However, to make these evaluations truly effective, it’s essential to focus on the competencies that matter most and provide feedback that drives meaningful growth.

Let’s explore employee evaluation in more detail by determining precisely what it refers to and then looking into some strategies for doing it correctly.

What is Employee Evaluation?

An employee evaluation, also commonly known as a ‘performance review,’ is a formal review process run by human resource departments in which a manager or supervisor assesses an employee’s work performance, skills, behaviors, and potential for growth within the organization. 

It typically involves reviewing various aspects of the employee’s work, such as job performance, work ethic, productivity, key competencies (e.g., communication, problem-solving skills, time management, ability to meet deadlines, etc.), and alignment with company goals. 

“The evaluation aims to provide constructive feedback, highlight strengths, identify areas for improvement, and create actionable steps for personal and professional development while also considering employee goals.”

Employee Evaluation vs. Performance Appraisal

Employee evaluations and performance appraisals are often used interchangeably, but they have distinct focuses and purposes:

Here are the key differences:

Purpose: Evaluations focus on development and growth, while appraisals focus on past performance and rewards.

Content: Evaluations assess a broad range of competencies, while appraisals zero in on job-specific metrics and outcomes.

Outcome: Evaluations provide feedback for future development, whereas appraisals often lead to immediate decisions like raises or promotions.

Performance appraisals occur once a year, and employee evaluations occur every three to six months. Some businesses, however, choose to conduct these quarterly, monthly, or even weekly and in certain circumstances, prefer to carry out more frequent check-ins or one-to-one sessions with employees. 

OPM data confirms that frequent feedback has greater results in improving employee performance and achieving performance management goals company-wide.

Key Elements of Employee Evaluation

An employee evaluation is not just a routine assessment but rather a tool for guiding employee development and aligning their efforts with organizational goals. To be effective, an evaluation should encompass several key elements that provide a well-rounded view of an employee’s performance.

Boost Your Business: The Critical Role of Employee Training and Development

Below are the essential components that contribute to an impactful and effective employee evaluation:

Performance Review: An assessment of how well employees have fulfilled their job responsibilities and met performance goals.

Competency Assessment: Evaluation of core skills and competencies, such as teamwork, leadership, and technical abilities.

Goal Setting: Discussions over short- and long-term career objectives, setting new goals for continued improvement and alignment with the company’s strategy.

Feedback and Communication: Constructive, two-way feedback that helps employees understand their strengths and areas for improvement.

Development Plan: A roadmap for the employee’s future growth, which may include training opportunities, mentoring, or career development.

These elements ensure that the evaluation process is comprehensive, fair, and geared towards fostering growth and improvement.

How Are Employee Evaluations Structured?

Employee evaluations are typically offered in a structured, formal setting, and the process can vary depending on the company’s size, culture, and goals. 

Most companies have an engrained employee evaluation system where employees are on a regular schedule – sometimes once a year (annual review), sometimes twice.

These assessments are often used in conjunction with raises and renewals or some sort of corrective action. Sometimes, they will happen after a big project or because of a specific event in the workplace. Most often, however, they are time-based. This helps to spread out employee evaluations so you aren’t doing them all simultaneously. 

For example, someone hired in January will have another employee evaluation in January next year. This helps to get a complete picture of how someone works and makes the process manageable.

Conducting Successful Employee Evaluations

Employee evaluations are challenging, but you can use them to your advantage if you know how to do so. Knowing how to conduct an employee evaluation is your first step.

Here are a few tips:

1Stay Prepared All Year

The first step is to be prepared for your evaluation. Keep notes all year long and stay organized. If you walk into the meeting with nothing prepared, you are just wasting time. Fill out your documents and keep detailed notes, so you won’t miss anything.

One way you can stay on top of your employee evaluations is to have your employees fill out text surveys and tests online to gauge their interests, performance, and knowledge on specific subjects. You can use this information to fill out your report before entering the meeting.

Additionally, you can leverage employee survey tools to collect meaningful information from employees. These tools allow you to get surveys on specific topics like- company-wide, leadership-only, or team-specific surveys. It’ll allow you to track changes in employee engagement levels over time and get the employee Net Promoter Score.

2Always Start with The Positives

You want to start the session out with the positives. Tell your employees what they’ve done right and what has impressed you. Keep your remarks clear and concise, but don’t be afraid of praise. 

Give solid examples of your employees’ good work and even provide tools for how they can continue doing it.

3Use Online Tests & Employee Evaluations

Just as it is important to understand your customers, it’s equally critical to understand your employees. One of the best things you can do is use online tests and self-evaluations to help gauge where your employees are and how much they understand their jobs. If possible, use these to fill out and broaden the scope of your evaluations.

You can even sign them up for tests and courses (using an online course platform such as Learnworlds) that will help them perform better at work.

Use these as enrichment activities for times when work is slow or when employees need additional training. If you just take the time to look for them, there are plenty of opportunities for your employees to improve and provide you with some insight.

Check these 16 best employee training methods you can use. 

For example, if you figure out that a new member of your marketing team isn’t experienced in using your product, enable him to use your product by providing a tutorial and instructions to remove this roadblock.

4Talk About Areas that Need Improvement

Next, discuss where your employee has gone wrong. If you are going to give negative feedback, make sure that you have legitimate examples. Then, outline a plan for how the employee can improve. You must do some of the heavy lifting to help your employees improve.

For example, you can provide tools to improve their communication skills, suggestions for getting to work on time, or additional guidelines for improving their quality of work.

5Ask Your Employee About What They Want to Do

Keeping your employee morale up is important – so make sure you know what they want to learn. Even if you can’t teach your employees something or move them into a role right away, you can always keep that information in the back of your mind.

It’s essential to consider each employee’s strengths and wants to determine which position in the company will make them happy and then motivate them to succeed and achieve high performance.

6Ask for Feedback

Before your session ends, ask for feedback on how you are doing as well. It can be humbling to get that feedback, but you need it. 

This will help your employees to tell you what they need to be successful. 

For example, your employees may convey they’re overworked and under-rested, or you could figure out that being productive is challenging for them. In this case, you could provide him with suitable productivity tips and apps.

7Request Employee Self-Evaluations

Incorporating employee self-evaluations into the evaluation process enhances performance reviews by promoting self-reflection and accountability. 

When employees assess their own contributions, they gain greater self-awareness, recognizing both strengths and areas for growth. 

This practice encourages:

(a) An open dialogue between employees and managers

(b) More meaningful discussions

(c) Employee ownership over their development

(d) Greater engagement and commitment to the organization

Did you know? LearnWorlds Assessment Builder allows you to create self-assessments, empowering your employees to reflect on their own understanding and performance, fostering independent learning and growth.

To implement self-evaluations effectively, provide clear guidelines and structured formats to focus employees on relevant aspects of their performance. Foster a work environment that encourages honesty and openness, assuring employees that self-assessments are tools for growth rather than punitive measures. 

Employee self-evaluations are a valuable tool for gathering 360-degree feedback as well.

8Provide Your Employee with a Copy of Their Evaluation Form

Once you’ve completed everything from the employee evaluation and performance review process, give employees a copy. This will help them see what needs to be done in the upcoming quarter or year. 

Of course, it will also help you if there is ever a time when you need to talk to them about their performance – they cannot say that they didn’t know about something in particular when you have provided documentation.

Ensure that you both agree with the decisions taken and enforce your commitment to offer your support in improving the employee’s job performance. 

Be specific and mention where the employee exceeds or doesn’t meet expectations. Here are a few examples.

When the employee exceeds expectations:

(a) ‘Shows strong judgment and relies on data-driven decision-making.’ 

(b) ‘Demonstrates a keen attention to detail and produces excellent work.’

(c) ‘Consistently sees projects through to completion and meets deadlines.’

When the employee doesn’t meet the expectations:

(a) ‘Tends to make impulsive decisions grounded in false assumptions.’

(b) ‘Delivers work with an unacceptable number of errors.’

(c) ‘Needs improvement of planning skills to ensure timely completion of tasks.’

Employee Evaluation Examples: How it Should Work

To better understand how employee evaluations work, let’s go one step further, exploring different case scenarios.

So, let’s break down your employees into three different groups:

The Good

The good worker is someone who goes above and beyond at work. He or she spends extra time to ensure that their work is correct, on time and done to the standards you’ve set. This is a person who, when they make mistakes, learns from them and doesn’t make those same mistakes again.

Your employee evaluation process of this person should focus on what they do right – don’t nitpick and look for what they do wrong. Tell them you appreciate them and love the work they are doing. During this time, focus on what they say about your work involvement, too. 

For example, maybe they want to take over the social media posting, and you do it but don’t like it – so you can shift it to them.

The Bad

Let’s say you have a mediocre employee but nothing outstanding. This person does the work they are supposed to but doesn’t go above and beyond the call of duty. Maybe they make mistakes a few times until they learn from them—or perhaps they try to work too quickly and produce sloppy work.

During this evaluation, you should focus on potential areas for improvement and provide constructive criticism. Tell them you think they have potential and ask them to work to achieve it—for example, they can work on their decision-making skills.

The Ugly

Not all employees are right for your company. Maybe you have some lazy employees, but you still see some positives in them. Say someone is really great in a specific area but doesn’t show up on time and has a bad attitude. The core skills are what is important.

Try to focus your employee evaluation on what can be improved and what value this person brings – but make sure they understand what mistakes they are making and that you do notice those mistakes.

17 Suitable Employee Evaluation Questions to Discover Potential

If you still aren’t sure about your employee and you want to learn more, there are some great questions you can ask to dig a bit deeper and find out more. If you aren’t a good communicator, this can be a problem.

Here are some excellent question examples you can employ to unearth an employee’s potential:

• What was your greatest accomplishment in the last year?
• What have you seen as your worst failure this last year?
• What do you see yourself doing in a year?
• Is there a position in this company that you aspire to obtain?
• What skills do you want to learn at your job?
• What areas do you think you need to improve upon?
• Do you feel that you are a good team member?
• What drives success in our company?
• What is a detriment to success in our company?
• What areas of our company need improvement?
• What scaffolding can we provide you for success?
• Do you feel that you help other employees?
• Do you have everything that you need to perform?
• What would help your overall performance?
• How has management helped your work?
• How has management hindered your work?
• Do you have any questions about your overall performance?

Aside from questions, there are a few practices you can try out to boost the effectiveness of your employee evaluation process. Read on to learn how to apply these to remote work settings.

Employee Evaluation & Remote Work: Best Practices

When you are doing an employee evaluation for remote work, it can feel a bit distanced or disconnected. However, there are some things you can do to help make it work:

1Use video

While there is a temptation to use a phone call for your employee evaluation, it helps when you can read body language. There are plenty of video interviewing tools from which you can choose. However, I highly recommend testing any tool before setting up calls with employees to ensure everything goes smoothly.

2Send copies of the evaluation

Since you cannot hand a copy of the employee review over to the person, send over the evaluation. You may even want to create a document that you can share.

3Ask to record the meeting.

If you want to be present in your evaluation, ask to record it. This will help you to get more value out of your time without taking you out of the moment.

4Don’t plan a meeting right after

Your employee evaluation may take 10 minutes or an hour. You do not want to cut off your employees. Try not to have a hard stopping time so they don’t feel slighted. Try to prioritize their needs during this time without worrying about how long the meeting lasts.

5Set clear goals and KPIs

With remote work, in particular, you want to set goals (preferably SMART goals) for your evaluation. This will allow you to reason through them much better than you can in email.

You can learn more about goal setting and its benefits here.

Employee Evaluation Templates You Can Use

Still unsure what you want to do for your employee evaluation? Don’t worry—we’ve got you covered. Many employee evaluation templates are currently available online, and you can also get them for free.

Simply select your preferred type, style, and format, such as numerical rating scales or behavioral or competency-based assessments, and you’re good to go.

Here are a few examples from TemplateLab to help you get started.

Example 1: Employee Competency Evaluation Form

This is a detailed, competency-based evaluation with a five-point competence scale. It focuses on knowledge, skills, and quality of work and includes notes and goal-setting sections.

Why it works: It differentiates between levels of competence in specific areas, providing granular insights into development needs and strengths.

Best for: Ideal for roles requiring skill-based assessments, such as sales or technical positions, where competency in specific areas directly impacts performance.

Example 2: 30-Day Employee Evaluation Form

This form can be used for monthly evaluations. It has a five-point rating scale for specific competencies like job knowledge, work quality, and innovation. It also allows the addition of comments and goals.

Why it works: It is quick to fill out and ideal for assessing 30-day-long progress. Comments allow for qualitative feedback in addition to numerical ratings.

Best for: Designed for probationary or early-stage evaluations, such as new hires or employees transitioning to new roles, to assess immediate impact and progress.

Example 3: 360 Degree Employee Evaluation Form

Here’s a competency-based form that evaluates a wide range of skills, from problem-solving to communication, with checkboxes for different areas of responsibility and skill levels.

