Training events can be incredibly useful for employees or members of an organisation to progress their knowledge, as long as the training is delivered in the right way. There are many different types of training out there from general employee learning to manager training and development so it is important to tailor the sessions appropriately. Here are our top tips for employee training and development events.
Training tips for before your employee development session
Find out why your attendees are coming to your training session
What are they hoping to achieve? Do they need to learn new skills? Is this something that they have requested or is their attendance mandatory? Knowing what your attendees are hoping to gain will make it easier for you to plan the session and include the relevant areas for them.
Research their knowledge
Presumably you will already know this but if you are not given that information by the organiser, make sure that you find out yourself. Do your attendees have a basic knowledge of the topic(s)? If they are only after a refresher, you won’t need to linger so much on the basics, as you would with a group of beginners. This will also mean that you won’t risk boring or alienating your attendees by giving them information that is too basic or too complex for their level of knowledge.
Practise your session
If you’ve delivered this session many times, you may be confident and know it like the back of your hand. If it’s your first time delivering that particular session, you should practise what you are planning to say, so that you aren’t staring at your notes the whole time and losing the interest of your audience. It’s quite likely that you will have adapted the session to meet the requirements of your trainees so don’t forget to at least run through the order of subjects first.
During your employee training presentation
Use a variety of training techniques
People don’t all learn best in the same way. There are three learning types that are commonly used – visual, auditory and kinaesthetic – which relate to learning by looking at charts or pictures, listening to someone speaking a lesson and to their own voice, or by going through a process and getting their hands on tactile materials, respectively. It’s unlikely you’ll only get one type of learner in your group so having a variety of activities will help. Having some slides with short points and graphics, a spoken lecture and some hands-on activities will help to cater to as many people as possible. This will also break up the session somewhat to make it more interesting.
Avoid over-reliance on PowerPoint
PowerPoint-style slides can be a fantastic tool to aid learning but don’t only use those. If you decide to use PowerPoint at any point in your session, try to follow the 1-6-6 principle, where you have one idea per slide, up to six bullet points per slide and up to six words per bullet point. This will help to keep them digestible and will avoid your delegates trying to speed read the content and missing what you are saying.
Keep it fun
As important as your session is, not everyone will be feeing that enthusiastic so it’s important to keep the session fun. Consider any games or quizzes that are relevant to your topic that you could incorporate into your session and consider opening with a joke.
Keep on message
It is easy to get sidetracked when there is a room filled with people so use your lesson plan’s structure to keep yourself on track and bring the focus back to the subject matter. If there are queries that are slightly off-topic that you won’t be able to answer within the session’s time limit, give out an email address that can used to ask and answer these questions.
Tips to keep employees focussed during staff training and development
Change the seating arrangements
Make sure that the layout of your training space is appropriate to what you are doing. A little difference will make them pay more attention. Consider arranging everyone into a circle to promote collaborative learning or have small groups around tables if they will be needing to work in teams at any point in the session.
Use plenty of examples
Relating your teaching to their business or organisation and how it operates will make the learning for engaging for them and will make them more likely to pay attention to the session. You can also encourage attendees to share their own experiences to see how that relates and how their experiences can be improved.
Have breaks
Regular breaks will give people the change to refresh and refuel themselves so that they can pay better attention to the training session. If your session is likely to be very long and full of lots of important information, consider whether it will make sense splitting the session over a few days.
Get feedback at the end of employee development training
At the end of your session, get feedback on what the audience liked, what they didn’t like and how they would improve the session. It won’t help you with the current training plan but it will help you to improve future sessions.
Staff training isn’t always easy to get right (as noted by Harvard Business Review) but it is possible and we’re here to help you find the right training space. Our training facility in Staffordshire is fantastic for hosting events where employee training and development is the priority. When you’re ready to book your training session in Staffordshire, get in touch with our team on 01785 878401 or via our contact form.