EMPLOYEE TRAINING

What Is Employee Training?

● Employee training is a set of training events and
educational practices that aims to provide staff with the
knowledge and skills needed to help their company
succeed. This can manifest itself in various scenarios,
depending on the industry, departments, roles, or training
needs of a particular group of employees.
● For example, whereas retail companies often conduct
sales and product knowledge training for sales
representatives, manufacturing companies will pay
closer attention to compliance training to ensure
workplace safety, meet industry specifications, and
comply with all laws and regulations. Although training
scenarios and their areas of application can vary, the
ultimate goal is to boost employee competence and keep
it relevant to the market.
 Why Is Employee Training Important?

●For companies, established employee

training ensures a high level of employee
preparation for performing job duties and
responsibilities. It also minimizes the risks
of violations that can result in heavy fines
and penalties.
● But from a strategic perspective, the
importance of employee training can also
not be overestimated.
● Depending on the company’s size, employee training is the
responsibility of either the HR department or the Learning and
Development team. It is no accident that training comes
bundled with this ‘developmental’ aspect. This indicates the
importance of a designated approach to the provision of
training and development opportunities and goes beyond the
scope of work with ‘human resources’ alone.
● Nowadays, companies increasingly recognize the potential of
digital technologies to change employee training for the better.
● Next, you’ll see that corporate training comprises a number of
various formats and activities, some of them being well known,
some having emerged recently. Choose that which suits your
training situation best to have a useful point of departure.
 Types of Training and Development
Initiatives for Employees
● Training types vary depending on the
involvement of an instructor and other learners in
terms of the process, physical setting, the
technology used, and, of course, the knowledge
and skills in focus.
● Let explore some of them…
 E-Learning
● Online learning, or eLearning, is a style of training via online courses,
quizzes, and other learning materials created with authoring software
and delivered via the Internet.
● The key characteristic and advantage of eLearning is that it offers the
opportunity to train asynchronously, without being tied to a specific
time, space, or an instructor’s presence.
● Companies can train hundreds of people at once, launch the same
quality training for remote employees, and scale new hires, sales,
compliance, and any other kind of corporate training. Online learning
enables companies to cut travel, accommodation, venue, and other
expenses associated with traditional group training and seminars.
● At the same time, the asynchronous access to training implies that it
should be rich in content, utilize multimedia, and keep learners
engaged so they can continue to progress through a given course and
complete it successfully. Plus, there should be knowledge checks to
assess how learners retained knowledge and understood the material.
 How to launch it
● To create online courses that can contain video, audio, graphics, quizzes, and
interactions, course developers and instructional designers (ID) need
authoring software. The company can hire freelancers for this task, assign it
to a corporate trainer or an HR specialist, or buy off-the-shelf courses
externally. However, the entire process is not as complicated as it might
sound. There are authoring tools and softwares that allow doing this quickly
and easily.
● To deliver digital learning materials to employees, it’s best to use a learning
management system (LMS). There, you can upload courses, launch
assessments for learners, and create a corporate knowledge base.
Onboarding, product knowledge, and any other kind of training in a corporate
LMS that will become a streamlined organized process, and real-time reports
from the system will help measure its effectiveness accurately.
● The system reduces the workload and automates tedious tasks like
scheduling training sessions, assigning courses, monitoring learner progress,
and sending out notifications. Set the LMS once and it will enroll, notify, and
certify learners like clockwork, enabling you to make the most of your
eLearning initiative.
 Instructor-led training (ILT)
● As the name implies, this type of training presupposes that an instructor
teaches something to a group of learners (gives a lecture) or facilitates and
leads group activities. ILT is a face-to-face activity and implies that all training
participants join together for the classes either in the same physical
environment (a classroom) or in a single virtual space. It’s especially
noteworthy that everyone participates in training synchronously, in the same
time frame, and it’s an instructor who leads the session, prepares the learning
material, and assesses learner performance.
● How to move it online
● The tried-and-true way to adapt ILT to digital realities is video conferencing.
Opt for Skype, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, or any other video conferencing
software to launch group calls here. You even can present in front of the
learners with the built-in interactive whiteboard, just as you would in a
physical classroom. In the iSpring Learn LMS, you can set up integration either
with Zoom or Microsoft Teams to host training right in the LMS, easily
schedule it in the built-in calendar, and monitor attendance.
 Hands-on training
● Training your employees on-site on how to perform certain job-related
practical actions is referred to as hands-on or on-the-job training. The
key principle of hands-on training is ‘watch and repeat’ – that’s why it is
strongly associated with mentorship. For instance, a mentor can show
their mentee how to fill in a contract form, use a printing press, or train
young baristas on how to make a caramel macchiato.
● Hands-on training is particularly relevant for introducing new hires to
their job duties, but also takes place during internal talent rotations
and professional internships. However, it may require too much effort
from seasoned employees who have to perform as mentors, while
juggling a lot of things at once and completing their own tasks.
● If it’s unstructured, hands-on training can hinder productivity. Plus, its
quality depends on so many subjective factors, including the mentor’s
talent for teaching and instruction. In workplaces where churn is fairly
high, hands-on training can result in pointless efforts that don’t result in
any ROI
 How to move it online
● People have always taught each other how to do things,
and there is no way to give up hands-on training. To
make it work, you can move a portion of it into the video
format and use video tutorials to walk the learner
through the topic. Teaching a process through a video is
an illustrative and time-saving way to explain how things
work, and what learners need to do with it.
● For a streamlined hands-on training process, you can
create an online course and assign it to a particular
learner or a group of learners in LMS.
● Employees will be able to take the course anytime, even
before day one. This will allow them to gain new
knowledge, prepare for the day, and test themselves with
interactive quizzes.
 Simulation-based employee training
● This type is closely related to hands-on employee training, but
has a strong technology component. For simulation-based
training, virtual reality is often used to sharpen skills in
construction, flight operations, maritime aircraft navigation,
surgery, nursery, and other arenas where stakes are high.
Simulation-based training focuses on hard skills training during
apprenticeship or internship, as in a medical institution.
● In the corporate world, simulation-based employee training
often aims at teaching how to use specific technologies,
hardware, or software, and you can leverage eLearning to
facilitate it as well.
● How to move it online
● For software simulation training, try recording screen casts.
● Screen casts will let you demonstrate the key
features and operations of an app and teach your
employees how to work with business software.
Learners can easily repeat the actions by
following your visual hints and then you can test
how well they remember the new material by
asking them to perform a certain task in the app.
 Role-playing scenarios
● Role-plays are a way to immerse learners into the context of
typical workplace situations, interactions with customers and
partners, and dealings with issues that arise. They aim to
develop a certain kind of behavior or a communication style
that would address workplace challenges most effectively.
● Role-playing is an active learning technique that prompts two or
more learners to act out a dialogue under the supervision of an
instructor. Typical examples of role-plays are dealing with an
angry customer, refund requests, or negotiations. When role-
playing, learners can become emotionally engaged, emulate
behavior in stressful situations, and sharpen communication
skills in a risk-free environment.
● The only disadvantage of face-to-face role-plays is that they
require the presence of other people, are bound by time
constraints, and are difficult to conduct at scale.
 How to move it online
● Interactive role-plays built with an authoring tool will let you keep the
lively and learner-centric nature of role-plays, but put them at scale and
enable learners to practice their soft skills anytime, anywhere.
● With such interactive role-plays made on softwares, it’s possible to
train outside of a classroom setting, but in a totally safe environment.
Whether it’s customer service or fire safety training, your employees
will learn to behave in risky or tricky situations confidently and operate
in accordance with established policies and procedures.
● Role-plays are great for cementing new knowledge in one’s memory,
and you can use them to supplement other types of training. To create
them in software, you only need to put a script into a dialogue format
and set up branching that will lead your learners to the specific
outcome depending on their choices. And, there’s no need to search
for authentic characters and backgrounds somewhere on the net:
Content Library provides plenty of options for creating a credible
learning environment.
 Coaching
● Coaches are experts in their field and sell this
expertise to those customers who also need to
succeed in this or a related field.
● Coaching is a rather exclusive and therefore
expensive one-on-one training for managers that
primarily focus on leadership skills, strategic
thinking, motivation, and business success.
● At the same time, coaches also need to reach
more people and frequently train other coaches, or
trainers, to spread best practices and motivate
each other. That’s why coaching now needs to be
present in an online format as well.
 How to move it online
●With eLearning, coaches can create online
courses that entice audiences and give an
idea of upcoming face-to-face seminars.
Like online courses on any other training
topic these can be made with the software
authoring tool. Here, coaches also can
record their talking head or presenter-style
videos that will look professional and neat.
5 Tips for Creating Employee Training Programs
for Your Workplace

