How to Keep Employee Training Relevant and Interesting?

Through the eyes of some employees, training is considered to be a necessary hassle to be added into their already hectic working life. Although they know that employee development training will be critical for the success of the business and in order to keep update with the trends, innovations and further advancement in their fields of expertise. And it is also no helps that many companies organize and run their training programs but contribute to less or no changes at all in their employee improvement. This might be due to the cost and time constraint in order to revamp or incorporated new content to their outline of the program.

Training and employee development program normally contribute to higher employee retention and loyalty and it also helps to give the company a better impression to their potential employees. With an increasing demands of qualified talent each year these days, is becoming a highly relevant subject matters to have a relevant, interesting, training and development program that can cater all the employees who participate in the program regardless their working level. To reach the goal, how a training program can remain relevant and interesting to these employees without putting too much budget for the companies to invest on them?

Experience in catering & developing different training program for various business in our 5 different global locations, Enigma CG suggests you six ways on how to jump-start your training & development program and remain relevant at the same time:-

Invest in Leadership Development

In today’s time, conscious leadership that is a combination of both business and relationship skills are much needed. Over the next few decades, many baby boomers will be expected to retire from their current position so there will be a potential void for experienced leaders. This increase will later combined with the ongoing production of millennials that will make some of the current programs to be obsolete and no longer relevant. Investing in order to fine tune the current leadership development program or creating a particularly new one, a business can get ahead with this pending gap and continued to be poised in becoming the strong, well-developed leader for tomorrow.

Keep training relevant

Employees dread and despise trainings that are not related to their routine and everyday work life. So as expected, many will refuse to engage and furthermore decline to participate. Try to pick your course offering and the participants that will be participating. Decide and check if it is relevant to their work and job scope. Will the outline help these workers to overcome their current obstacles in completing their work with success? Everything should be put into account when deciding the course that fit your employees to ensure the success in the end of the program, either it will improve or break your employees. Make sure certain course materials are still relevant and help the participants now or in the immediate future to grow.

Bringing in a new trainer

In many organizations, the same people will be conducting the training over the years. There is a chance that their course content or materials might be irrelevant to the person these days. A new trainer can add a new flavor to the current topics as they can bring in different point of view and perspective besides adding up new content that can further engage the audience by expanding their knowledge further.

The new trainer doesn’t have to be expensive either because there could be an expert trainer lies within the four walls of your business and it might also be people from inside the organization. Reaching out to business peers and mentors to gain insights & expertise as well.

Create options

Make all training program to be easily accessible to all your employees. Start off by creating real-time offering, recorded offering and online offering to entice your employees further. Also you can give options for your employees to attend it either remotely or in person, considering where they are currently located. Prepare for other workers that non-traditionally work in shifts schedule. New technology has enable the program to be manage a lot easier by providing a platform for it to be accessed anyway either remotely or online and use the chance to get the full use of these technologies to allow easier and less expensive course & training to be conducted.

This kind of capability allows greater flexibility of how a course and training program can be conducted while enabling the employees to participate in the course and furthermore increase the attendance rates and in turn the likelihood of the subject matters can be retained.

Change the scenery

If the training is normally conducted in an onsite training center or a corporate conference room, you might want to consider moving to other location. Sometimes a change in scenery might be good to get these participants to be attentive at their seminars and training programs because it left all the other distractions back at their workplace and their mind will be free to accept any knowledge coming their way. It doesn’t have to be an exotic location but it can be in other corporate location, training center and even outdoor. It is essential to get the employees out of the office once in a while and take them into the neutral scenery so their mind will be freed from all the distractions that may arise in the office. This will encourage the participants to be more engage and willing to learn with the program.

Feedback, Feedback & Feedback

From before, during and after the class, do make sure you ask for feedback from your employees or participants. Ensure they are satisfied and learn quite a lot during the training so it will benefit them. Once you received the feedback, make sure to review it and later act on it if there are any issues that to be addressed. Acting from the feedback received, employees will most likely provide an open end and honest feedback that will move forward. It is also important to ask for feedback from employees that absent from the non-mandatory session because by knowing the reason behind their absence, employers will know what is the step to take that can help reduce non-attendees in the future.

By keeping the current training program up-to-date and relevant will help increase the utilization of the program further. Instead of having your employees dreading about the training course, now they will be looking forward to participate as they can gain more knowledge and insights that can help improve their method of work and increase their level of productivity. An additional benefit in training and development program for employees is reduction of turnover and increase in employee loyalty. Investing in corporate training will ensure their workforce to be able to serve them better in the new future.