Why it works: It’s broad in scope, covering various dimensions of an employee’s role from different perspectives, making it suitable for gathering feedback from peers, subordinates, and managers.

Best for: Ideal for managers or senior employees where holistic feedback from multiple sources is valuable. It can also be used for leadership roles or roles with high collaboration demands.

Example 4: Annual Employee Evaluation Form

This is a detailed, structured form with numerical ratings for various competencies (e.g., honesty, productivity, work quality). It includes sections for strengths, opportunities, and goals.

Why it works: It’s comprehensive, giving a well-rounded view of the employee’s performance, strengths, and areas of improvement. The use of weighted scores makes it easy to quantify overall performance.

Best for: It is well-suited for annual reviews where long-term performance needs to be measured, and developmental goals should be set for the upcoming year.

Ready to Streamline Your Employee Evaluation Process?

Employee evaluations present unique opportunities to enhance your company culture and drive progress. By focusing on detailed, real-time feedback, you can streamline the evaluation process and create a more positive work environment, all by ensuring employee satisfaction and boosting retention. 

These evaluations support individual growth and can help you pave the way for your organization’s overall success. Embrace this chance to foster development and innovation, ensuring a brighter future for both your employees and your company.

———————————————

Are you looking for a solution to offer remote employee training? LearnWorlds is a cloud-based learning platform that enables companies to provide training from their own website. Try LearnWorlds with a 30-day free trial today.

The post What is Employee Evaluation & How to Get It Right appeared first on LearnWorlds.

But how do you make training truly engaging and productive? One of the top e-learning strategies is microlearning—delivering bite-sized, easily digestible content that suits today’s busy learners. Videos are an ideal format for micro-learning, capable of breaking down complex concepts into simple, engaging learning experiences.

As a powerful medium in e-learning, videos enhance understanding and retention. With the rise of interactive videos, employee training has become even more effective. In this guide, we’ll explore why video should be a cornerstone of your training strategy and provide a few real-life examples showing how to implement it.

Why Use Training Videos in Employee Training?

Training videos offer significant advantages in employee training, making them a valuable tool for organizations across various industries.

Scalability and Reusability: Once created, training videos can be used repeatedly across different departments or training sessions, saving time and resources.

On-Demand Access: Employees can revisit videos at their convenience, ensuring they can review and reinforce learning whenever needed.

Cost-Effective: Compared to on-site training, videos are more affordable, especially when split into short, digestible modules that cater to different learning paces.

Higher Retention Rates: Training videos increase information retention by providing visual and auditory reinforcement, making it easier for employees to remember key concepts.

Clarity for Complex Products: Videos can effectively demonstrate how to use products or systems that are too large or complex to train on in person, ensuring clear and consistent instruction.

Incorporating training videos into your employee onboarding process enhances learning and provides a flexible, scalable, and cost-efficient solution for your ongoing training needs.

Different Types of Training Videos

Training videos are a powerful tool for delivering knowledge and skills in an engaging and efficient manner. They come in various styles as well to meet different training requirements.

Here are some key types of training videos that are used often:

• Animated training videos
• Live-action videos
• Slide presentations
• Screen recordings
• Work Productivity videos
• Explainer videos
• Selfie-videos
• Tutorial videos
  

Choosing the right type of training video is crucial for delivering effective training.

Of course, each style has its strengths, making it easier to match the video format to your training objectives, business goals, and audience needs.

Successful Examples of Training Videos

Now let’s explore some examples of effective training videos that can inspire and guide your own video creation efforts.

Example 1: Simple slide presentation training

Slide presentations (usually made in PowerPoint) are one of the most popular and easy-to-create lecture styles. The presenter is either absent or present with their voice. Slide presentations can become very engaging if you put a lot of work into designing each of the slides carefully.

Slide presentations can also be overlapped by the instructor’s presence (here’s an example) or be split into a screen that also shows the instructor:

Example 2: Screencasts

Screen-casts, also known as video screen captures, are the most suitable means to teach computer software. They consist of “the capture all of the action on a computer screen” format and often contain audio narration.

Creating a screencast helps technical instructors show off their work. Instructors can also create this type of video to demonstrate the proper procedure to solve a problem. Here is an excellent article with tips and techniques for creating winning screencasts.

How to make screencasts the right way.

The screen movement can either be static or dynamic (follow the cursor). A screencast is essentially a movie of the changes over time that a user sees on a computer screen, enhanced with audio narration, so the agency is quite strong.

Example 3: Teaching masterful techniques

Wondering what’s the best way to use video to train employees? 

If you own a coffee shop, teaching new hires how to create the best coffee is essential. This video clocks in at less than three minutes, but it gives you a close-up look at the technique of making the perfect latte. With such videos, you don’t have to look for a high-level pro who offers in-person training only.

Example 4: Interactive video training

Interactive videos offer immersive training experiences. The viewer is put into the role of an active participant. This is easily achieved through various interactive buttons and labels.

The viewer interacts with several objects, inside the video and reads information about them, and selects the right objects in the scene when asked. Also, the viewer has the choice to navigate several parts of the video content with navigation buttons and answer questionnaires inside the video. In the latter case, the video stops, and the user interacts with a question. Then, the video gives feedback according to the user’s choice.

Very popular are also videos where you have to decide what you are going to do. In this case, we are talking about branched videos, where the viewer sees a different version of it according to their path choices. You can see an example here.

Example 5: Animation training Videos

Animated video lectures are becoming more popular, allowing learners to learn in a fun and relaxing way. Animations are very similar to the cartoons we used to watch in our youngest age and maybe that is what makes them so engaging:

Giving glimpses of such situations helps people first to understand the issue, and then how to deal with it.

In this type of lecture, the main protagonist is the media presented while the instructor plays an assistive role with a voice-over (most of the time). The most popular tools for creating animations are Animaker and Vyond.

Example 6: Live action with animation

Videos that combine animation with real video are fascinating.

Animated heroes in videos make a huge impact. Rather than narrated videos, it is better to create animations that make the viewer feel an expert is preaching them. An authoritative tone isn’t always the most persuasive.

Also, handwriting boards are very popular:

In this type of lecture, the viewer sees the words being written at the moment of speech. Here, you can also include whiteboard animations (which are available on most video animation platforms). The instructor can choose if a hand will be visible or not.

Example 7: Selfie videos

Selfie videos are much more lively and engaging, and they make the background much more interesting for the viewer. They can serve numerous purposes from traditional lectures with the presence in full screen to extended field trips.

Selfie videos are speaker-centric, and the presenter may be interspersed with slides, animations, other videos, images, etc.

Example 8: Conversation-style videos

Creating videos where two or more people discuss a topic and present valuable conclusions is a very engaging and authentic way to convey essential messages. At the same time, it is the most effective way to emphasize the people in a lecture video.

Just make sure the conversation is substantial and has something great to offer. The footage may sometimes be adorned with slides, annotations, and keywords.

Example 9: Short videos focusing on one skill

An employee training video doesn’t have to be super long to be effective. With short videos, you can give a few tips with close-up shots to show your students how to learn a new skill.

For example, an explainer video about how to deal with angry customers does the job in less than 90 seconds. Here’s another one that is under 5 minutes:

Generally, in terms of video length, the sweet spot is no more than 2 minutes. Longer than that and you risk losing your viewers’ attention.

How to Make Great Training Videos for Your Employees: A Step-by-Step Process

Whether you are onboarding new employees or upskilling your current team, following a structured process of creating your own training videos is essential. 

Doing so will also help you ensure they are impactful and deliver the desired results.

Step 1: Define Your Objectives

Before you start recording, you need to clearly define what you want to achieve with your training video. Are you looking to teach a specific skill, communicate a policy, or provide an overview of a new system? Knowing your objectives will guide your content creation, ensuring that every part of the video aligns with your end goals.

Step 2: Understand Your Audience

Your training video should be tailored to the needs and preferences of your employees. Consider their current knowledge level, learning styles, and any potential challenges they might face. This understanding will help you decide on the video’s tone and the complexity of the content.

Step 3: Script and Storyboard

Once you have your objectives and audience in mind, start scripting your video.  A well-written script keeps your message clear and focused. Along with the video script, create a storyboard to visualize the flow of the video. This helps in planning visuals, transitions, and any on-screen text or graphics that will support the narrative.

If you need video templates there are plenty of tools that offer them. Try Canva or Envato Elements.

Step 4: Production and Editing

Now, it’s time to bring your script to life. Use quality equipment when recording videos, to ensure good lighting and sound. Look for a video editor as well and during editing keep your video concise and engaging by cutting out any fluff and using visuals that complement the content. 

You can add overlays and additional interactive elements like quizzes or prompts to keep viewers engaged with the training materials and reinforce learning.

Need a video editing tool? Check this list of best training video tools to find the video editing software that matches your needs.

To create interactive videos from scratch and add all the elements you need, make sure you check out our very own Interactive Video Editor. Add pop-ups, questions, CTA buttons, watermarks, subtitles, transcripts, embedded content, and more!

Step 5: Review and Revise

Before finalizing your video, review it with a test audience or subject matter experts to ensure accuracy and effectiveness. Gather feedback and make any necessary revisions. This step is crucial in refining your video to ensure it meets its objectives and resonates with your audience.

Step 6: Share and Distribute Your Video

Once your training video is polished and ready to go, the next step is to ensure it reaches your employees effectively. Choose the right platforms and channels based on your employees’ or team members’ preferences—whether it’s through an internal Learning Management System (LMS), email, or a company intranet. 

Simply download your video files from the training video software you are using, then share them via a link or embed them directly into your communication channels. 

You can choose to upload them on Vimeo, YouTube, or other social media platforms directly. Just make sure the videos are easily accessible while providing options for different formats and are compatible with various devices. 

Tips for Effective Training Video Production

Creating impactful training videos requires more than just pressing the record button. To ensure your videos are effective and successful, it’s essential to follow best practices in video production. 

Below are some practical tips to help you produce high-quality training videos.

Ensure your videos are highly engaging

Your video needs to be as appealing as possible. There are numerous ways to do this. You might want to try to add aural features to highlight and reinforce important points. But, you should also learn how to draw attention to video lectures. 

The critical problem of learning with video lectures is the learners’ sense of distance between you and them. Emotion can shorten the distance. The emotion expressed by the instructor’s facial expressions creates the perception of closeness. Namely, it could overcome learners’ feelings of isolation.

Keep them short and to the point

Most people don’t watch videos for longer than 6 minutes. So, it is better to keep the idea of a short attention stream in mind the next time you create a training video.

Instead of long droning videos, use short videos.

Break them down into small chunks

By using small chunks of video content, trainees can see what information will be covered in each video segment. Your learners will understand what each video covers and won’t be forced to scan through an hour-long video to return to the information.

Edit the videos thoroughly

The real work continues after the video has been recorded, thus at the post-production stage. Usually, for high-quality corporate training videos, it takes between 30-60 minutes to edit each minute. 

Luckily, nowadays, video production is not just a privilege for professionals. Impressive techniques that are popular amongst experienced moviemakers have become available to beginners too. You can find affordable software and easy-to-use apps to unleash your creativity.

Compress the videos

Using high-definition videos might not be great when someone is watching from a mobile device or a non-high-speed internet connection. It’s better to compress videos before uploading them to your chosen LMS.

Compressed videos take less time to load and are more accessible even when employees choose to attend the training program on the go.

Monitor the video performance

By tracking key engagement metrics, such as views, completion rates, and user feedback, you can gain valuable insights into how well your videos are resonating with your employees. Such data is crucial for refining your training approach and making adjustments to future videos.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to training videos, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Different types of videos serve different purposes, from onboarding new employees to explaining complex concepts or reinforcing company policies. 

Before you even begin creating your videos, you will need to consider your lecture style. Are you going to use a slide presentation, create an animation, or a selfie-style video?

Choosing your instructional video style is essential, as this will inform your lesson plan, dialogue, and video editing process. If you want to learn more about training videos, read our Video-Based Learning ebook or visit our unique online course in our Academy!

The post How to Create Awesome Training Videos (+8 Great Examples) appeared first on LearnWorlds.

It is an incredibly useful tool for both elearning and offline lessons. With a lesson plan, you can create a more effective training session, increase student understanding, and provide better learning experiences guided by the lesson objectives.

All educators must know how to create a lesson plan to ensure their learning sessions run smoothly. Depending on the students they teach and the timeline they have on their hands, educators set learning objectives, break the material up into sections, and choose learning activities that will be suitable for each trainee.

What is a Lesson Plan?

A lesson plan is a detailed step-by-step guide for educators providing materials to learners to accomplish their learning goals during the course.

It outlines the teacher’s objectives for the student’s accomplishments, the material to cover, and the delivery methods, including assignments, exams, and other evaluation forms.

A lesson plan is not a to-do list; it’s a strategic document that considers your students’ needs, your teaching style, and the subject matter at hand.

