3 Essential Steps for Making an Effective Corporate Training Program

When you invite guests for dinner, you aspire to be the perfect host for them. You make sure that their food preferences are met, the house is clean, and the furniture looks presentable. All of this, so that your guests have a great time and appreciate your efforts. 

The above example is relatable to you because it’s a normal thing to do when you have guests at home. Now, try comparing a corporate training program with hosting a dinner party at home.  Sounds lame? But, here’s the thing, if you have not planned a corporate training program as articulately as you had planned the dinner, then your employees are not going to appreciate your efforts. 

Your training efforts are not going to impress your employees unless you treat them as your guests and go an extra mile. Running a corporate training is not enough anymore. Else, how do you explain an NPS score of -29 by employees for companies that have increased their online training budget to upskill their employees. 

Having the intention of training employees and actually executing it with precision is the gap where most companies sink. In this blog, we will guide you to fill that gap, so that you don’t fall into it.

The success of your training program depends on how deep you’re willing to go to plan it from the start till the end. It’s only when you’re clear about why the training is important, how the training will be conducted, and when and how you will measure the metrics as an outcome of the program - you will see yourself walking towards success.

If we try to summarize that in two words, then it’s Research and Analysis. But, it’s easier said than done. Our best suggestion is that you do it in phases - planning, executing and tracking

The planning phase begins with the idea of training your employees. This phase will include top-of-the-funnel training needs which you have to decide early on to set the design for the overall program. In this list, we will cover the three most essential ingredients that you cannot miss while planning a corporate training program.

Identifying the training needs

A journey begins by taking a step. And, when the journey is about training employees, the first step should be knowing the training needs. Fumbling at this step or planning it hastily, can hurt the overall success of the program. Because if your training need is not clear, then measuring the outcome is a baseless idea. Don’t define this task as an individual task, talk to senior executives, managers and leaders to have a clear understanding of what this training will achieve. If this it’s a skill-based training, find out how this skill will help the employees and the organization

Defining the goals 

Knowing the need of the training program will give you direction. Defining the goals will help you set the milestones in the journey. A goal will give a more clear picture of what exactly the training program is trying to accomplish. Let’s continue our example of skill training. The need here is to help employees to upskill. But, your goal will be more specific like - 

• The average productivity of employee should improve by 20% after the training program
• The cost of performing a particular operation should cut down by 15%
• After the training, the customer happiness index should improve by 10% at least

By quantifying your goals, you add a level of precision to your training program and make it easier for calculating results at the end of the program, which will see in the subsequent parts of this blog

Knowing your audience

The last thing you want to do with your training program is throw it at your employees’ faces, and just wait for it to stick. That’s not going to work, because not all employees are going to be the same. A few will be more advanced in certain technological aspects while a few might be laggards. The same goes for other factors like age, gender, designation and overall knowledge about the program. 

There can be multiple factors that you might want to consider while knowing your target employees well, but here are some pointers to keep you in the track - 

• Number of employees participating in the program
• Average age of the employees
• Gender distribution
• Knowledge about certain systems/computer programs
• Any special requirements to be made for any employees 

The executing part is about working on training content and finalizing on how it will be delivered to the employees. Like above, we will split this part in three points, each focusing on the different aspects of executing a training program

Deciding the flow

Whether the training is about upskilling employees or training them on the latest government regulation, your training program needs to have a flow. A well-decided flow will help the employees transition from one chapter to the next without getting overloaded with information. 

One of the best ways of doing this is by splitting the training into multiple parts, each focusing on specific requirements of the overall training program. For example, if the training is about the latest cloud-based accounting software, then you split will look similar to this - 

Part 1: 

• Getting to know about the company
• Introduction to the user-interface and overall feel of the software
• How will it benefit the team to manage their daily operations?

Part 2:

• Exploring every module of the software in detail
• Understanding the flow of operations
• How to migrate data from the old to the new software?

Involving a Subject Matter Expert

If your training program is about a subject that requires a high level of knowledge about the subject, then it makes sense to involve SME to smoothen the process. Your SME can be in-house employees or outside consultants.

In the former case, if the SME is an employee, it’s easy to make them a part of the process and drive things to the end. In fact, you can make them an active part of the training, and make it an employee-led training process. If that is not possible, you can arrange meetings to consult them in designing the process. They can share practical and valuable tips on what the employees will find most useful and how it can be delivered to them.

In another case, where the SME is from an agency, you can get into a contract to decide the timeframe for consultation and get their insights on how the program should be planned for maximum success.

Deciding the method of training

While it’s time to deliver the content that you have built, you might see yourself getting spoiled for choices. L & D has come a long way when it comes to different methods of instructing training content to the employees. 

Your choice here will depend on several factors - 

• Budget
• Time 
• Familiarity with training techniques/technology of employees
• Ease of use

One of the best ways of handling this is by inculcating blended learning which means using multiple ways of learning in a single program. This way, you keep the process interesting without making it look very tough to create. 

Whether you decide to stick to a single format or multiple, here are some popular instructional techniques that you should know - 

• Animated training videos
• Instructor-led training
• Simulation training
• Video learning using screen recorded videos
• Roleplaying and case studies

The final part of a training program begins after it has been delivered. In the tracking phase, you will evaluate the effectiveness of the program and get a real assessment of the success of the program. But, like we did before, there are some ground rules to achieve that. And, here are the three of them - 

Gauge the reaction

To get an idea on the emotional reaction of employees towards the training, this is an important step of evaluating the success. Their reaction will tell you how much they enjoyed attending the sessions. To capture their reaction, you can run a short survey with a few questions. If the group is small, you can also interview them personally, and write down their answers on a sheet. 

Measure the learning

There is no point in running a training program if the employees have not retained what they have learned from it. This would mean that all the hard work gone behind in making the program is futile. To measure how much employees have retained the learning, you can plan quizzes or interactive exercises. You can either inform the employees in advance to give them time to prepare or keep it as a surprise element

Understand the behavior

A well-planned, effective program should show a change in the behavior of the employees. For example, if the design team is given hands-on training on using Figma, and assuming they enjoyed the program, they will show a positive improvement in their work. They will use the tool to their best of knowledge to get better results. To assess this, you can again interview the employees or ask their managers about any kind of change in behavior of the employees.

Planning and executing a training program is not an easy task. There are multiple factors that play a crucial role in its success. But, it has a determined effect on the organization if it's done in a planned way.

In the assessment part, ensure that you have used the right techniques to measure the results from the program. Once you have them, sit with your team and compare the result with the goals that you have set before starting the program. If the program worked well, you can use the same formula to replicate on other training programs. If the reactions, learning and behavior of the employees have not been very good, then you can use it as a learning tool to make better programs in the future.

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