Step 1: Identify your training needs

The first step in creating effective training is to identify your training needs. This means looking at your company’s goals for the year and determining what steps need to be taken to achieve those goals.

Consider the following questions.
What are your companies goals this year?
How are you going to achieve these goals?
Who will be performing each task?
What additional knowledge and skills do they need in order to complete the task to the required standard?

Answering each of these questions helps to ensure that the training not only addresses the needs of the company, but also the individual. It ensures that training is targeted, appropriate and cost effective.

In my experience, companies and organisations who skip this stage, often find that they waste large amounts of money. Skipping this stage results in training that is poorly targeted. And whilst this might bring about improvement, it often doesn’t provide the knowledge and skills that are necessary for the company to acheive its goal.

It’s also essential to link this step with the appraisal cycle. Having identified areas for improvement, including them within the appraisal cycle, helps the individual to feel motivated to achieve the target whilst also keeping them accountable.

Remember, the goal is to provide training that will bring about positive and lasting change within your business or organization. By accurately identifying your training needs, you can ensure that your training program is targeted to meet those specific needs.

Step 2: Establish your training objectives

What are training objectives and why are they important?

Training objectives are concise statements which clearly outline what you will learn within the course. They are sometimes called intended learning outcomes. Each objective should have a specific measurable goal which aligns to the overall goals and objectives of the organisation.

Here are a couple of examples of training objectives.

Improve customer service skills for all customer-facing employees.
Improve knowledge of the company’s products and services for all employees.
Enhance team members’ ability to handle difficult customer situations by providing them with the skills and knowledge necessary to de-escalate conflicts and resolve complaints.
Develop team members’ ability to provide personalized service to customers by teaching them how to gather customer information and use it to create a more personalized experience.

If you are interested in reading more about learning objectives, Blooms taxonomy provides an interesting read

Step 3: Design the training course

Once you have a clear understanding of what needs to be learned, and you have established specific training objectives, the next steps are to decide upon the content of the course, the training format, and the delivery method.

The course content should be built around the training objectives.

It is helpful to break the content down in to training sessions. This helps you to plan what knowledge will be covered at each point in the day. It also allows you to plan on when to include training tasks and learning activities. Tasks, discussions, and hands on exercises can be used to help delegates embed and apply knowledge. They can also be used to improve engagement. Spacing these tasks throughout the day is a helpful strategy to improve learning.

The illustration below shows a session time table. This information should be provided to organisers and delegates in advance. This level of detail enables organisers to decide if the course content will meet their company objectives.

Next, it’s important to consider the format and delivery of the training.

Will the training be face to face in a classroom, an online course, or a combination of both? Will it be a self-paced program or will it include live instruction? The format and delivery should be tailored to the training content. We deal with this in more detail later in the article when we explore the different types of training and their benefits.

If the course is going to be delivered in person then the next set of considerations are around venue and location. This is also dealt with in more detail later in the article.

Course outline showing 4 sessions within a one-day course

Step 4: Deliver the training

There is a lot to consider when you are delivering a training course. We explore this in a lot more detail below.

Step 5: Evaluate the training

It is important to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of the training course.

Did the training meet your training objectives and did it fill the gaps in knowledge and skills?

Can your team use this new knowledge and skills to achieve the companies targets and goals?

Training evaluation can be done in stages.

Ask your delegates to provide feedback on the day of training. The easiest way to do this is by asking them to complete a participant evaluation form. We have created an evaluation form template which is fully editable. Click the link to download it.

In order to measure responses, ask delegates to grade their answers.

Here is an example

Did the training course meet your expectations?

1= Poor or strongly disagree
5=Outstanding or strongly agree.

By quantifying responses, you can gain an accurate impression of the courses overall effectiveness.

It is important to evaluate all aspects of the training, so ask questions about the whole process, including booking, course content, the knowledge of the tutor and the venue. Within the evaluation include three open questions that allow delegates to give their opinion. Ask delegates to identify the most valuable sections of the training but also ask them to suggest improvements. By evaluating each aspect, it becomes easy to see what aspects were successful and which aspects received negative feedback.

For training to be truly effective, it must bring about lasting change and improvement. So it is important to measure the impact of the training over time.