The key components of a lesson plan typically include:

• Learning objectives
• Materials and resources needed
• The lesson procedure (including introduction, main activities, and conclusion)
• Assessment methods
• Time allocations for each part of the lesson
• Content formats or media (text, video, quizzes, etc.)

The Learning Objectives

The foundation of any effective lesson plan is a set of clear, specific learning objectives. These objectives answer the question: “What should students know or be able to do by the end of this lesson?”

Make sure the learning objectives are SMART:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Attainable by all students
• Relevant to your students
• Time-based, aligning with your syllabus

It’s crucial to align these objectives with the overall learning outcomes for the course or unit. When setting these objectives, consider your students’ prior knowledge and needs.

Are you building on previously learned skills or introducing entirely new concepts?

Understanding where your students come from helps you set realistic and meaningful objectives. Lesson plans for training may have different learning objectives, such as compliance or work-related skills, over teaching lesson plans that may have a goal of memorizing knowledge.

Planning the Lesson Structure

Planning a lesson structure is like creating a road map for your class time. A typical lesson structure includes an introduction, main activities, and a conclusion.

The top three items to include in your lesson plan for each activity are learning objectives, timing, and materials you’ll use. Your lesson plans may vary depending on the time limit and how many students are in a class.

A simple example of a lesson plan is the following:

• Introduction (5-7 minutes): Get your students interested in what will happen in the class during a lesson; ask a question, come up with a creative name for your lesson, or provide them with some reviews so that they can get involved in the learning process.
• Presentation (up to 10 minutes): Create the need for students to learn what you will present.
• Procedure (the remaining class time): Prepare lesson materials, such as digital handouts, videos, visuals, textbooks, and some software platforms, that you’ll use with students to learn the topic.
• Practice (10-15 minutes): Think about exercises and other activities your students will practice in the lesson with you, individually or in group activities.
• Review and assessment (5 minutes): Consider how you will finish a lesson; write the takeaways for students to summarize their new knowledge.

Designing the Learning Activities

Learning activities are an essential part of your lesson. Make sure to include various kinds of activities to accommodate the different learning styles in the classroom, like:

Lecture: A lecture involves a teacher speaking to students about a specific topic, providing information, explanations, and sometimes visual aids to help students understand the material.

Presentations: Presentations allow students or teachers to share information on a topic using slides, images, and sometimes videos to make the content engaging and easier to understand.

Discussions: Discussions encourage students to talk about a topic in a group, sharing their ideas, opinions, and questions, which helps deepen their understanding and develop critical thinking skills.

Roleplay: Roleplay involves students acting out scenarios or characters to explore different perspectives and practice skills in a realistic context, making learning more interactive and engaging.

Case studies: Case studies examine real-life situations or problems, allowing learners to analyze, discuss, and learn from actual examples, helping them apply theoretical knowledge to practical situations.

Group assignments: Group assignments require students to work together on a task or project, promoting teamwork, communication, and collaboration while tackling a shared goal.

Quizzes/skill tests: Quizzes and skill tests are short assessments that help measure students’ understanding and retention of the material.

Additional reading resources: Additional reading resources are extra materials like books, articles, or online content that provide more information on a topic.

When teaching online, you can include activities suitable for online learning like:

Videos: Pre-recorded lectures or presentations students can watch at their own pace. For example, you can record your powerpoint presentation.

Social activities: Instead of group assignments, students can interact through the community of the LMS.

Live lessons: Live classes and workshops through Zoom, WebEx, or similar software can substitute for some live lessons and create a stronger connection than self-paced videos.

Office hours: Setting aside time for questions, whether that’s a live chat, phone call, or video call, the lecturer is available to students taking an asynchronous class.

While designing your lesson plan, consider whether you are teaching in a classroom or online or planning a mix of the two. While activities will vary in different settings, you need to keep your learners’ attention equally well in both settings.

Assessment and Evaluation Activities

Assessments help you understand whether your students have achieved the learning objectives and inform your future teaching. They can be smaller knowledge checks like quizzes or more demanding like an assignment or an exam.

Assessments are a very important learning tool as they assist with knowledge retention and test progress.

One type of evaluation is formative assessments, those are ongoing checks for understanding and include:

• Quick quizzes
• Exit tickets
• Observation of student work
• Class discussions

Summative assessments, on the other hand, evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit. These could be:

• Tests or exams
• Projects
• Presentations

Many educators like to use rubrics to evaluate students’ work. Rubrics help evaluate students while being consistent in grading.

Example of a Rubric, Source

Reviewing and Refining the Lesson Plan

A lesson plan is never finished, and even online courses need reviewing an updating every few months.

You will find yourself coming back and updating various parts. Especially if you are writing a lesson plan for corporate training, where new skills and requirements are constantly being revised, you might end up reviewing your lesson plans often.

You will need to

• Double-check alignment with curriculum standards
• Add new skills or evaluate previous lessons
• Ensuring a logical flow of activities
• Verifying that all necessary materials are prepared
• Updating content to match requirements for compliance

Gaining feedback is also important. You can have feedback forms at the end of your lesson for students, or you can ask colleagues to offer feedback before publishing it.

Conclusion

Creating an effective lesson plan is both an art and a science. It requires careful thought, creativity, and a deep understanding of your students’ needs.

By following the steps outlined in this guide, you’ll be well on your way to crafting lesson plans that engage your students and achieve your learning objectives.

Remember, the goal isn’t perfection but continuous improvement. Each lesson you teach is an opportunity to refine your planning skills, so don’t be afraid to experiment with new ideas and approaches. With practice and reflection, you’ll develop a planning process that works for you and your students.

Now, armed with these strategies, it’s time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and start planning your next great lesson.

P.S.: You can create your outline directly on LearnWorlds and use the AI Assistant to help plan your next online course. With LearnWorlds’ 30-day free trial, you can create your online course faster.

The post How to Write a Lesson Plan: A Comprehensive Guide appeared first on LearnWorlds.

But if you’re reading this, you’re part of the 25% that cares about diversity, equity, and inclusion. You want your company to lead differently when it comes to creating a more inclusive and equitable workplace, which is reasonable, considering DEI training fosters healthy and inclusive work environments.

DEI training or ‘inclusion training’ is more important than just fulfilling a mandatory requirement. It’s an opportunity to truly drive positive change. For it to be successful, it needs to come from the business strategy, be owned by the entire organization, and then be backed up by HR initiatives – it cannot exist within a vacuum.

With that, let’s look at why your organization needs to prioritize DEI strategy and training and how to ensure its success.

What is DEI Training?

DEI training is a type of professional training that teaches a company’s workforce how to create a work environment that is diverse, equitable, and inclusive for all. If done right, this training becomes an integral part of your company’s business strategy. It addresses the more covert and disguised forms of biases, underlying prejudice, and structural inequity, which are often based on race, sexual orientation, socioeconomic or ethnic background.

DEI is an abbreviation that stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion:

• Diversity: Diversity is the presence/ representation of differences including, but not limited to, race, gender, identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, language, physical or mental ability, and age. Unlike equity and inclusion, diversity is more obvious and often quantifiable.
• Equity: Equity promotes impartiality, fairness, and equal access to opportunities, advancement, and participation. Equity addresses structural inequalities and barriers; it means providing people with an equal amount of resources based on their unique circumstances.
• Inclusion: Inclusion is creating and fostering an environment where everyone, including members of traditionally underrepresented or marginalized groups, feels respected, welcome, and psychologically safe.

The training addresses people’s overlooked pain points and encourages open dialogues around uncomfortable and less discussed topics.

The Importance of DEI Training

As we’ve established, DEI training can be a powerful tool when executed properly, not only for the employees but also for the company’s bottom line. In the 2021 Happiness Index report by CNBC|SurveyMonkey Workforce, it was found that 78% of workers say it is important to them to work at an organization that prioritizes workplace diversity and inclusion.

Imagine being able to attract and retain top talent to your organization. That’s what having a dedicated and effective diversity, equity, and inclusion training program will do for you. Showing employees you care about their safety and well-being indirectly increases their job satisfaction; better job satisfaction means higher productivity and greater profits!

3 Benefits of DEI Training

In addition to attracting and retaining top talent and increasing your organization’s profits, there are a host of other benefits, too – let’s explore them:

⁃ Employee happiness

A survey revealed that workers are happier when they are pleased with their company’s DEI efforts. A diverse workforce and inclusive culture help employees feel a greater sense of belonging and connection. They don’t feel isolated but valued and welcomed regardless of their background or who they are. A happy employee is engaged, productive, and more invested in their work.

⁃ Improved company reputation

Millennials, Gen Z workers, and consumers are more socially conscious than ever. These groups require companies today to show their dedication to issues that concern workers and society, like diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Google, for example, has been leading the industry in DEI training and initiatives, and according to employees, people feel more comfortable discussing race and ethnicity openly.

On the other hand, makeup brand Youthforia is an example of a company with a ruined reputation because of poor DEI training. They were recently caught up in a scandal and accused of not being diverse or inclusive after releasing a foundation shade intended to match the darkest of skin tones. After launching the product, multiple dark-skin creators tried the brand and verified that the shade was in fact, jet black. No undertones. Just black.

This scandal revealed Youthforia to be lacking in the diversity department. They rushed to release a product that wasn’t vetted or tested on people with dark skin tones. The launch and rollout of this product was lazy and showed a lack of empathy and unfortunately, has tainted their reputation.

⁃ Innovation

With greater DEI efforts, you attract talent from various backgrounds with different skills, perspectives, and experiences. These people bring different characters and innovative ideas that elevate the organization. DEI training also makes existing staff feel more respected and embraced in the company, encouraging them to contribute more.

Types of DEI Training Programs

DEI training comes in different types and is carried out for a multitude of reasons. For instance, if your organization has a geographically distributed workforce, then you could carry out diversity, cultural sensitivity, and possibly microaggression training.

It’s important to know the different types so you choose the best one based on your company goals and strategies. Here are some common types:

• Basic Diversity Training: this training is useful to educate employees on issues surrounding race, ethnicity, gender identity, religion and sexual orientation. It’s a great foundation for organizations that want to build a more inclusive workplace.
• Cultural Sensitivity Training: cultural sensitivity training helps employees be mindful of cultural nuances when interacting with co-workers, clients, and partners. This type of training empowers employees to build authentic and respectful relationships with their co-workers.
• Microaggressions Training: this training helps employees identify instances of micro-aggressive behavior, like comments about weight, outward appearance, or racial stereotypes. It helps minimize these occurrences and creates less hostile work environments.
• Unconscious Bias Training: the goal of this specific program is to remove any biases formed by social conditioning and stereotyping. It helps people recognize their hidden biases and stops words or actions that may cause unintentional harm.
• Allyship Training: this training educates employees on how to support and advocate for people with fewer privileges by understanding their challenges, recognizing personal privileges, and learning practical support strategies.
• Inclusive Leadership Training: this training aims to equip leaders with the skills to create and sustain inclusive work environments. It teaches strategies for managing diverse teams and fostering a culture of belonging. The goal is to enable leaders to champion DEI initiatives effectively.
• Anti-racism Training: this type of training helps participants understand and combat systemic racism by providing historical context and explanations on how racism manifests. It teaches participants to identify and challenge racist behaviors and structures, promoting racial justice and equity in their environments.
• Disability Awareness Training: this training educates employees about various disabilities and the challenges faced by individuals with disabilities. It covers accessibility, inclusive language, and reasonable accommodations, aiming to create a more inclusive and accessible environment for everyone, regardless of their abilities.

Different types of DEI training can be leveraged to different ends depending on your organization’s needs and culture. So, when choosing what to focus your training on, remember that every company is unique, and no two companies will require precisely the same kinds of training. Let’s explore a few topics you should include in every DEI training program.

Topics to Cover in DEI Training Programs

The topics covered in DEI training will depend on the type of training being taught and your organization’s goals. However, you should include certain topics in every type of training. Let’s take a look at some of them:

• Difference between diversity, inclusion, and equity: Define what DEI is so people understand what the program and training entail.
• Self-reflection: This exercise should be the starting point of every training as it encourages people to look within themselves and identify their own biases.
• Workplace scenarios: Role plays and case studies that mimic everyday office scenarios will uncover how small behaviors can have large impacts on people in the workplace.
• Deliberate Inclusion: Yes, training employees to be inclusive is beneficial, but what’s even more effective is giving them actionable tools for how they should treat their peers and approach conflict in the workplace.

Every topic covered in DEI training should provide flexible tools that can help foster inclusive attitudes and improve workplace culture. It should also create opportunities for feedback and dialogue and improve everyday relations between team members.

With your knowledge of the different types of training programs and the topics they cover, let’s examine the steps you need to take to build an effective one.

How to Build an Effective DEI Training Program

Here are 4 steps to building an effective DEI training program for your organization:

• Assess your organization’s training needs
  

  To build a successful DEI training program, you need first to identify the areas where your team/ company may need extra education and training. Also, as part of your assessment, define the goals and objectives of the training program before building a curriculum. This will help guide you throughout the process and efficiently evaluate its success.

