Nearly everyone recognizes the value and benefits of workforce training. When done properly, training can make workers more efficient — increasing production, revenue, and profits while decreasing costs, waste, and inefficiencies. Effective training can lead to increased compliance with regulations. It can even lead to a happier, more satisfied workforce, which in turn reduces turnover and costly onboarding. So the benefits are many.

But creating effective training isn’t easy. Some common problems include creating training that doesn’t support a true business goal, or for a problem that training can’t fix, or without first identifying the true purpose of the training, or that includes too much information. Or maybe all of those things.

So, how does one create effective workforce training materials? Below is an eight-step road map to help you create more effective training materials. Entire books have been written about each of these steps, so there’s far more to say than what’s written below. But this article should serve as an effective getting-started guide in your quest to create workforce training materials that actually work.

Beyond that, we’ve added some notes in the conclusion of this blog to get you thinking in a “what’s next?” manner, including a link to the famous book Leaving ADDIE for SAM, a link to a Training Maximizers post by Dr. Will Thalheimer that I very much admire, and some links to articles on performance support/job aids and the 70/20/10 model of learning.

Step 1: Perform a Training Needs Assessment

Imagine someone at work perceives a problem and thinks a new training program might resolve it. For example, maybe the production manager says that her workers need to be more efficient and create more units of a product. Before anyone rushes off, creates training materials, and conducts the training, it’s a good idea to take a step back and assess the situation. That’s what the training needs assessment is for.

The basic training needs assessment is a four-step process. Those steps are:

• Identify a clear business goal that the training supports
• Determine the tasks the workers need to perform so the company can reach that goal
• Determine the training activities that will help the workers learn to perform the tasks
• Determine the learning characteristics of the workers that will make the training more effective

Sounds simple enough, but let’s break those four steps down a bit more.

Identify the business goal:

Don’t provide training if it’s not clear why you’re doing it, or if it doesn’t directly support a business goal. Business goals include things like increasing revenue and efficiency, decreasing costs and waste, supporting a new product, teaching a new or changed production process, or complying with regulations. For example, a business goal might be to train employees to create a new product.

Determine the tasks workers need to perform:

Once you’ve identified the business goal, ask yourself what your employees have to do if the company is to reach that goal. During this phase, you’ll identify the “performance gap” between what your workers can do now, and what they must be able to do. To keep with our new product example, the workers might need to know what the new product is, how the product is produced, and (most importantly) the tasks the workers must perform on the job to make the product.

Determine the training activities that will help workers learn to perform the tasks:

You’ve identified what the workers need to do, so now you have to identify the training activities that will help them learn to do those tasks. To continue our example, this may include a quick and short explanation of the product, an equally quick and short overview of the production process, and demonstrations mixed with hands-on practice of the tasks they’ll have to perform on the job.

Determine characteristics of workers that will make the training more effective:

Finally, consider the characteristics of your workers to determine the type of training that will be most effective for them. In a perfect world, you’d cater training to each individual, but that’s not always possible and you may have to consider the average characteristics of the group as a whole. Consider these kind of things: are they more comfortable with computer-based training or instructor-led training; do they like self-guided or self-paced learning, or would they struggle in that environment; are they youngish or older; are there cultural issues that may factor in; do they learn better from reading, listening, or doing; etc. And because it’s hard to create one-size training that fits all, consider training that blends different aspects so you’ve got a better chance of reaching everyone.

Step 2: Keep Adult Learning Principles in Mind

You could argue this step is already addressed at the end of step 1 or will factor into later steps, and you’d be right. But it’s important enough to call it out on its own.

The workers you want to train are adults, and adults share certain characteristics that that make training more effective for them (or less effective if you ignore the characteristics). If your training recognizes and respects these adult learning principles, it’s likely to be more effective. If your training disregards these principles, you’re throwing training money out the door from the word “go.”

So what are these principles? Adult learners:

• Are self-directed
• Come to training with a lifetime of existing knowledge, experience, and opinions
• Are goal-oriented
• Want training that is relevant
• Want training that is task-oriented
• Learn when they see “what’s in it for them”
• Want to be and feel respected

You can see how these principles relate to the learner characteristics you identified during your training needs assessment. And you can imagine how they should affect your training during design and delivery. Remember the old saying that “you can tune a piano but you can’t tune a fish?” Well, if you ignore adult learning principles, you’ll be trying to tune fish all day long.

Step 3: Develop Learning Objectives

Before you begin creating any training, it’s critical that you create a list of learning objectives.

Learning objectives are a list of things the workers must be able to do after the training is completed. They are the “North Star” that all aspects of your training should be pointed at. Once you’ve created your learning objectives, create content that covers the objectives—and nothing but. In addition, any quizzes, tests, case studies, or hands-on exercises performed during training to evaluate your worker’s comprehension of the training should assess only the workers’ understanding of the objectives. And finally, any observation of workers when they’re back on the job to evaluate the effectiveness of the training should also focus on the performance of these objectives.

To (intentionally) overstate the point, learning objectives are the end-all and be-all of your training. Without objectives, you’ve got an out-of-control car without a driver.

There’s a lot to be said about learning objectives (and even more to be said); we’ve included a few tips below.

They Can Address Knowledge, Skills, or Attitudes (KSAs):

A learning objective may address things that your learners can “know,” such as how product flows through a machine; skills that your learner’s can perform, such as threading materials into a machine; and attitudes that your employees can hold, such as the importance of threading materials into a machine properly in order to create the best possible product.

Make them SMART:

When you write an objective, it should have five characteristics, known collectively by the acronym SMART. The objective should be specific, meaning it’s very clearly stated and its meaning is equally apparent to everyone. It should be measurable, meaning everyone can agree if the learner satisfies it or not. It should be achievable, meaning the learner truly has a chance to satisfy it. It should be relevant, meaning it’s important for the worker’s job. And it should be time-bound, meaning it will be clear when the learner must be able to satisfy the objective (typically, after training).

Give them four parts (ABCD):

A learning objective should include four parts, which you can remember with the letters ABCD. It should include an actor who will perform the objective (the employees you’re training). It should include a behavior that the actor must perform (this behavior should be stated as a verb that defines the workers’ behavior, such as “recite” or “turn”). It should include conditions under which the employees must perform the behavior (for example, “given a wrench, the employee must…”). And it should include the degree to which the employee must perform the behavior (for example, “90 times an hour”).

Step 4: Design Training Materials

Designing training materials is like planning a dinner party, coming up with a menu, and writing the recipes. It’s the “plan before you do” phase of training creation.

While you’re designing your materials, keep the following points in mind:

• Remember that it’s important to design before you rush into the next step (development)
• Always focus primarily on the learning needs of your employees, and not on what’s easy for your trainers
• Only create training content and assessments that relate directly to your learning objectives
• Remember the adult learning principles
• Include as much hands-on practice or simulation as possible: people learn by doing
• Whenever possible, put the employees in control of the learning process (instead of the trainer)
• Do everything possible to let the employees talk and interact with the trainer and with each other during the training
• Make sure there’s plenty of opportunity for feedback during training
• Break your training materials up into small “chunks” that are easier to take in and understand
• Order your “chunked” training materials in a logical manner—one step that builds on top of another, or chronologically, etc.
• Try to use a “blended learning” approach that includes training in several different formats (computer-based, instructor-led, etc.).
• Try to appeal to a variety of your workers’ senses during training—sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste (when appropriate and not dangerous). Sight is by far the most important sense for learning, but adding the others when possible does help.

(to be continued)