Online employee training provides a powerful opportunity to train people in an efficient way. It has many advantages over traditional learning, such as the ability to reach people in different locations. The latest Learning Management Systems are useful for organizations in many industries, including health, hospitality, finance, and more. At the same time, not all training modules are equally effective. There are certain flaws that limit their usefulness. Let’s look at the nine most common corporate training module mistakes.

1. Lack of Real World Relevance

One of the most important characteristics of effective online employee training is that it applies to real-world scenarios. If your training modules are overly theoretical, they won’t prepare your employees for the situations in which they’ll need the information. For example, if a new hire is learning how to use a software program, you’ll need corporate training modules that simulate typical use cases within the software. Or, if you’re training hospitality workers on how to handle various customer service scenarios, make sure you come up with realistic examples that your employees can resonate with.

2. The Material is Outdated

Technology and business practices are rapidly changing across all industries. If your corporate training modules aren’t frequently updated, it will quickly become obsolete. To ensure your training material stays relevant, you’ll need clear communication between the people in charge of training and those on the front lines of your business. You should also frequently review training modules to make sure they reflect the latest changes in your industry and organization. The days when a training program was relevant for years are long gone.

3. Lack of Evaluations to Measure Retention

To measure the effectiveness of your corporate training modules, it’s essential to incorporate methods of evaluating employee understanding of the material presented. The best way to measure knowledge retention is to include quizzes and/or tests in your eLearning modules. Make sure that you’re using an LMS system that makes it easy to track employee quiz/assessment results.

4. Lengthy Course Modules

The mind absorbs new material best in small chunks. This is a principle that holds true in all types of learning situations. When it comes to online learning, too much information in a single module overwhelms the learner. This is something that anyone who creates content for the internet understands. According to Nielsen, 79% of people scan web pages rather than reading them word-for-word. Keep this in mind when designing learning modules. 

  • Keep sentences and paragraphs as short as possible.
  • Use bullet points and numbered lists to make information more scannable.
  • Break larger steps down into shorter steps.
  • If one page of content seems crowded, split it into two or more pages.
  • Use plenty of white space, so the content doesn’t appear cluttered.

5. Lack of Course Collaboration

Most work situations involve teamwork. No one works in complete isolation. You want your training to reflect this reality. If training isolates people, it isn’t realistic. The best training involves collaboration and helps to prepare your employees to work in a team environment. Your corporate training modules should simulate the kind of collaboration trainees will need in their work situation.

6. The Training is Boring

The objective of training is to convey information, not to entertain. At the same time, the more interesting it is, the more information your employees will absorb. When appropriate, games and interactive exercises make the material more engaging. If your employees are just sitting there reading dry material, their minds will tend to wander. Gamification is especially helpful when training millennials.

7. No Way to Measure Course Effectiveness

Just as it’s important to test trainees throughout the training, you want to “test” the overall effectiveness of the training. It’s helpful to have a course survey that lets participants provide detailed feedback about what they liked and didn’t like about the training. No matter how information-rich the training is, what counts is how effectively the modules are at training people who aren’t yet experts. A course survey helps you refine your approach so that you can make improvements in the future.

8. The Material Isn’t Visually Engaging

We live in an increasingly image-based world. This is obvious if you pay attention to social media, which is largely driven by images, videos, memes, infographics and other visual content. If your training modules are overly text-based, you’re going against the current. The idea that a picture is worth a thousand words may be a cliché, but it’s one that contains a great deal of truth. Images can’t always replace text, but they almost always enhance it. It’s worthwhile to use custom images or acquire the rights to quality visual content to make your training more compelling and enhance the value of your brand. Generic stock images that look like they’re from a late 1990s website will turn people off and reflect poorly on the corporate training module in question.

9. Training is Not Branded

You don’t want to provide people with generic training for your industry. Make sure your training reflects your unique brand. Keep this in mind when choosing the style, layout, and colors of the modules. Make sure your logo is prominently featured throughout the training.

 

Create Better Corporate Training Modules Today

If you want to avoid the most common corporate training module pitfalls, following the ideas presented in this article is a good starting point. If you don’t have the bandwidth to implement these ideas, hiring an eLearning specialist may be worth looking into. Either way, the corporate training experts at Knowledge Anywhere are happy to lend a hand.

Sign up to receive industry tips, trends, & insights