• Pick the topics to be covered
  

  Once you’ve defined the training goals, tailor the topics taught to achieve the objectives. For instance, if your assessment reveals division within the teams, consider conducting inclusivity training to build more connection and community. If on the other hand, your organization interacts with clients all over the world, carry out a cultural diversity training program.

  In addition to this, speak to your employees, find out what training they would like to have, and develop programs that cater to their specific requests.

• Choose the right format
  

  The next step is choosing the right training format. Today, many training formats exist, including webinars, e-learning modules, interactive games, and seminars.

  Picking the right format is vital to the success of your DEI training because it helps motivate and engage whoever is taking it. But you don’t need to be rigid with the format. You can go with one method at first, get feedback from staff, and then make adjustments.

  Check out our comprehensive guide to teaching online to ensure success in your training programs!

• Evaluate the success of the training program
  

  This step is a great way to measure the success of your training program. Tracking results is not easy, so get a list of your desired metrics to monitor. One thing you can do is create a course evaluation framework to get honest and constructive feedback from employees.

  Ask open-ended questions like, “What would you improve about this course and how?”. It not only gives you valuable and robust information from different perspectives but also gives your employees a voice and makes them feel heard.

Examples of DEI Training Courses

In this section, we’ve featured 3 existing and successful DEI training programs to give you inspiration on what to look out for when building your program or choosing the right one for your employees.

Know More is a DEI training agency that helps organizations build greater diversity, create inclusive workplaces, and uncover unconscious biases that impede inclusivity.

Course Overview + Outcome: This program helps leaders build their competence and confidence and recognize behaviors needed to grow the organization from an equitable perspective. Successful completion of this program prepares leaders to head diverse teams effectively. The training also equips you to address social issues affecting vulnerable populations and promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within the organization.

Price: $3,950

Who should attend: Leaders at all levels, HR professionals, or others who are responsible for or wish to take responsibility for diversity and inclusion in their organization.

Location/format: In-person workshops + online learning

Length: 3 months + Capstone Project

Course Overview: This program is for organizations that care about building and leading diverse and inclusive teams. Throughout this course, attendees will be taught by expert DEI trainers, who will help them gain personal awareness of how they show up in diverse settings. The program will also equip them with evidence-based tools for becoming better allies and change advocates. At the end of the course, your team will have learned better conflict management skills and how best to regulate emotions.

Price: $2,000

Who should attend: Team leaders, managers, and employees with desires to create and develop an accepting, diverse, and inclusive workplace.

Location/format: Asynchronous & Synchronous sessions

Length: 5 weeks

Course Overview: This is a 3-day certificate program for leaders at all levels to develop skills to become diversity champions and go beyond the standard DEI training. This course teaches attendees how to recognize and celebrate the uniqueness and individuality of each person in the organization and how to identify and understand hidden biases on a deeper level.

Price: $3,295 non-members/$2,995 AMA members

Who should attend: Leaders at all levels, HR professionals, or anyone who wants to take responsibility for diversity and inclusion in their organization.

Location/format: In-person/ Live Online/ On-site

Length: 3 days

DEI training FAQs

Are there ways to measure diversity and inclusion within an organization? If so, how?

Some areas that you can look at include the diversity of your staff; assess how varied your workers are in race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender, and also how that diversity is spread across leadership teams. For inclusivity, measure employee engagement, retention rate, and happiness.

Does having a diverse organization help with employee retention?

Not on its own. People need to feel valued, connected and welcomed in an organization, and if they don’t, no level of diversity will make them stay.

How can a company promote diversity and inclusion within the organization?

Firstly, emphasize the importance of diversity and inclusion in the company during the hiring process and training sessions. Also, make sure there is a culture of accountability when it comes to DEI, so if employees behave in ways that don’t foster an inclusive workplace, they should be given instructions on how to correct their behavior.

What are the benefits of getting a DEI certification?

As an individual, DEI training helps you become more well-rounded. You gain a deeper understanding of the world around you and how you can help create a more just and equitable society. It also helps you build trust and credibility with your colleagues.

How can bias be eliminated from the hiring process?

Regardless of how good your intentions may be, when it comes to diversity and inclusion, some unconscious biases may creep in during the hiring process. To avoid this, your company can use a blind hiring process, which can include a blind resume practice, where you black out all the personal information on resumes—such as addresses, dates of birth, and gender —so that you’re not using these factors to evaluate candidates.

Create an Equitable, Diverse, and Inclusive Environment For Your Employees

DEI training will only be successful if you are intentional about it. To make sure it’s not one-and-done and truly engrained into the company culture, you need first to define what success looks like at the start of the training.

Also, make sure it is owned by C-suite executives and leaders on all levels to drive implementation. Include it in the company’s culture, encouraging inclusive behaviors, creating ongoing strategic initiatives, and having each training facilitated by trained professionals.

Diversity, equity, and inclusivity training begin at the onboarding stage; it is continuous, and you can always refine it along the way. Get started by leveraging a robust learning platform like LearnWorlds to host your organization’s training, or choose from one of our many courses and expand your knowledge on DEI initiatives.

Further reading you might find interesting:

• How to Start a Profitable Online Course Business From Scratch
• Knowledge Economy: How to Sell Knowledge Online
• How to Teach Online: Your Handbook to Success

The post What is DEI Training: Benefits, Types, and Examples appeared first on LearnWorlds.

In this post, we’ll explore all the benefits of tracking employee training, what data you should look for, and the best tools for the job – along with the pros and cons of each option. Let’s dive in!

4 Reasons Why You Should Track Employee Training

Employee training has numerous benefits for your employees and your business. Employees are happier, more productive, stay longer. With a competent and loyal workforce, your business can thrive. In order to reap these benefits, though, you have to keep tabs on your employee training programs to ensure they’re meeting your expectations. Here’s why:

1. Measure Training ROI

You probably know how much money you’ve spent to deploy employee training, but do you know how much you’ve made as a result? Training ROI is a complex thing to measure, and maybe you won’t be able to measure it with 100% accuracy. However, the more data sources you look into, the better you will be able to evaluate it (more on that in a bit!).

Knowing your training ROI means you’ll be able to manage your budget more efficiently and reallocate your resources as needed. Not only that, but for L&D professionals, proving ROI is essential to prove the value of their work and to secure or even increase their training budget.

2. Address Knowledge & Skills Gaps

Tracking employee training means you will monitor how employees perfom both during the course and on the job. You’ll also get to speak with them directly and hear their thoughts about your training program and the extent to which it has helped them.

This will allow you to identify knowledge and skills gaps and address them effectively with additional learning material, mentoring, or on-the-job training, therefore reinforcing the learning objectives of the course.

3. Comply With Regulations

Compliance and detailed record-keeping go hand in hand. You need to know at any time that all employees have successfully completed their compliance training, when a certificate is due to expire, and that your company overall is on track with the compliance regulations of your industry.

If you’re in a heavily regulated industry, you understand how important compliance is and that it goes beyond fines and penalties. Compliance often involves health & safety, and not abiding or being aware of regulations and best practices can jeopardize the well-being of your employees and the environment.

4. Create More Effective Training Programs

Tracking employee training is multi-faceted – it involves tracking learner performance, evaluating employee performance after the training, getting manager and employee feedback, and more.

This training data and feedback from diverse sources will give you an accurate picture of the effectiveness of your program but also of what’s lacking and what needs to be improved – this is key to designing better training programs in the future and achieving your respective goals.

What Should You Track? 3 Types of Metrics to Ensure You’re in Control

There is a vast pool of information waiting for you, provided you’re up for some digging! Below we share the most common and reliable sources of data to track employee training:

Learning Metrics

Leaning metrics refer to metrics that measure course effectiveness and knowledge retention.

• Completion rates: This is the no-brainer metric that first comes to mind when tracking employee training initiatives. Although superficial, a completion rate will give you a first idea of how engaging your training course has been. Not only that – in the case of compliance training, it will help you ensure there are no weak leaks among your workforce.
• Assessment scores: Individual and average assessment scores will give you an accurate idea of how well employees have assimilated the information and parts of the training they might still feel unsure about.
• Certificates earned: The number of certificates earned is a quick way to check whether all employees have finished mandatory training.
• Engagement with training activities: There are ways, especially if you use a Learning Management System, to monitor learner behavior down to activity level. How much time they spent on each activity, whether they completed a video or not, whether they passed a test on the first attempt, and more. All this will help you understand whether your training course is engaging or not.

Employee metrics

Employee training has been closely associated with pivotal employee metrics, namely:

• Employee satisfaction
• Employee engagement
• Retention

These metrics are the results of multiple factors. It’s hard to identify the degree to which they can be safely attributed to employee training. However, if employees refer to their training experience positively in your employee satisfaction survey, it’s safe to say it has played a significant part.

• Employee performance: Employee performance can be measured in different ways depending on the type of training and is often intertwined with other metrics. For new hire onboarding, for example, it can mean time to productivity. In compliance training, you might need to measure the number of incidents. For job-specific skills training, it can refer to faster turnaround or higher sales figures.
• Behavioral changes: Behavioral changes are tied to soft skills and are evaluated rather than measured. For example, better time management is clearly manifested as timely or faster turnaround for projects (measurable) but also a better life balance and less work-related stress (not measurable).Behavioral changes affect the whole team and not just individual employees. For example, when employees develop conflict resolution skills or when they’re trained in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), there will be less friction in the workplace.Similarly, as employees become more adaptable and resilient, your business will be able to navigate change more smoothly. These traits and skills can be evaluated through performance reviews, observations, and feedback from supervisors or peers.

Business Impact

The most tangible results are expressed in business metrics and KPIs. At this point, it’s worth noting that it’s essential to define your desirable KPIs before deploying training. And it’s almost impossible not to, since usually a business deploys training in order to improve specific business results. Indicatively, some KPIs to watch are:

• Customer metrics: CSAT (Customer satisfaction score), NPS, number of support tickets, churn, CLV.
• Financial metrics: sales, training cost reduction, revenue, and gross/net profit margin.

4 Tools to Track Employee Training

You have more than one option to track and record employee training data with tracking software. Here, we present you with 4 different tools, each one addressing different business needs and training delivery methods:

Learning Management System (LMS)

A Learning Management System is hands-down the most efficient tool to deliver and track employee training, from new employee onboarding to upskilling and compliance training. An LMS enables you to offer learners diverse training content formats (eBooks, PDFs, videos, quizzes) and supports several training delivery methods (synchronous, asynchronous, blended, mobile).

Most LMSs offer built-in report tools that help you stay on top of your elearning initiatives without you having to do excessive manual work. You can see how individual employees, departments, or entire branches perform in a few seconds, with just a few clicks.

LMSs have several functionalities that allow you to monitor several metrics, even in real-time, like training completion rates, individual and average course scores, number of certificates issued, time spent on each learning activity, quiz scores, and more.

Most LMSs have filters so you can monitor only the data you need, and can be scheduled for automatic delivery. Your training records are kept for life in one place, together with all your training material. Make sure you specifically ask your LMS vendor about their reporting system, as some LMSs tend to be either overly complex or offer superficial metrics only, like course completion rates.

Overall, an LMS is the most complete training solution, offering multiple options to monitor learner performance through:

• Surveys
• Learner assessments
• Gradebook
• Certificate management
• Reporting tool

Pros

• All-in-one solution to centralize, distribute, and monitor training
• Content authoring capabilities
• Advanced analytics: insights on course and learner performance
• Integration with workplace tools
• Minimal manual work required

Cons

• It could be expensive if you only have one training course

Need more information about how to pick the right LMS for your business? Download our LMS Guide now, and you’ll learn practical tips to cut through the noise and choose the best LMS for your needs!

Training Management System (TMS)

A Training Management System is a platform that helps businesses organize and streamline instructor-led training and VILT. A TMS undertakes all “housekeeping” tasks, like course scheduling, logistics (for on-site training sessions), learner registration, reminder emails, budgeting planning & forecasting, and, of course, detailed reporting.

Keep in mind that, as opposed to an LMS, Training Management Software doesn’t always have content creation or training delivery capabilities. Therefore, it’s a good option if you implement instructor-led training and need a tool to handle administrative tasks.

Pros

• Advanced analytics, including Business Intelligence
• Automation of admin tasks

Cons

• Only works for ILT and VILT
• Doesn’t support content authoring or delivery; TMSs focus only on admin tasks

Employee Training Tracking Software

Another solution to track employee training progress is to use specialized training tracking software. Employee training trackers specialize in monitoring training and help with admin tasks, like training assignments, documentation, reminder emails, etc.

Pros

• In-depth training reports
• Effective compliance monitoring

Cons

• Doesn’t support content authoring or delivery

Google Sheets

This zero-cost solution can serve as a training log for small companies who are offering few on-site or online training courses or when the pricing of other tracking tools is off-limits for your budget. In such cases, good old Google Sheets or Excel will do the job just fine.

