An employee’s knowledge base has a significant impact on the quality of their work. Without appropriate learning opportunities, your team may struggle to complete their assigned tasks, decreasing productivity and the quality of their outputs. However, if the training you provide is ineffective, it can actually do more harm than good, leading to increased confusion and frustration as well as issues with following developed processes and procedures.
By incorporating various learning and development (L&D) best practices into your training paradigm, you can increase the effectiveness of the learning experience. This can lead to enhanced quality and productivity, positively impacting your bottom line.
If you want to implement best practices that can drive learning effectiveness, here are a few worth embracing.
Before you even begin developing an L&D program, you need to know who your audience is and the struggles they face. This ensures your learning initiative is focused on the right training areas and topics. Plus, it gives you a chance to align the training with your organization’s greatest needs.
Consider your employees’ backgrounds, current knowledge levels, daily struggles, and anything else that can help define their existing strengths and weaknesses. The goal should be to create training that has an inherent sense of relevance and accessibility, ensuring the content provides value and is delivered in a way that is easy to understand.
Most professionals are busy. As a result, squeezing training into their schedule isn’t always easy, especially it is only available in formal classrooms, at specific times, or on a limited number of devices.
While occasional in-person training can provide value, making the core of your learning experience more flexible is a smart move. Make the bulk of the content mobile-friendly and online accessible, giving your employees options regarding how they access the material. Embrace microlearning – the approach of dividing up training into bite-sized modules – to make the modules easier to work into even the most hectic workday and to enhance retention. By including flexibility and mobility, you can ensure that your team can remain productive and is able to complete their training.
One of the drawbacks of many classroom learning experiences is that they aren’t overly engaging. Similarly, even if the materials are accessible online, asking your employees to spend hours reading text isn’t going to keep them engaged or motivated.
Instead of relying solely on traditional forms of content delivery, think outside the box. Make sure any text is written in a way that draws the reader in and include interactive elements that promote increased engagement. Along with text-based information, embrace other media like videos, infographics, and images.
Once a module is complete, add an interactive assessment to the end. Not only does this allow employees to gauge their level of understanding, but it also provides you with valuable data about the effectiveness of the content.
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