●No matter which types of employee

training programs you prefer, it’s best to
consider these five pieces of advice. They’ll
help you come up with a more meaningful
and effective training program for your
employees.
 Find the Why of the training
● Understand the issue you need to address with
training and think about how it affects on-the-job
performance.
● Is there any gap between the current and the
expected level of knowledge and competence that
hinders your company’s growth?
● Articulate the ultimate training goals, namely, the
results that you expect to achieve after launching
employee training.
● An effective training program should bridge the
skill gap and lead your company to the desired
results.
 Make training composite

●Any training initiative in a company needs

to be aligned with the business strategy
and values. Whichever topics you cover in a
training program, ensure consistency in the
message and make any piece of learning
content address certain training needs
precisely. Arrange the pieces of content
into composite learning tracks in your LMS
so all your learners can study them in the
required logical order.
 Make the content diverse
●Sloppy slides and monotonous lectures are
not a part of your plan, right? To bring
engagement to your training, try to diversify
content types and support course material
with game-like drag-and-drop exercises
and colorful interactions. Different types of
training content will let you address various
learning styles better
 Avoid cognitive overload

●When it comes to maintaining your

learners’ attention, less is more. So, if you
can offer valuable information to learners
in smaller portions, that will be great. Opt
for microlearning to fit training into your
employees’ daily schedule. This way, there
will be less risk of content fatigue
 Get feedback from learners

●Learn employees’ impressions of the

training program either by asking them
directly or conducting an online poll.
Consider their opinions before you start
revising the existing training program. This
will help you identify what’s already good
about it and what you can improve to
facilitate a better learner experience
THANK YOU