Pros

• Zero cost
• Good solution for small companies

Cons

• Time-consuming
• Requires a lot of manual work
• Limited data analysis
• Not efficient for large-scale training initiatives

To Track or Not to Track?

When it comes to employee training, it’s not a question of whether to track it but how. If you don’t want to juggle between tools, a Learning Management System is an integrated, cloud-based solution to streamline, deliver, and track your training programs.

Our platform, LearnWords, is a user-friendly LMS that supports interactive, engaging learning experiences and automates the most mundane admin tasks. Our platform features in-depth analytics and reports, advanced assessments, built-in surveys, and a certificate builder. Plan your next employee development or business initiative, knowing that your workforce can keep up! Start your 30-day free trial now!

Further reading you might find interesting:

• 100+ Elearning Statistics, Facts and Trends
• The 19 Best Learning Management Systems
• SCORM 101: The Definitive Guide to Choose a SCORM Compliant LMS
• What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?
• The Benefits of Mobile Learning: Unveiling Its Power and How It Works
  

The post How to Track Employee Training & Measure ROI appeared first on LearnWorlds.

Learning by doing is extremely efficient in instilling knowledge and translating this knowledge into practical application.

Due to its hands-on nature, on-the-job training is mostly linked to technical skills and practical tasks – operating machinery, using workplace tools, performing job tasks, following procedures, and so on. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t apply to soft skills training.

Many on-the-job training examples improve valuable soft skills like communication, team building, and emotional intelligence.

If you want to know more about this type of employee training, you’re in the right place. In this post, we’re sharing 11 top examples of on-the-job training and strategies to implement it. But first, let’s see what makes this training method so effective.

5 Big-Time Benefits of an On-The-Job Training Program

Should you use on-the-job training in your organization? We believe so, and we have 5 good reasons that will make you see the point in it as well:

Cut down on training costs

More often than not, you will not need extra resources to train the employee the same way you would for a traditional training program that involves seminars. That said, it’s advisable to keep a central repository with all necessary instructions and practical information.

Promote practical application

At the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding – and the “pudding” is whether employees can actually do what the training promises. On-the-job training helps achieve that by being activity-focused and providing hands-on experience.

Employees learn by observing, asking, doing, and receiving feedback in real time. This way, they reach the learning objectives of the course faster and more effectively. Not to mention, that the need for assessment is virtually eliminated since their knowledge is tested and proved during the training.

Boost employee morale

On-the-job training is the best way to help new and seasoned employees become more productive and perform better, as it provides opportunities to apply what is taught on the spot.

Passive learning, like attending seminars and watching video lectures, can be discouraging and even boring. Actually doing something, however, reinforces the sense of accomplishment and makes the employee feel useful.

Improve employee retention

On-the-job training is the most effective training method for onboarding, since new hires need to adjust to a new work environment as well as to their new role. Pairing them with an experienced employee is an excellent way to introduce them to the company culture, help them acclimate, and form stronger bonds among colleagues, all of which play a massive role in improving employee retention.

Minimize training time

Practice speeds up the learning process. It helps the employee internalize the new knowledge and cultivate skills and competencies faster by building “muscle memory” instead of relying on memorization. With on-the-job training, employees learn faster and better.

11 Effective On-the-Job Training Examples

Hands-on training can be a very effective way to train employees. There are several on-the-job training methods to help cultivate the necessary skills and improve employee performance that may or may not involve formal training sessions. Which one’s the best? Well, there’s no right or wrong here. It all depends on your specific training needs and the human resources available.

Let’s go over some of the most popular and effective on-the-job training examples:

Orientation is the initial phase of employee onboarding and it typically lasts between a few hours to a full work day. Orientation is not about developing a new skill set, so it doesn’t involve any formal training sessions; it’s about introducing the new employee to their team members and getting them acquainted with key tasks of their new job. During orientation, the new hire also learns about organizational structure and company policies and receives practical information about office operations.

Just-in-time training (JIT) refers to training not only on the job – but also on the point of need and not before. Rather than formal employee training, JIT is more of a job aid, and it’s particularly beneficial for deskless employees, like salespeople, healthcare professionals, and field workers, who don’t have easy access to a laptop.

To deliver just-in-time training, you’ll need a Learning Management System with a mobile app, like LearnWorlds, so that the content is optimized for mobile consumption. You’ll also need to create bite-size content that employes can easily consume, also known as microlearning content. Common examples include infographics and short videos.

LearnWorlds is an excellent LMS solution both for employee onboarding and just-in-time training (and much more!). Launch your own branded mobile app, create interactive content, and streamline training using with our customizable platform. Discover LearnWorlds with a 30-day free trial today!

Coaching and mentoring are effective types of on-the-job training that can be conducted either online or in person and involve pairing the employee with an experienced, usually senior, company employee. These methods are the most supportive. Although the terms are often used interchangeably, they are slightly different.

Coaching focuses on unlocking the employee’s potential and helping them overcome roadblocks to meet their professional goals. In many cases, coaching is done by an external professional. Mentoring is more focused on assisting the employee to master their new job role and discuss career goals with the mentor sharing advice and offering guidance. Depending on the employee needs, you can opt for one or the other.

Another method of on-the-job training is job rotation, which involves training employees in different jobs, usually similar to what they’re already doing. Job rotation doesn’t aim to improve their skill set but to increase transparency and help employees understand how the work of other employees is linked to their own. This type of training might even help employees discover they fit better in a role they hadn’t originally planned.

Job shadowing is a common type of on-the-job training where the trainee follows an experienced coworker on a typical workday (or more). This gives them ample opportunity to ask questions in real-time as they arise and better comprehend the task at hand. Job shadowing is extremely effective and can cut down the duration of the OJT program.

Perhaps the most common type of on-the-job training, co-worker training (or buddy system) refers to pairing an employee with a colleague who does the same job. Every employee has their own approach, so the training process might differ.

Some may focus on doing practical tasks together, while others might additionally offer resources like documentation they have prepared for personal use. The buddy system uses knowledge sharing as it’s primary learning method and it fosters strong employee relationships.

Simulations imitate real-life situations and are particularly effective because they require the employee to think and act on the spot, often under critical circumstances. They are very common in types of training where employees run higher risks and benefit from practicing in a safe environment, like health, safety, compliance, and even cybersecurity.

Simulations are computer-based and are usually part of formal training courses that involve several synchronous training sessions and self-paced learning. They’re used either to assess employee knowledge or promote practical application.

Delegation is when a manager assigns a task to a trainee and asks them to complete it, usually with minimum supervision. Delegation can be tricky, as it requires the manager to effectively gauge the competency level of the trainee and assign them a task that challenges them just the right amount; they should be able to complete it, but at the same time, it shouldn’t be too easy.

This type of OJT is like delegation but on a larger scale: a manager or supervisor forms a group of employees (a committee) and assigns them a project. Usually, the project is intricate and requires that the employees collaborate effectively to finish it.

Being essentially group assignments, committee assignments are excellent team-building activities that enhance communication and collaboration skills and reinforce team spirit as well as any job-specific skills.

An internship refers to “hiring” a college student so they can get work experience while they’re still studying. An internship is a valuable and highly sought-after type of on-the-job training that offers students a head start in the job market as they have experience their fellows don’t. Internship positions may or may not be paid. An internship can also lead to a permanent job for the intern.

Refresher training refers to on-the-job training that aims to freshen up existing knowledge through active recall and practical application. An often overlooked type of training, refreshers help keep employee skills sharp and current, as this training is usually updated to meet the latest job requirements.

Quick Tips & Strategies for On-the-job Training Success

Are you considering deploying on-the-job training? We have some words of advice for you for successful implementation.

• Deploy on-the-job training beyond onboarding: While it is primarily applied in employee onboarding, ΟJT is suitable for most types of training. To name only a few examples, on-the-job training can be used for upskilling and reskilling, to enhance soft skills, refresh memory, or (in the form of a simulation) to provide a safe environment for practice. On-the-job training is one of the most cost-effective, easy, and fast ways to train employees no matter where they are in their professional journey.
• Complement with job aids (using an LMS): On-the-job training offers the opportunity for practice and real-time feedback, which is great. But what happens when the training is over? Taking notes doesn’t work for anyone; it’s definitely inconvenient at times, and important details might fall through the cracks.Utilizing an LMS for online training ensures meticulous and accurate documentation down to the last detail. Moreover, employees have instant access to a variety of training materials (videos, eBooks, infographics, quizzes, podcasts, and more) whenever the need arises or when it’s most convenient for them.
• Choose the right employee to do the training: The employee you choose to train the new hire (or any other employee) will serve as a mentor for this person. This means they should be experienced enough and eager to undertake this role in order to fulfill the expectations and responsibilities that come with this role.
• Define the learning objectives: Coordinate with the trainer to agree on what the trainee needs to learn during their on-the-job training. For all its benefits, on-the-job training can get overwhelming, as it’s done in real-time.Especially in the case of new hires, things might move too fast without them assimilating the new information. It’s best to start with the basics and gradually move to tasks of higher difficulty level or less urgent than throwing everything at them from week one.

On-The-Job Training is the Missing Piece of Employee L&D

No matter your industry, there’s always room for on-the-job training in a business. If you want to train employees fast and effectively, this is the single best way to ensure they are able to apply knowledge and skills on the job, and get the work done effectively.

Likewise, a Learning Management System is the missing tool in your training toolkit. It will help you keep all essential learning material in one place, allow learners to learn at their own pace, offer employees job aids when they need them, and streamline training for everyone.

Do you want to see for yourself? Sign up for a 30-day free trial with LearnWorlds now!

Further reading you might find interesting:

• The 19 Best Learning Management Systems
• SCORM 101: The Definitive Guide to Choose a SCORM Compliant LMS
• What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?
• 10 Best WordPress LMS Plugins Comparison
• The Benefits of Mobile Learning: Unveiling Its Power and How It Works

The post 11 On-the-job Training Examples & Strategies to Build a Competent Workforce appeared first on LearnWorlds.

No doubt, asking too many questions is awkward because you know you’re cutting into someone’s work. Besides, even legitimate questions tend to sound “stupid” to the person who asks them.

But this is how many new employees feel during their first days at work. And if they don’t have a proper onboarding experience, these questions can linger for weeks and hinder them from being productive; not to mention, it will take them much longer to feel part of the team.

Many companies over-rely on HR tools and offer a basic orientation that involves mostly paperwork, and then leave it to managers and co-workers to train new hires with no specific plan in mind.

Make sure you don’t make that mistake. Create a step-by-step onboarding process and invest in an employee training platform, so you can streamline paperwork with new employee onboarding. Offer a comprehensive learning experience that suits your company’s needs whether you operate on-site, hybrid, or remotely.

Read on as we discuss the benefits of employee onboarding and share with you a new hire onboarding checklist.

First, let’s answer one common question:

What is the Difference Between Employee Training and Onboarding?

Employee onboarding falls under the umbrella of employee training & development, so one doesn’t exclude the other. The key difference is that employee training focuses only on helping employees develop technical and soft skills.

Onboarding has a broader scope. While onboarding includes skills training, its goal is to help new hires acclimate and feel comfortable in their new workplace. Therefore, it is more of a holistic experience that includes orientation, skills training, bonding activities, and introduction to the company culture.

What Are the Benefits of Training New Employees?

Training new employees should be part of every employer’s agenda. If you’re unclear about the point of having a formal onboarding process in place, let us help you with that:

Reduce time to productivity

According to a report from Gallup, it typically takes approximately 12 months for a new employee to reach full productivity in their recently assumed role. Skills training, an indispensable part of onboarding, helps employees become productive faster than they would by randomly asking questions here and there or through job shadowing and note-taking. This translates to increased job satisfaction and, of course, better results in terms of the quality and quantity of the work produced.

Improve employee engagement

New employee onboarding is not about job training only. During onboarding, new hires get a first taste of the company culture as they meet and interact with other team members and better understand the company goals and mission. This helps them acclimate faster, feel happier in the workplace, and be more excited about their new job!

Improve employee retention

At the time of writing this post, 39% of employees who have been with a company for less than 6 months plan to leave within the next 12 months. Need we say more? Several surveys link poor onboarding to higher employee turnover – and you already know how disruptive, time-consuming, and costly it is to replace employees.

A formal, steady-paced onboarding process gives new employees the time and space to learn, acclimate, and flourish in your company.

New Hire Onboarding Checklist: 12 Items That Shouldn’t Miss

This is not a simple JTBD employee onboarding checklist. We dive deep into the process, starting with some behind-the-scenes tasks you must perform.

This might not be a cutting-edge piece of advice, but it’s an essential one. It’s important to have everything documented, even if you’re a small business of 10 employees. Each job position might be accompanied by a thorough documentation of the job description, daily tasks, and connection to other departments. Of course, this is a dynamic process as a role and a company evolves, so make sure to update the relevant documents regularly.

