Staff training sessions may seem simple at first glance, but if you want your employees to integrate what you’re going to teach, you have to do more than just lecture them. The best training sessions are engaging and allow people to participate without hindering their flow. The information also has to reach and be understandable to all attendees. This is especially important if you have to train people from multiple teams together. Below we outline a few tips for planning meaningful, insightful, and effective staff training sessions.
Structure Your Session
The way you structure your session can make or break the event. You have to make sure that you start with an introduction that will let them know what you’ll be covering and give them an idea of the order in which each point will be presented.
If you want to make things easy for you, we suggest that you find a good online flow chart maker. This will allow you to frame your session. Picking an online chart maker will make collaboration much easier too.
Flowcharts can be used to organize your ideas in a logical order and visualize how the session should be going. A flexible flow chart will allow you to insert or remove elements easily and see how different blocks should relate to each other.
Establish Learning Objectives and Measure Results
Next, you will need to set clear objectives for your session. These objectives should be measurable and realistic. You also need to have a system in place to know if your employees really interacted with the training. This could be done by having them fill in reaction forms at the end of the sessions, but they often don’t tell the full story. Participants will usually try to say what you want to hear so they can get the whole thing over with.
Instead, you should do follow-up evaluations to see if there has been any difference in how your employees perform on the ground. Management will need to start paying more attention to what people are doing and ensure employees’ actions are aligned with what was taught during the session.
Choose the Right Space
Choosing the right space for the training session is also very important. The area needs to be comfortable, but not too much. It also helps to have the training in an area your audience is familiar with. If you’re going to be training your warehouse staff, for instance, then having the session in the lunchroom will make the atmosphere feel more convivial, which will foster interaction.
Use Training Material
You should also try to go the extra mile and prepare some training material. These can be manuals that the attendees will be able to use during the session and after. They can be used to serve as a reminder of the things they’ve learned. It will also make the session much more fun and engaging. Training materials can be used to guide the session and make different parts of the session more digestible as well.
Simplify the Session as Much as You Can
You should also try to see if you could take out superfluous information or even the entire blocks from your session. The simpler the session is, the greater the chance the attendees will integrate the information. You also have to keep the session as short as you can.
Add Training Activities
You should add a few activities to your session to keep everyone engaged. One of the things you could do is organize the attendees in groups of five at the beginning of the session as an ice breaker. Then ask every member to share ten things they have in common with the rest of the group.
This will allow members of the group to form a bond and it will create a more relaxing learning atmosphere. Having people learn in small groups will help them share ideas or allow them to ask questions to other members if they don’t understand a certain point.
Leave Some Time for Questions and Breaks
You should also make sure that you have time at the end of each training block for questions. You have to anticipate which type of questions people are going to ask and how long it’s going to take to answer them.
You should also break the session up with coffee breaks. Try to give breaks every 75 minutes or so to give people a chance to go to the bathroom and come back with a refreshed mind.
If you want to give training sessions that will be engaging and bear fruit, you need to follow these tips. This will ensure that everyone learns the skills you want them to, and they will look forward to more training sessions.
