Do you want to give employee training a shot? Here are 5 insider tips for designing and developing an effective training program for your business by taking the solution-based learning approach!
Workforce training doesn’t require any introduction. Everyone knows and recognizes the countless benefits it can bring a business. To name a few, training increases productivity and revenue while decreasing costs and mistakes. However, designing the right training program to accommodate the specific needs of your business is an art form and should be taken seriously. Instead of blindly following corporate training trends, do your research and create an effective training solution that fits you perfectly. In this article, we walk you through the solution-based learning steps you need to follow to make the right design decisions and discuss why measuring outcomes is an essential part of the process.
5 Steps To Develop An Effective Training Solution
One of the advantages of implementing solution-based learning is that begins with the end in mind. Its primary focus is to target problems that are plaguing your organization and remedy them with custom-tailored solutions instead of embarking on the development journey without a roadmap or clear destination. Whether the answer is VILT sessions or a blended learning strategy, solution-based learning helps you personalize the process and achieve the desired results.
1. Conduct A Needs Analysis
This is the starting point of any well-designed training program. You can’t just jump into developing materials without knowing your underlying problems. Analysis helps you pinpoint performance gaps, existing knowledge, as well as the skills that your employees need to develop to maximize their efficiency. All of the above can be achieved by administering assessments and surveys or gathering data from your quarterly/yearly performance reviews and employee development plans. Another crucial task is to determine why there is an issue in the first place and how it impacts your organization. For example, developing new skill-based training resources for your team or rethinking your current approach will boost your sales team’s performance and improve customer satisfaction scores. During this stage, you can also evaluate current training materials and decide if you want to repurpose or scrap them altogether.
2. Identify Your Training Goals
The information from the Training Needs Analysis will help you set training objectives that outline in detail what your employees are expected to be able to do by the end of the training. In addition, they help you understand and measure the impact of training on your organization. As such, training objectives must be precise, measurable, and time-specific. Another thing to remember is that training goals must align with your business objectives. At the end of the day, an effective training solution is one that supports success and efficiency within an organization. Last but not least, this phase should also include the development of evaluation criteria so that you can determine the success of the entire project and keep everything on track.
3. Choose Your Technology
Often, businesses opt for training methods that are popular in the industry, whether that is eLearning, video training, and so on. However, picking a method based on popularity might not be the best course of action. It’s important to look into the specific characteristics and preferences of your employees so that you can offer them the most effective option. Are they tech-savvy enough for eLearning? Do they prefer to train alone or with an instructor? How do they want to practice their new skills? These questions will help determine whether your employees need an exclusively online or blended learning training experience.
4. Design Your Training Materials
Now that you have gathered all this information, you are ready to design and develop your training materials. Use an advanced authoring tool to create presentations, videos, games, just-in-time resources, branching scenarios, and more that you can add to your training solution. Remember to keep your materials interactive, concise, and visually appealing to hold the attention of your audience. A storyboard will help you keep track of your content so that you can ensure it flows correctly. An eLearning design pro tip is to allow employees to personalize their learning paths and plan room for feedback exchange throughout the learning process.
5. Measure Your Solution-Based Learning Outcomes
You might think that your work is over after designing and implementing your training program. However, the only way to know whether your training solution is effective is to evaluate it properly by using the evaluation criteria you set earlier in the process. Thankfully, there are various ways to achieve that. You can use post-training employee feedback, assessments, as well as data analysis of the training objectives you set earlier. The more thorough you were during the initial stages of development, the easier it will be to prove the value of your training solution. But why is it important to measure training outcomes?
Why You Need To Measure The Effectiveness Of eLearning
Setting measurable goals that give you tangible results is one of the most crucial steps in creating an effective solution-based training program for your business. Here are a few of the reasons why.
Gauge The Progress Of Your Learning Goals
Proving that your training solution is effective is not just a matter of checking off training goals once completed. You need to be aware of the different variables that affect training outcomes. This way, you can identify which tools, techniques, or methods bring in the desired results faster. At the same time, you can use this information to hold learners accountable for their progress and motivate their overall learner engagement.
Make Data-Driven Decisions
What happens when by the end of your training experiences, your goals haven’t been accomplished? Having quantifiable data can help you easily understand which areas are still in need of improvement, which techniques need to be modified, as well as which employee categories had a better response to training. This data will inform your decisions so that you can make calculated adjustments that will undoubtedly result in the accomplishment of your overarching objectives.
Prove ROI
Employee training can increase revenue, decrease employee turnover, promote organizational growth, and put your organization ahead of the competition. However, to get these results, you will have to allocate adequate resources toward training. If you want to prove to higher-level stakeholders that this investment is worth their while, measuring all aspects of training is a one-way road. Specifically, you’ll be able to demonstrate with hard data how newly acquired knowledge from training improves employee performance and promotes the achievement of business goals.
Conclusion
Designing and developing an effective training solution can make all the difference in the trajectory of your business. With so many training options available, it’s important to follow a strict framework that will help you design a program based on your training needs and not industry trends. And let’s not forget the importance of measuring training effectiveness. By setting quantifiable goals, you can keep track of progress, prove ROI, and make informed decisions with solution-based learning. Hopefully, the insights shared in this article will help you make the right decisions so that you can maximize training ROI for your business.
Author: Christopher Pappas