Create an employee handbook that lays out company policies, benefits, and SOPs and has a detailed company chart and directory to help new employees familiarize themselves with the basics. The employee handbook doesn’t have to be an actual document, of course. You can store all this information on your HR tool. Or – even better – on your employee training platform, so you can have documentation and training in one tool.

Before anything else, create a template or checklist mapping out all the key tasks and activities that make up your new hire onboarding process. This will help you ensure that nothing falls through the cracks and will give you a better sense of whether the process will roll out smoothly or if it’s packed with too many activities, which is often the case. Plus, a checklist should save you considerable time and effort the next time a new employee joins, as you’ll have everything already documented.

A new hire training program starts before day one. Get new employees excited and lessen their stress by being transparent about the days ahead. Knowing what’s coming will relieve the sense of the unknown (that few people feel comfortable with).

Make sure to share:

• Activities planned for their first day (e.g., meetings, welcome kit waiting for them)
• Training plan for the first few weeks
• The paperwork they need to sign & employee handbook
• Necessary information, such as directions and parking information
• Downloading guidelines and credentials for workplace tools (if they’re remote)
• Contact information of their manager and HR

Start building employee engagement on day one with a welcome kit. Include small gifts, like a customized cup with the company branding and a snack pack, and also more practical but fun information, like popular restaurants and bars around the area.
A welcome kit also includes office supplies or tech gear the employee needs. And if you haven’t already shared that information before, now is also a good chance to share the employee handbook.

Create a centralized knowledge base with FAQs, SOPs, company policies, and training material. This may as well be a Learning Management System – especially if you’re working with a remote or hybrid workforce and plan to offer online training.

An LMS comes with multiple benefits as it supports different training delivery methods and types of content, giving you unprecedented flexibility in offering employee onboarding and all training beyond that:

• Multimodal learning (hybrid, blended, synchronous, asynchronous, mobile)
• Multimedia & interactive content (videos, eBooks, infographics)
• Quizzes, exams, and self-assessments
• Social learning (discussion forums, learner groups, activity feeds)
• Reward system (gamification & certificates)
• Reporting tools
• Integrations with workplace tools

Do you want to see an LMS for employee onboarding in action? Try LearnWorlds, the lightweight LMS that will help you streamline your onboarding process for good. Claim your 30-day free trial now!

Coaching and mentoring are as personalized as an onboarding experience can be. Pamper your newcomers by pairing them with a mentor who will introduce them to the company mission, discuss their aspirations & goals, and address specific training needs that may come up. Besides, mentorship is a fulfilling task for the mentor as well, who gets to pass on their knowledge and expertise to the new employee.

An effective training plan should combine hands-on, on-site learning with e-learning for a more flexible training experience. Conduct training sessions in real-time as needed, where employees can learn by doing and discuss anything they don’t understand.

But make sure to also offer online training materials that will allow employees to learn at their own pace and also serve as “cheatsheets” that substitute the dreaded asking around we mentioned at the beginning.

Besides, each employee has a different learning style. Wherever possible, offer multiple learning sources and training methods and let them choose how they want to train in their new role. For some, job shadowing might work much better than reading step-by-step guides or watching tutorials.

Offering a bit of everything will keep everyone satisfied. Whatever the case, include quizzes and self-assessments, so new hires can do their own knowledge checks and self-critique as they learn.

New employees are eager to become part of the team as much as they are eager to do their job duties. For this reason, it’s important to share with the new employees the values and mission and also to help them understand how decisions are made and how the day-to-day atmosphere is.

Typically, an introduction to the company culture takes place by arranging meetings with other teams within the first couple of weeks. Some more exciting and warm ways to receive new hires are a welcome lunch or drinks (even virtual!) and team-building activities, like games or wellness activities.

Once the new employee has undergone some basic training, they should get started on their first task. Help them feel useful by enabling them to contribute – it’s key to start building engagement and a sense of fulfillment. Of course, it should be made clear to them that they will be fully supported through the execution of the project.

A new job is anxiety-inducing for most; and it’s not just “the first week” that’s hard. New team members might feel intimated not only by the responsibilities of their new job but also by their new work environment.

While it’s essential that they become productive fast – for their own benefit, first and foremost – you shouldn’t plan a tight training schedule that will overwhelm the new employee. If anything else, new employees will be trained largely by other employees who will have to accommodate their business-as-usual tasks while providing training, and that can quickly become problematic for the whole team.

When it comes to employee onboarding, slow and steady wins the race. The best employee training programs are spread over a 3-month period and include a check-in 6 months after the start date.

You must be attentive to employee needs during their onboarding. Check in with them regularly, and don’t wait until the end of the official onboarding program to collect their feedback. See how the process is unfolding for them. Do things move too slow or too fast? Is the process overwhelming? Do they need a change of pace? What skills do they feel the most insecure about and need more work?

Feedback shouldn’t be one-sided. New employees are more insecure than your seasoned workforce about how they’re doing, so you should take extra care to give them constructive feedback as much as they give back to you.

At the end of the process, discuss again to see how satisfied they’ve been with the program and whether they need to revisit a part of the training. When they’re a few more months in, discuss further L&D opportunities that are suitable for their career goals.

Have some key metrics in place against which you’ll measure the effectiveness of the employee onboarding, like time to onboard, time to productivity, and employee engagement. Revisit these metrics every three months during the first year.

Apart from pulling out metrics and cross-checking business KPIs, launch surveys and schedule one-to-one interviews to request employee feedback specifically on their onboarding experience.

Onboarding for the Win

Onboarding training should be part of your training strategy. Losing (good) employees, then hiring and training new ones is an expensive sport you don’t want to play. Get on the right foot with new hires from day one to increase engagement and retention. Offer them plenty of training resources and, if it’s within your company’s abilities, assign them a mentor to walk them through the first rough months.

A Learning Management System is the most comprehensive employee onboarding solution. Stop juggling between different tools and platforms, which will only add to the confusion. Give LearnWorlds a try and see how one single platform can accommodate all your documentation, self-paced training resources and activities, live classes, and mentorship sessions.

Further reading you might find interesting:

• The 19 Best Learning Management Systems
• SCORM 101: The Definitive Guide to Choose a SCORM Compliant LMS
• 10 Best WordPress LMS Plugins Comparison
• What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?
• The Benefits of Mobile Learning: Unveiling Its Power and How It Works

The post How to Train New Employees Effectively: The Only Onboarding Checklist You’ll Ever Need appeared first on LearnWorlds.

But there’s more to that. Sharp skills translate into better performance, more opportunities for career advancement, and, therefore, higher job satisfaction. And make no mistake – a competent workforce that is also happy plays a huge role in the success of your business.

While you may already be on board with the idea of investing in your employees’ professional development, you might be under the impression that you don’t have the budget, expertise, or human resources to create an effective training program.

Today, we’ll show you how all of these issues are solvable, and that you can indeed build employee development programs. (Hint: you probably already have more resources readily available than you think – we’ll talk about that, too).

All you really need to do is create and follow a structured training plan. Delivering training online, or at least complementing it with online resources, will also support your effort to make Learning and Development part of your workplace culture.

In this post, we’ll go through this training plan together. But first, let us make our case for online training.

Why You Should Deploy Employee Training Online

First things first, we’re not in favor of an “either-or” approach. Online training is not always the solution. For instance, it can’t substitute hands-on practice for technical and manual tasks. Imagine training a construction worker how to operate a lift from the comfort of their home – would you like to be around when they try it in real life?

That said, online training fits the bill for technical and soft skills training programs. You can also support most types of on-site training with training material and activities, and create blended learning experiences.

Let’s see the benefits and use cases one by one

Offer convenience and flexibility

Online courses are often self-paced or combine synchronous with asynchronous elements. The training material is available 24/7 and can be accessed from any device provided there’s an internet connection. Employees can set their own schedule for learning inside or outside work hours without interrupting their work day. No uncomfortable daylong seminars, no unnecessary commuting.

Provide just-in-time training

Deskless employees, like salespeople or healthcare professionals, don’t have the same access to on-the-job training as everyone else does. Online, and mobile learning in particular, is the only way to support these employees when they’re on the job.

Streamline and document training

A Learning Management System helps you streamline your training efforts by providing the same quality training to everyone. On top of that, it allowed you to create your own learning hub – a centralized location with all the learning resources your employees need.

Trim your training budget

Your primary training goal is to help employees build their skills in the most effective way possible, so cost-efficiency shouldn’t be a determining factor unless online training makes sense.

That said, when you deploy training online vs in-person, you will save big on expenses like instructor fees, venue, accommodation, and transportation costs – not to mention the time lost from productivity.

Cater to diverse learning styles & needs

Online learning leaves more room for variety, which is especially beneficial for visual learners who prefer to take their time walking through the content. By including a mix of written, audio, and kinesthetic activities, eLearning can provide comprehensive learning experiences for everyone.

Apart from preferences, employees also have different needs. Physical, learning, or cognitive disabilities might hinder some employees from keeping up or even participating in on-site training. Online courses are easier to work around and be accessible for everyone.

Easily update your content

Things move fast in the modern workplace. New products, new employees, new regulations, new skills, new information. With online training, it’s easy to keep your employees up to date without having to organize training events from scratch. All you need to do is upload updated training content on your training platform.

Cultivate a learning culture

Online training is much easier both for the company to deploy and update and for employees to follow through. This means you can roll out new and diverse courses regularly and keep the momentum going.

Your 10-Step Guide to Building Successful Employee Training Programs

Let’s move from theory and unshakeable arguments pro online training to the actual planning & development phase. We have created a concrete 10-step mini-guide for you to follow:

1. Define Your Business Goals

Defining your business goals is the first step to building a successful training program. You don’t need to go wild here and plan for the next decade. Focus on what you want to achieve in the foreseeable future so that you can set specific and measurable goals.

Many businesses use the SMART methodology to define their goals:

• Specific: Specify what needs to be accomplished.
• Measurable: Usually, business goals are measured by relevant KPIs and metrics. Define your KPIs early on so you can measure the progress you’re making as a company and the success of your training program.
• Attainable: Make sure your goal is realistic and achievable.
• Relevant: Your goals should be relevant to the bigger picture – the vision you have for your company and your definition of success.
• Time-bound: Set a timeframe for achieving the goal.

Let’s say you’re a SaaS company. A SMART goal sounds like this:

“Increase our CSAT score by 5% by the end of 2024.”

Based on this goal, ask yourself: Which new knowledge and skills does your workforce need to help you achieve the goals? This brings us to the next step.

2. Evaluate Skills Gaps & Training Needs

In many cases, the problem might not be your employees but your processes or business strategy – even the tech you’re using, or your product! Therefore, before designing a new training program, you must revisit and reevaluate all business operations linked to your goals.

At the same time, you need to conduct a training needs assessment. You have several options for this:

• Send out surveys
• Set up one-to-one or group interviews with employees
• Speak with managers and supervisors
• Conduct skills assessments

After you’ve received feedback from multiple sources, you should be able to figure out the skills gaps among your workforce and start planning your next training program to address these gaps.

3. Identify Potential Barriers

Next, you should consider the challenges you may face as you deploy training. Typically, these involve:

• Budget
• Time constraints (especially in compliance)
• Conflicting schedules (due to timezones or shifts)
• Accessibility issues
• Tech savviness

Keeping potential roadblocks in mind will help you design a program tailored to your needs, preferences, and capabilities and choose the training delivery method that best works for your company.

4. Define the Learning Objectives

Now, you have all the information that you need to start writing the learning objectives of the course. The learning objectives are a short but concise description of what employees will be able to do after they complete the training course.

Think of them are the Unique Selling Points of the course – the answer to the “What’s in it for me?” question. A quick tip is to avoid generic verbs like “learn or understand” and focus instead on action-oriented ones. Here’s what a learning objective sounds like:

By the end of this sales course, you’ll be able to:

• Communicate product benefits effectively
• Answer all customer objections
• Close sales two times faster
• Operate the [X] CRM system

Having defined the learning objectives, you can select the best activities that will bring learners closer to those and also the assessments that will effectively measure their knowledge.

5. Design a Course Outline

With a course outline, you’ll create a roadmap and organize your content into learning modules. A course outline will help you create the course sequence and define the much-necessary knowledge checkpoints and reward systems.

Designing a training course is not always simple because the learning process is not. If your requirements are complex, you might need to outsource content creation or hire an instructional designer.

If you don’t have an instructional design expert on your team, don’t hesitate to consult one. It’s best to spend some more money now and get the job done right than develop a program that misses the mark.

Visit the LearnWorlds Experts Directory to discover qualified eLearning professionals who can help you build your training course.

6. Choose an Employee Training Platform

According to a survey conducted by Training Magazine, Learning Management Systems remained the most popular learning technology used in 2023.

This comes as no surprise: an LMS helps you organize and distribute your training content with significantly fewer hassle and cost compared to other solutions. In addition to that, LMSs support diverse content types and enable you to create training that has an impact.

