There’s nothing like a fresh coat of paint to make a room “pop.” A new vibrant color can make a space feel alive, turn a dreary office into a center for creativity, transform a house into a home. In the same way, businesses should consider new ideas to revitalize their employee training programs from time to time in order to inspire the best performances from their team.

We recently highlighted ten reasons why you may need to revamp your employee training program. Now we offer you seven ideas on how you can take action and revitalize the way you train your team:

1. Revisit your strategy

Before you start making wholesale changes with a training program, it’s important for a business leader to evaluate their current training strategy. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What’s working about our training methods? What isn’t?
• Does our current training program align with our corporate goals?
• Are we training the right people?
• Have we reached our training goals in the past year?

By determining your needs and looking at what is and is not working, you’ll be able to focus on changes needed to revive the pockets of ineffectiveness.

2. Add video

If all of your training occurs in the classroom, consider adding a full library of off-the-shelf training videos. They provide a consistent message that is immediately accessible anytime, any day. This is especially helpful when onboarding new employees. Learners don’t have to wait for a scheduled classroom session and they can get the information they need immediately. Employees like drivers and salespeople can access training videos on their mobile devices while on a break in their vehicle or waiting for their plane in an airport.

3. Try social learning

Social learning is a quickly growing aspect of employee training programs. By introducing this sort of technology, business leaders can leverage workplace friendships and encourage friendly competition with learning. Learners get inspired to take additional training by what they see in their activity feed and the company benefits from their new skills.

4. Promote self-directed learning

While some professionals prefer to learn in social settings in classrooms, to compete with others in an open forum, and to share their knowledge publicly, others are motivated to learn on their own in the privacy of their own space. Self-directed learning enables professionals to direct their own learning based on their individual needs and interests and at their own pace.

Not every company subscribes to the self-directed learning methodology, but when implemented correctly, it can lead to faster professional development and better ROI for training.

5. Train with blended learning

Blended learning –– as its name suggests –– combines both online learning courses with in-person sessions. Try assigning a series of online training videos as pre-work to a classroom session to ensure the learners are all starting from the same foundation. Break up the instructor-led presentation with videos throughout the class. Use video recaps as part of your training reinforcement after the classroom session.

6. Adopt microlearning

Research shows that employees are interrupted every 11 minutes. The science of microlearning is the foundation for the style of training videos from HSI. It works around those interruptions. The idea behind microlearning is to introduce employees to small, vital chunks of information bit by bit. With an average course length of 7:12 minutes, our videos work within your learner’s schedules. Each course delivers only the necessary knowledge.

7. Incorporate soft skills

While compliance training is vital for many businesses, forgoing soft skills training within your program could be a major oversight. To return to our previous analogy, running a training program that excludes soft skills is like applying paint without primer. Soft skills help employees communicate, solve problems, and develop as professionals. Soft skills training courses may be the refresher your training curriculum needs.

Additional Resources

There are countless ways to go about adding some new energy to your employee training program. Fortunately, we at HSI have an exhaustive video library of resources that are informative, engaging, and fun! Don’t just take our word for it, though. Check out a few of our resources here:

• Check out our eBook: "How to Evaluate Your Learning Strategy"
• Read about the "Science behind Microlearning" in our white paper.
• Learn more about blended learning in our blog post "What is Blended Learning, and Why is it Important?"
• Request a free trial of our HSI LMS and watch any of our videos and check out our social learning technology and classroom management feature.