Improving training effectiveness can have long-term, strategic benefits for a company – without costing a lot.
Ongoing training is vital to ensure that staff can meet requirements and implement your company’s current processes and procedures. This is particularly important for compliance with standards (including internal, industry and regulatory standards).
Too often, companies approach training as an afterthought – or an activity to get ticked off the list. It may be poorly planned or executed, and appear disconnected from real goals and work activities.
When training isn’t strategic or regularly updated, it can waste resources. It may also fail to address knowledge gaps and cause or reinforce misunderstandings. Below, we offer some practical steps for improving training effectiveness in your company.
How to improve training effectiveness in your company
A well-planned and strategic training session is never a waste.
Improving the effectiveness of training will ensure that staff members walk away with improved job skills that ultimately save time and money.
1. Survey your employees beforehand
Identify gaps in your employees’ knowledge and areas that need improvement in your service delivery and organizational processes.
Surveying your staff, users and suppliers will give you a complete picture of organizational procedures and where improvements can be made.
Surveys can easily be conducted using online training management software.
2. Create key outcomes and communicate them
Determine what you need to accomplish with the training and communicate this clearly to participants.
Trying to cover more than one subject at a time might not be feasible but sometimes necessary to demonstrate a complete procedure.
Try to find a balance so that your key outcomes are still clear and achievable.
3. Create an on-going learning path
Create an on-going learning path that your staff can follow throughout the year (or even multiple years). These can be tailored to teams or individuals, depending on your requirements.
A culture of life-long learning is something that you should encourage within your organization if you want to stay ahead in your field or industry.
4. Choose the right training software
Training management software can help you plan and schedule training sessions as well as monitor outcomes and track progress so you can identify areas that need improvement.
Good training software will also facilitate surveying of staff, users, and suppliers so you can identify areas of improvement.
5. Stay informed about industry trends
If standard operating procedures change in your industry, especially if they relate to compliance, you need to be aware of these changes in time to implement the necessary training.
Being informed about these changes is the responsibility of the company and a failure to implement them with proper training could lead to penalties or failed audits.
6. Refine your teaching methods over time
Gather data from past training sessions and assess outcomes to determine how training materials and methods could be improved. There may be areas to add, change, update, or refine.
Surveying participants before and after training sessions can also help determine what worked well, and what didn’t.
This may seem like extra work, but once you’ve refined your teaching methods, you’ll need to do it less often.
7. Identify the best times for training
Training for new products or procedures, as an example, needs to  happen before they are implemented.
If you get the timing wrong, staff won’t have a full understanding in time and your customer service will suffer.
Also, avoid scheduling training sessions for busy times of the year such as before the annual shutdown.
8. Incentivize or reward training achievements
Staff members might view training sessions as an unwelcome interruption, which is not unwarranted if they’re very busy or working towards deadlines.
To encourage a culture of learning and attentiveness during training sessions, rewards or incentives can be offered to staff members who are proactive or achieve exceptional results.
Learning will soon become its own reward as training sessions make work easier and more pleasurable.
Improving training effectiveness with software from isoTracker
isoTracker’s training software module helps you plan and implement training sessions for employees, users and suppliers.
The survey functions help you ascertain what training is needed and by whom. Built-in corrective action features allow for easy resolution of any knowledge gaps.
This software can stand alone, or it can be integrated with other isoTracker quality management modules including document control, CAPA, complaints management and audit management software.
With a 60-day free trial you can see first-hand how our training software can help with improving training effectiveness in your company.