Depending on your specific needs and the type of training, your requirements may differ. For example, if you want to conduct live sessions, you should look for a platform that directly integrates with a video conferencing tool. If you need to train deskless employees, you need an LMS with a mobile app, and so on.

Even if you don’t know the exact features to look for, by describing your requirements to the LMS vendor, they should be able to demonstrate they can address those needs.

In the meantime, here are some important considerations for every company:

• User limits. For large companies, user limits can impact your budget.
• Data privacy. What measures are in place to ensure data security? Who has access to information?
• Ease of use. Some LMSs are complex and take weeks, plus external help, to be implemented and configured. Make sure you don’t choose an LMS that you can’t navigate on your own. Ask for a free trial to see whether you and your employees can comfortably use the platform.
• Customization. Ideally, you want employees to learn in a familiar environment and to incorporate training into their workday as smoothly as possible. Ask about the branding options, integrations, APIs, and UI customization features.
• Customer support. Eventually, you’ll have to submit a ticket or make a phone call to the customer support team. And you want to ensure you will receive an educated answer and a solution to your problem sooner rather than later. Customer reviews are a reliable source of information, as most users will refer to the level of customer service they’ve received (which only shows how crucial it is).
• Types of content supported. The most important considerations here are interactivity and SCORM compliance. You need to create opportunities for interactions, like via discussion forums and playful content. SCORM compliance is essential to ensure you can easily migrate content among different LMS platforms.
• Use cases. If you have specific use cases in mind, like new hire onboarding, health and safety, or customer training, ask the vendor to pinpoint the features that can support them.
• AI functionality. AI is all the more important if you’re building the content with your own team; it can help you save big on time and money without sacrificing quality.
• Evaluation & tracking. What methods does the training platform provide to evaluate the success of your program? You need insights not only on completion rates but also on learner behavior and interaction with content. See if the platform can support evaluation surveys as well as robust reporting.
• Training methods supported. As we mentioned, online training goes with everything: synchronous, asynchronous, hybrid, blended, and mobile learning are all possible with the right tool.

7. Start Working on the Content

If you decide to develop the training in house, we have two words of advice for you before you even get started:

The first is to identify team members with expertise in the course topic. Use them as your Subject Matter Experts to organize mentoring sessions or advise with course creation.

Second, use content you already have! Yes, even those dreaded PowerPoint presentations can be turned into something more exciting, like an eBook. A webinar can also be turned into a series of videos, and so on. Think about what you already have before you start building content from scratch.

In the meantime, some popular types of content to include in your course are:

• Videos (made by you, or from external sources like YouTube)
• eBooks, infographics, Slideshows
• Podcasts and other audio files
• Quizzes and self-reflection journals
• A reward system with badges and certificates

Remember that every learning activity must be relevant to the training objectives and, whenever possible, reinforce real-life application. Avoid overloading your employees with nice-to-have information because this will hurt their capacity to absorb even necessary knowledge.

If necessary, add live instructor-led training sessions during which you can explore case studies and real-world examples, dive deeper into the topic, answer questions, and practice with role-playing exercises to improve knowledge retention. Leverage discussion boards and community features to enable employees to share knowledge and engage in discussions.

Want to know more about how to create personalized learning experiences? Watch our free webinar Personalize Your Corporate Training Experiences.

8. Do a Beta Test

Before launching your program, take one final look through the eyes of others. Create a small team of employees who will access the course while it’s still in draft mode, then conduct a group discussion to get their feedback.

9. Promote & Launch

Does an internal training program need to be promoted? Yes. You need to help employees see the value they can get from it. You need to make a commotion and let enthusiasm spread among your employees!

Therefore, a couple of weeks before you launch the course, send an email or post an announcement to let employees know that the course is ready. Share a sneak peek and highlight perks for course participants, like paid time off or a special reward for top performers. Most importantly, explain how the course is linked to career opportunities.

10. Measure How Effective The Program Was

Typically, a training program ends when employees have finished the course successfully. But the most important thing is the aftermath. A training program always leaves you with important questions to answer:

• What do employees have to say about the course and the content?
• What do your learning analytics tell you (that your employees won’t?)?
• Have employees applied their newfound knowledge on the job? If not, was it because they didn’t get a chance to or because the training was irrelevant?
• Are you closer to your business goals?

Answering these questions irequires a systematic approach: launch employee surveys and interviews, check your LMS reports, measure your KPIs, and discuss with managers.

It’s pretty much what you did before designing the program to evaluate your needs – only now you have more sources to collect data, and the focus is different. You also need to remember that business KPIs take a while to improve and that, usually, there’s more than one factor at play.

Ready to Launch?

Offering continuous education has multiple benefits for a company. Your employees are the building blocks of your business – and no business can go far unless it keeps its employees’ skills current and the employees themselves happy with their jobs.

LearnWorlds is an excellent choice for your employee training initiatives. Our platform is a lightweight LMS you can implement in a few hours and even launch your branded mobile app, supercharged with an advanced AI assistant with built-in prompts.

Scalable and flexible, LearnWorlds is fully white-labeled, SCORM compliant, offers multiple integrations and API, customer user roles and access controls, and poses no limits to the number of courses or users you can have.

We could go on for a while. Why don’t you leverage our 30-day free trial to discover the amazing capabilities of LearnWorlds?

The post Designing A Training Program: How to Boost Employee Performance With eLearning appeared first on LearnWorlds.

The need to reskill and upskill employees are imperative. There’s no need to stress about it, though – using a Learning Management System (LMS) can really untie your hands and make the development process much smoother.

At the same time, an LMS can help you solve another problem – educating your customers and anyone involved in selling your product, such as consultants, vendors, stakeholders, and more. This is all the more true (and needed) if you have a complex product like SaaS.

So today, we’re going to explore why you should deploy training in the first place and why you should choose a Learning Management System for your upskilling efforts. Then, we’ll find out how you can use an LMS for upskilling and training and which features to look for.

Table of contents

• 1Benefits of Employee Training
  
• 2Benefits of Customer Training
  
• 3Why You Should Use a Learning Management System for Upskilling and Training
• 47 Brilliant Ways to Use an LMS for Upskilling and Training
  
• 514 Key Features To Look For in an LMS
  

Benefits of Employee Training

Before diving into the practical aspects of upskilling and training, let’s start by giving you the reasons to do so. First, when it comes to training your employees.

1Boost Productivity and Job Performance

The most direct and fast result you should expect after deploying an employee training program is a more productive and efficient workforce. After all, this is exactly what upskilling is about – enhancing existing or developing new skills, whether soft or digital skills, that will help employees do their jobs better and faster and also undertake new responsibilities.

2Increase Employee Retention

Career development and upskilling opportunities have been cited repeatedly among the top reasons why employees leave their current employer and start looking for a different job. And unsurprisingly so. Employees, at least the type you want to have among your workforce, will end up feeling stagnant if there’s no prospect for a rewarding career path on the horizon.

As employee engagement drops, it’s all downhill: productivity decreases, absenteeism increases, and so does turnover. Not to mention that disgruntled employees often pass on their dissatisfaction and lack of motivation to others, and the overall workplace environment loses some of its liveliness. Opportunities for professional development seriously increase your chances of not losing quality employees.

3Improve Employee Agility and Readiness

Employee training might be primarily linked with technical skills and competencies, but you mustn’t overlook the way it can improve soft skills either. Soft skills become all the more important to employers as they’re often the glue that sticks the workplace together. How? Think about how higher emotional intelligence and better conflict management could decrease friction in the workplace.

It doesn’t matter which soft skills your corporate training program focuses on. Following a streamlined approach and offering plenty of training opportunities to your workforce will help you stay ahead of industry trends and future-proof your business.

Talent development helps employees remain sharp, alert, and agile enough to face any challenges or changes that come along, like digital transformation and the integration of Artificial Intelligence in the workplace. This is because regularly feeding employees’ brains with new information and skills takes them out of a state of passiveness, sparks their curiosity, and boosts their confidence.

4Stay Competitive

You can’t even dream of success without a competent workforce. Your employees are the ones bringing in ideas and turning your vision into actual products and superior customer experiences. Whether you’ll be able to maintain this high level of quality in everything you offer or not depends on the effort you put into educating your employees and continuously honing their current skill sets.

5Create a Positive Company Culture

A learning culture can’t be anything but a positive culture. Provided you respect your employees’ personal time and don’t force them into participating in training programs they don’t want to.

In any other circumstances, employee development programs contribute to a positive employee experience. Learning and development goes hand in hand with a vibrant workplace where all team members find purpose and opportunities to grow professionally, open their horizons, and feel empowered with new skills.

Benefits of Customer Training

Deploying a customer education program won’t disappoint you regarding business benefits. These benefits usually translate into better business KPIs that ultimately lead to economic growth and stability.

1Increase Product Adoption

It goes without saying that when customers have the resources they need to learn a complex product, this increases the chances of them managing to incorporate it into their work or their lives. Product adoption is the first step to establishing your brand in your customers’ minds and creating a relationship of trust and loyalty.

2Improve Customer Satisfaction

A customer who uses your product and has a better workflow, project management, personal development, or whatever your product solves is naturally a happy customer. Your e-learning content, whether we’re talking about video tutorials, a blog, etc., will empower customers and allow them to utilize your product to the maximum, increasing customer satisfaction.

3Build Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty comes with the added benefit that, as a rule, loyal customers spend more. This happens both because they buy more often from you and also because they buy a wider range of products. The amount of money a customer spends for as long as they remain your customer is known as Lifetime Customer Value.

4Decrease Customer Acquisition Cost

You know very well that attracting new customers is not exactly cost-effective. Customer education enables you to build your brand and establish your business in the market. This means that more people will know about you, and you won’t have to spend that much on marketing and promotional activities, thereby decreasing the customer acquisition cost.

5Get More Positive Online Reviews

A direct result of higher customer satisfaction is that your Net Promoter Score (NPS) and the number of positive reviews and ratings will increase. It’s pretty obvious what online reviews are, but perhaps you haven’t heard of NPS. NPS is the number that measures the likelihood of a customer to recommend your product or service, and it’s measured by a survey asking exactly that.

Watch the webinar recording

Why You Should Use a Learning Management System for Upskilling and Training

Now that you’ve realized how necessary training is, we’ll explain why you should use a Learning Management System to deliver online training instead of using a classroom-based approach.

1Familiarity

During the pandemic and the subsequent restrictions on movement, most of our daily activities switched to online mode. And for many people, they have stayed this way. Working, shopping, and learning, among others, still take place online. In most cases, doing these things online is more convenient.

Like remote work, online learning is the option that makes the most sense right now, and an LMS is the best learning tool for the job. Employees can enhance their skill sets, and customers and partners can learn your product in a familiar and easy way.

2Flexibility

A Learning Management System is the most flexible solution for all involved stakeholders.

Starting with you, imagine organizing on-site training for a large group of audience and possibly different branches. You’ll need to find a location, booking fees, and possible transportation costs. Both the trouble and the cost are considerable. Not to mention that there’s a limit to the number of people that could participate in such an event, making on-site training very challenging and almost impossible for high-scale customer education.

With an LMS, you can offer training courses from the comfort of your office chair. Well, sort of. But you get the point: once you pick the right platform, creating the content becomes much easier. Among the desired LMS features at this point is SCORM compliance, so you can easily transfer your content if you’re switching platforms.

What’s more, you only build the content once, have the core of your course ready, and then update it as you go whenever necessary. Also, an LMS supports as many users as you wish and an unlimited amount of learning material.

An LMS is flexible for course participants too. Online training doesn’t cut into their day; whether employees or customers can learn while commuting and at their own pace and can create their distinct learning path. The course material is available when they most need it.

Think about your mobile or deskless employees, for example. Drivers, consultants, healthcare professionals, and sales assistants – their jobs become a lot easier when they have instant access to “cheat sheets.” Many LMS solutions even offer a mobile app, which is the best deal for learning on the go.

3Onboarding

Onboarding new hires is a challenging yet crucial process. New employees are likely to feel overwhelmed by instructor-led learning programs, on-the-job learning, and the overall amount of new information they have to take in before they fully take on their new role.

Providing training via an LMS allows both employees and customers to learn at a more comfortable pace and access less critical content later. At the same time, they know that all the training resources they need are organized and stored in one location.

4Effectiveness

When you have an LMS, learning never ends! You can continuously renew your content library by activating an RSS feed, for example. Or by initiating conversations in the discussion forum. These might not be examples of formal learning, but social learning is just as effective – and definitely more pleasant.

Even during the formal part of your e-learning course, an LMS has everything you need. You can combine different content formats to satisfy all learner preferences and to keep a nice balance between visual and audio content – eBooks, PDFs, videos, quizzes for self-evaluation, and formal learner assessments. You can also choose to add gamification elements, like leaderboards and badges.

