Are your employees enthusiastic about your corporate training? Are you achieving the compliance rates you need for your next audit? If you answered “no” to either of these questions, it’s time to take action and engage your employees to motivate them to take responsibility for personal learning and development.
Here are five key principles that, when used wisely, will connect your employees with your important learning messages.
1. Make it relatable.
How long does it take you to zone out in a meeting if the item of discussion isn’t directly applicable to you? If training materials are too generic, they won’t strike a chord with anyone. Of course, there are strategies for including and appealing to a range of learning cohorts, but the golden rule is: Make it relatable. Use real employee stories or, in e-learning, involve your CEO in a warm, informative welcome video. Relatable learning materials are inclusive and speak directly to the learner while inspiring action.
2. Make it easy to apply on the job.
On completing your training, will your employees know how to translate their new skills directly into their daily work tasks? Whether you’re using e-learning or face-to-face training, if you’ve only presented information in a “tell style” delivery, it’s likely that the concepts will remain theoretical. Weaving core content through immersive, relatable scenarios is one of the most effective ways to illustrate exactly how to apply skills and knowledge on the job. Graphic narratives are an effective method for presenting a story and aligned content, and you can incorporate interactivity by including frames for learners to select for related information.
3. Make it user-friendly.
This important principle is often overlooked by focusing too much on learning content and not enough on the experience. If your information is not structured well and is difficult to navigate, it can frustrate or lose people entirely. User-friendly training is intuitive and unfolds in a sequence that builds in complexity. In an e-learning context, it means providing clear, consistent navigation instructions and explaining expectations at the start. For face-to-face training, it might involve providing a well-structured workbook that reinstates key messages and offers space for notetaking and reflection.
4. Make it memorable.
Learning doesn’t just happen. The more memorable training is, the longer learning will extend beyond the learning experience. Use appropriate attention-grabbing mechanisms, and link content to anecdotes. Consider creating an accountability campaign that takes key learning messages from the classroom to the office with full visibility and a call to action.
5. Make it social.
Now that you’ve created exciting, memorable training materials, it’s time to encourage people to talk about them. Your LMS might include social features that enable employees to comment on and discuss training, or you could begin a post-training discussion on your organization’s social media platform. At the end of the day, you shouldn’t need to force the conversation; if your training is interesting and delivered in a fresh and exciting format, it will stand for itself and generate word of mouth without too much help.
