What Makes Good Training Content?
Creating training content is one thing but creating good training content is another. This is the difference between a successful training session or a failure.The real definition of “good training content” is that it should be educational and engaging to meet your training goals.
But creating good training content can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a lot to work with, it’s your first time creating training material, or if what you have to teach might be deemed as “boring.”
To help, here are some of the most important elements of good training content:
Use Strong Visuals and Designs
Visuals and design play an essential role in your training content’s success. It’s not just about how “pretty” it looks. Research has found that people retain 80% of what they see, compared to 20% of what they read and only 10% of what they hear. Visuals have a more impactful way of holding and improving the learning retention of your employees that text and audio miss out on.
Keep the Goal in Mind
Developing your training material with a goal in mind is a key part of creating good training content. Without a goal, you’ll most likely be setting your employees up for failure because then they’ll join the workforce or company without a clear direction.
So ask yourself, ” What exactly do I want to accomplish with my training?”
The goal you choose will influence how you structure your training, what kinds of content you include and how you deliver, test and revise it. Goals can be aligned with role responsibilities, company goals, succession plans and product or service updates.
Use the Power of Storytelling
Storytelling isn’t just for novels. It’s a great way to build a connection with your employees and your training content. Storytelling has the ability to inspire and motivate your employees to be enthusiastic about their jobs or being a part of your company.
The London School of Business found that people retain 65 to 70% of information shared via a story, while only 5 to 10% retain information conveyed through statistics. Making up stories is a learning technique that not only triggers emotions in employees with different learning styles but also helps them in remembering key aspects of their training.
Add Interactive Content
Interactive content is any content that requires your employees to stay engaged during training sessions and helps to improve their training experience as well. Interactive content can be as simple as providing a checklist that employees can have to check off as they go through training or as complex as creating quizzes segmented based on your employees’ roles and interests.
Encourage Two-Way Discussions
Always engage your staff in a two-way dialogue throughout training. Create or schedule a section of your training where discussion and interaction are encouraged. Employees must feel heard and supported because this contributes to a clear path to training success.
You can start by adding live training into the mix. As time-saving as recorded training is, live training allows employees to ask questions and get answers in real-time instead of being left alone to find the answer or wait until someone is available to ask.
If it’s not possible to have live training, be sure to have scheduled conversations beforehand or during training to learn what you’d both like to accomplish with this training. Lastly, listen a lot more than you speak, as you want to create an environment where there’s open feedback and multiple understanding. Most notably, listening carefully to what’s being said and what isn’t is just as important.
Share Your Jargon Dictionary
Every company has its own jargon, whether it’s based on the industry, role or company culture. They reduce confusion or clashes between new and current employees. And for employees in training, they help shorten the time it takes to learn and make sure that everyone uses the same words to talk about the same thing.