For further interactivity and synchronous learning, a learning platform allows you to schedule real-time, instructor-led sessions and webinars. During these sessions, the instructor can address learner questions, explain complex concepts more effectively, discuss in real-time, and organize learning activities.

5Reporting

A valuable and unique to LMS platforms’ functionality is that you can monitor more than completion rates. You can get invaluable insights about how they interact with the content and which parts of the online course have sparked their interest, taken them longer to complete, and more.

This information is handy as it can complement learner feedback, which isn’t always honest. Plus, in certain types of training, like compliance training, you need to ensure employees have achieved the learning objectives.

You can analyze your findings and ask for clarifications from the learners (especially when we’re talking about corporate training) if you notice concerning patterns. Most importantly, you should be able to act upon these findings and improve your upskilling strategy and learning experience.

6Monetization

Most LMS platforms offer eCommerce capabilities, and either have built-in marketing tools or integrate with popular marketing tools, so you can also sell your training course if you wish. This option comes in handy with advanced customer education programs and soft skills training. Soft skills apply in different settings, whether in everyday life or the workplace and are not unique to your business.

7 Brilliant Ways to Use an LMS for Upskilling and Training

We’re sharing seven practical ways to use a learning management system in your training efforts regardless of the audience.

1Deploy Training Courses

The most obvious and common way to put an LMS into use, especially in a business setting, is to create online training courses. These courses can vary:

• Compliance training. This type of training is usually mandatory and is particularly common in heavily regulated industries like healthcare and manufacturing.
• Technical skills. This involves enhancing or building new job-related skills that have practical application. A couple of examples are sales and customer service training.
• Soft skills. Soft skills are a must for a functional and friction-free workplace. Yet they’re the trickiest to build, as they involve behavioral change. The list of soft skills is extended and comprises conflict resolution, leadership skills, communication, time management, active listening, and many more.
• Onboarding. Onboarding is a one-way street for companies who want to decrease time-to-productivity and keep their employees. A proper onboarding process may last up to 6 months to give the new hire ample time to explore new information at a moderate pace.
• Customer education. Customer education, or customer onboarding, dramatically improves critical business KPIs and empowers customers.
• Partner training. Similar to customer education, partner training gives external collaborators the knowledge they need to sell your product efficiently.

Online training programs usually involve a variety of eLearning content. They are either entirely self-paced (asynchronous) or have a mix of asynchronous and synchronous elements (blended learning). Synchronous learning is also an option for online training.

2Host Online Events

Another way you can use your LMS is to host online events, like mentoring and networking events, webinars, and conferences. Most learning management systems integrate with video conferencing tools, like Zoom and Webex, so you can schedule synchronous sessions where participants can engage in more direct communication and practice and host large-scale events. You can record and repurpose them at a later stage to become part of a course.

3Build an Online Community

Don’t underestimate the power of bringing your learners together – whether we’re talking about employees or customers. Within an online community that includes a discussion board, a blog, and groups learners can socialize and learn through a spontaneous exchange of information.

For example, you can create topic-specific groups to bring together learners with similar interests and knowledge levels. Or you can initiate discussions and share insightful blog posts.

4Create a Centralized Content Library

You can use an LMS to upload useful resources and learning material that your employees can access any time they like to learn more about a topic or practice a skill, even if it’s not as a part of formal training.

Having a centralized content library will additionally help employees occasionally refresh their memory. Offer a variety of content as not all people learn the same way. A centralized content library is also especially helpful for new employees.

5Offer Just-in-Time Resources

Remember those deskless employees we mentioned earlier? This part of your workforce often doesn’t receive the same level of training. Having quick resources they can access on the job is extremely helpful and can save them from frustration and mistakes. Quick resources are also lifesavers for customer education too.

To enable that, take into account that learners won’t have much time to watch lengthy videos and process complicated information. Therefore, offer bite-sized resources, like infographics, slideshows, and quick instructional videos that stock to the point and effectively answer their questions.

The best way to deliver just-in-time training is via a mobile app. A mobile app is not only as mobile-friendly as it gets; it has the most appropriate user interface for easy search and on-the-go learning.

6Measure and Track Learner Progress

A well-monitored training program applies to employee training first and foremost and also to customer and partner training.

An LMS offers a variety of assessment tools you can use to evaluate learner progress, like quizzes, assignments, and exams. For deeper insights, you also have access to advanced reporting. You can additionally keep a record of their performance using an online gradebook.

Measuring progress and analyzing completion rates and engagement with the course is a crucial part of learning – it gives you the opportunity to make improvements and enjoy even better results with your next program.

7Incentivize and Reward Learners

If learners lose interest mid-training or even go into training unenthusiastically, learning won’t be effective. Finding ways to motivate learners in training is important to keep their attention and interest, so as to maximize training effectiveness and also to get them to complete their course.

One such way is creating engaging content, to begin with. Interactive elements and a variety of content can satisfy different learning preferences and keep everyone happy. To take it a step further, you can incentivize learners by rewarding them with badges as they progress through the course.

Certificates are another excellent way to reward learners and validate their knowledge. And if you decide later to sell the course, they add extra value and increase its appeal.

14 Key Features To Look For in an LMS

The first step to training success in your upskilling programs and similar training initiatives is investing in a user-friendly and feature-rich Learning Management System. Let’s take a quick look at the 14 features your LMS shouldn’t miss:

1. 1. AI Content Creation: AI content creation capabilities are non-negotiable if you create custom training content for your employees. Look for an LMS to assist you with a comprehensive course outline, write eBooks and other text content, and proofread/edit your work. Apart from being a huge time-saver, a helping hand from AI will also enhance the quality of your course since the content will be polished to perfection and tailored to your tone of voice.
   2. Variety of content: This is a no-brainer. Not every learner learns the same way. Unless you’re able to provide a little bit of everything, all learners will get bored and some won’t be able to learn much at all.
   3. Video conferencing tools: Your LMS of choice should integrate with video conferencing tools to allow you to hold webinars and synchronous online sessions.
   4. Assessment tools: Another must-have feature, assessment options like exams and assignments will help you evaluate whether your learners have actually learned or just cruised through the course.
   5. Reporting tools: In-depth course analytics will enable you to understand whether your course has resonated with learners and identify problematic areas.
   6. Feedback tools: Getting direct feedback from learners should be part of your training program. Learners need to be heard and they need to see that their feedback is taken into consideration. Look for a platform with built-in forms that you can use to request feedback at the end of the course – among many other uses.
   7. Integrations: An LMS with plenty of integrations will help you automate processes and enable you to work with tools you’re already familiar with.
   8. Gamification: Even simple gamification elements like badges play a role in boosting engagement and motivation.
   9. Certificate builder: The ultimate incentive is recognition. Make the process easier by choosing a platform with a built-in certificate builder.
   10. Mobile app: For deskless employees -and not only- a mobile app will take mobile learning to the next level. Increase engagement with in-app notifications.
   11. eCommerce and marketing capabilities: Why not leave the window of monetization open? If someday you want to sell your courses, you should be able to. Therefore, the best learning management system must accept different payment gateways, integrate with marketing tools, and offer affiliate marketing and diverse selling options.
   12. White labeling: Create training in a familiar environment where your company logos and colors shine. Make sure your LMS offers true white labeling where it’s all you.
   13. Website builder: Another essential feature for customer training and also for selling online courses. With a customizable website builder, you can create the online storefront that best expresses you and matches your company and brand.
   14. SCORM-compliance: A SCORM-compliant LMS makes your life so much easier because it ensures the content and the LMS play well.

The Time to Upskill is Now

There’s no question about whether you should deploy training or not. No matter the audience and the purpose, a training course is always a good idea as it educates, engages, and empowers!

Give LearnWorlds a try for free for 30 days and start creating your training courses.

9000+ brands trust LearnWorlds to train their people, partners & customers.

Start a FREE Trial

Further reading you might find interesting:

1. • How to Teach Online & Earn Money: Definitive Guide
   • How to Create and Sell Profitable Online Courses: Step-by-Step Guide
   • How Much Money Can You Make Selling Online Courses?
   • Starting an Online Course Business from Scratch
   • What is an LMS (Learning Management System)?
   • How to Create a Course Outline [With Templates]
   • The Essential Guide on How to Create Cohort-Based Courses

The post 7 Brilliant Ways to Use an LMS for Upskilling and Training appeared first on LearnWorlds.

What binds this diverse group together is the necessity for personalized learning experiences and streamlined management tailored to individual requirements.

That’s why we’re thrilled to roll out our new feature: User Groups. This innovation is geared towards fostering a more organized, personalized, and manageable learning environment, which enables you to provide tailored training to a broad range of learners.

Unpacking User Groups

User Groups offer an automated way to unite users into groups to manage those group members separately by a dedicated Manager, applying custom site navigation & specific course enrollment and/or segmentation logic to each User Group.

So, what exactly do User Groups bring to the table for each training scenario?

B2B training providers: empowering diverse client base

When you run a training business with multiple B2B clients, you must give each of them a unique and empowering learning experience. Your clients should have control over their training management, and you need a way to make this happen effortlessly.

User Groups empower you to craft distinct learning environments for each client, each adorned with a personalized after-login page to mirror the unique branding identity of every one of them.

You can assign dedicated Managers to these groups, giving your clients complete control over the training journey of their learners and their results. This isn’t just personalization; it’s empowerment!

Internal training: tailoring for engagement

You need to ensure that your employees get training that’s not one-size-fits-all. Different departments require specialized learning environments, and the experience for new hires should differ from that of tenured staff.

With User Groups, you can create a dedicated learning flow for each department. You can even automatically enroll employees in a different level of course complexity based on their sign-up form answers. Or assign a dedicated Manager to each department & group of employees to make their learning process smoother.

Imagine the boost in engagement and effectiveness when each team gets precisely what they need!

Customer & partner training: nurturing product mastery and loyalty

In a market bustling with options, companies offering a comprehensive product line and complex solutions are tasked with the unique challenge of ensuring their customers and partners are well-versed in their products and services.

Your newcomer clients from the healthcare industry require nurturing through a curated curriculum centered on fundamental product functionalities, while a group of seasoned tech-savvy clients can delve into advanced features across a wide product range.

User Groups enable you to cater your training content to the distinct needs of various customer and partner types.

By enrolling different clients into respective product courses and designating a dedicated Manager for each group, you can orchestrate a more structured and personalized training journey.

This not only fosters better product adoption but also amplifies brand loyalty and lays the groundwork for long-term relationships.

Online Course Providers: Scaling Your Audience

As an online course provider, you may hone in on a niche topic catering to a unique segment of individuals, or broaden your scope to serve a highly diverse audience with a vast array of courses covering numerous fields and complexity levels.

If you are among those course giants, you stand at the forefront of addressing the diverse learning objectives and preferences of a varied learner crowd.

User Groups facilitate automatic audience grouping based on course subject, complexity level, or other attributes gathered through a custom sign-in form that are essential to your business model.

Whether it’s young learners delving into basic marketing courses or advanced learners navigating engineering concepts, User Groups let you create customized after-login pages from sign-in form responses, ensuring engaging language and relevant course offerings for each specific audience group.

This feature allows for tailored navigation aligning with each learner’s goals, enabling you to explore diverse topics and audiences and expand your business to new heights.

How to Get Started with User Groups

If you are eager to start utilizing the User Groups power, hover over the ‘Users’ section of the platform and follow these easy steps:

1. Define Your Groups: Decide how you want to group your users. It could be by department, client organization, experience level or any criteria that suit your needs. Then, set up automated group member addition rules. There are several options: based on the email domain, tags or answers your audience gives during the sign-up process.

1. Customize the Experience: Tailor the navigation and learning flow for each group. You can specify the courses where members are automatically enrolled upon their addition to a group, the page they land on after login, and even automatically add tags to include them into communication or another type of automations at a later stage.
   
   
2. Assign Group Managers: Empower individuals to oversee and manage their respective groups. This ensures that the right people are in charge of the right school members, delegating management functionality from Admins or empowering your clients’ control.
   

You can find a detailed guide on how to set up User Groups & User Group Manager roles in our support articles.

With the User Groups release, you also get an enhancement in User Automation rules.

Now you can:

• Trigger the automation when a user is added\removed from a group
• Automate an action to add\remove a user from a group

Empowering Every Training Scenario

User Groups from LearnWorlds isn’t just about personalization; it’s about simplifying the management of your training or educational groups. It’s about efficiency, empowerment, and adaptability. It’s about meeting the unique needs of your learners & clients.

With User Groups, you can take your training and educational offerings to new heights. Whether you’re shaping internal training, catering to clients & partners, or delivering online courses, User Groups give you the power to make personalization more than a concept; it’s a reality.

Don’t wait to discover the endless possibilities User Groups offer. Get started today and embark on a journey to scalable personalization. Your learners, clients, and students will thank you for it.

The post User Groups: Tailored Solutions for Every Training Scenario appeared first on LearnWorlds.