Create an Effective Training Program in 8 Steps

How does one create effective workforce training materials? Below is an eight-step road map to help you create more effective training materials. Entire books have been written about each of these steps, so there’s far more to say than what’s written below. But this article should serve as an effective getting-started guide in your quest to create workforce training materials that actually work.

Step 1: Perform a Training Needs Assessment

Firstly you should analyze the performance problem to get an idea of what’s causing it and to see if training is the best solution. If you’ve analyzed the workplace performance problem and determined that training really is the right solution, then it’s time to start your research for the training. That’s what the training needs assessment is for.

The basic training needs assessment is a four-step process. Those steps are:

• Identify a clear business goal that the training supports
• Determine the tasks the workers need to perform so the company can reach that goal
• Determine the training activities that will help the workers learn to perform the tasks
• Determine the learning characteristics of the workers that will make the training more effective

Sounds simple enough, but let’s break those four steps down a bit more.

Identify the business goal:

Don’t provide training if it’s not clear why you’re doing it, or if it doesn’t directly support a business goal. Business goals include things like increasing revenue and efficiency, decreasing costs and waste, supporting a new product, teaching a new or changed production process, or complying with regulations. For example, a business goal might be to train employees to create a new product.

Determine the tasks workers need to perform:

Once you’ve identified the business goal, ask yourself what your employees have to do if the company is to reach that goal. During this phase, you’ll identify the “performance gap” between what your workers can do now, and what they must be able to do. To keep with our new product example, the workers might need to know what the new product is, how the product is produced, and (most importantly) the tasks the workers must perform on the job to make the product.

Step 2: respects Adult Learning Principles in Mind

The workers you want to train are adults, and adults share certain characteristics that that make training more effective for them (or less effective if you ignore the characteristics). If your training recognizes and respects these adult learning principles, it’s likely to be more effective. If your training disregards these principles, you’re throwing training money out the door from the word “go.”

So what are these principles? Adult learners:

Are self-directed
Are goal-oriented
Want training that is relevant
Want training that is task-oriented
Learn when they see “what’s in it for them”
Want to be and feel respected
You can see how these principles relate to the learner characteristics you identified during your training needs assessment. And you can imagine how they should affect your training during design and delivery.

Follow the next →