5 Steps to Create a Learning and Development Presentation
Learning and Development: Why is it an essential investment for your business?
A skilled, informed employee base is the beating heart of any successful business. Utilizing an effective learning and development strategy is the underlying secret to a successful team from day 1. You’ve probably heard the quote of the CFO asking the CEO “What happens if we train our employees and they leave?” to which the CEO responds ” what. happens if we don’t train our employees and they stay?” Although it’s funny, effective training is a necessary component of a functioning company. Without an effective training program, it’s unlikely that employees will be successful at their jobs, meet company expectations, or stay in their role past their initial year. On average it costs a company between $15,000 and $20,000 to hire an employee once all costs are factored in. Yet companies spend very little on training. This means that one of the largest unforeseen costs a company incurs could be due to a lack of employee training programs.
One comment that will often get brought up is that ” we should continue to training employees the way we always have.” This often means sitting a new employee next to a veteran to use their experience as a guide to learn the job. Although this may seem cost-efficient on the surface, the. true costs can pile up. These types of “watch what I do” training programs diminish the capacity of the person doing the training, can pass on bad and often unintentional habits, and are not scalable across geographic regions or during times of rapid hiring. This can be amplified by the simple fact that you are hiring for that role because there is an excess of work and all current employees are saturated, to begin with.
Learning and Development: What are the benefits and Why should I care?
To thrive in the long-term, an organization needs a strong human capital. Similar to any sports team, your business needs a veteran employee who has years of industry experience and knowledge. It needs the employee who has been. with company 5+ years and is being groomed by the company to eventually replace the veterans. Last but not least, to continue to scale, a company needs a source of new employees who will be developed into productive members of the team. With each of these employee groups there the investment an effective training programs will vary, but so will the trade-off. As an employee developed their knowledge and skills, the training they require will lessen over time. It may seem as though a cost-effective solution would be to hire industry experts who come to you already trained. Unfortunately, the trade-off is that those employee types require a higher salary, may still need some training and are more willing to jump to another company if the offer is right. This keeps leading us back to the need for an effective training program.
So aside from needing an employee training program, what are the long term benefits to the company?
- If creates a scalable system to onboard and training employees
- It reduced the demand caused by training on the company leaders
- A training program once developed is scalable to employees across different locations
- A training program can provide feedback on employees so you can see who your leaders are
- A training program can help new employees become productive faster
- A training program help increase employee retention
A learning and development program is how your business can invest in the quality of your workforce. With training tactics and established goals, this program can guide the growth of your workers in the future. At the foundation of every learning and development program, is a training curriculum broken down into a series of Learning and Development Presentations. Let’s jump into the 5 steps that you can use to create effective training programs that are able to fill a new employee with the knowledge they need to help build your company. After all, a training program comprised of little more than HR policies handbook is going to struggle to capture employees’ attention
Step 1: Create a Learning and Development Strategy
A learning and development strategy is a crucial component of any business, as it specifies the goals and requirements for the workers under your umbrella. It specifies the skills and abilities that your workforce needs to have to promote the success of your business. When push comes to shove, your business’ learning and development strategy can have a major impact on the current operations – and future growth.
To establish a Learning and Development strategy, ask these key questions:
- What are the training needs employee need to know in order to excel at their job?
- How can my employees maintain and build their skills over time?
- How can I engage my employees to inspire them to do their best work?
- How can I build a sense of community among my employees to promote retention?
- How can I build cohesion between all employees in the company?
By detailing your strategy in your learning and development plan, you’ll give your employees a complete understanding of the business’s workforce goals.
Create Knowledge Paths
Once you’ve mapped out the skills each employee needs to obtain, the first step in creating a knowledge path or learning journey for each role. By organizing the subjects that require the least amount of context at the beginning, and gradually increasing complexity as the journey progresses, also you may find that there will be some overlap in the training between roles early on. This is fantastic because it allows you to a program that may be foundational to multiple roles. An example of a program that would be applicable to multiple roles and should be delivered early on in an employee’s knowledge path is the story of your company. Developing a course that helps all employees understand your company, the value it adds to its customers, is often the first step in developing an amazing Learning and Development program. Examples of courses that would be more role-specific and come later in a knowledge path would be procedure-based courses such as software training.
Step 2: Identify Your Subject Matter Experts
The next step in developing your learning and development strategy is to identify the employees who are your subject matter experts (often referred to as SMEs). Subject Matter Experts are also often your veteran employees who are filled with industry and company knowledge. They may have done a great deal of employee training through the old training methods of “watch what I do.” It’s essential to include these employees in your employee training plan because if the information that they possess does not get recorded, their retirement can mean that years of information become lost to time.
Share your training needs with your Subject Matter Experts. They will be able to help you develop a program that is well rounded. They may even have already developed some employee training components that you can use. Ask your Subject Matter Experts to collect all of the training resources they have developed over the years and assign one of the skills identified in your employee training knowledge paths.
This approach will help you audit and also use the training documents you already have available saving you time while starting to bring your previously detailed Learning and Development strategy to life.
As you start to identify program resources you may want to use them to create a variety of different employee training formats. Here are a few different formats and the reasons why you might choose them:
- Classroom Training and workshops (face to face or over web conference) – These allow the employee to ask questions, meet leaders throughout the organization, and allow your facilitators to get employee feedback. These ar great for courses that may be shared among multiple employee roles
- Online or Elearning – This type of training is great for topics like processes, procedures. Think about anything topic where a youtube video might have helped you to learn a skill. Companies can achieve the same type of skill development through e-learning with the benefit of real-time analytics and reporting.
- One-on-one coaching – allows coaches to set up a mentorship opportunity and provide a safe environment to start practicing skills
- Articles, memos, newsletters, and other written materials – Great for updates to existing procedures or strategies
Alone and in combination, these Learning and Development formats can enhance your training program with the information and guidance needed to evolve and improve employee performance. Regardless of the learning and development format, be sure to clearly outline each approach, telling workers what to expect and how to prepare.
Step 3: Make an Effective Plan to fill Training Gaps
With a clear Learning and Development strategy and approach, and also your Subject Matter Experts help, it’s time to determine the training gaps that need to be developed. A Learning and Development plan is an ongoing effort that many companies will commit to in order to take the steps necessary to implement an effective plan. In the same sense, companies realize that even though they use their Subject Matter Experts to help them develop the content, the development of a learning management system and all the courses needed to build an organization-wide plan may require some outside help. The content for each course will need to come from inside your organization, but where possible aligning your company with an agency experienced in developing Learning and Development strategies such as PresentationGeeks can help provide you with the additional expertise and development support you need to jump-start your program. One of the first steps that you will want to take before choosing a partner to work with is to find out if they have had experience working with an organization to create a training strategy from the ground up. Learn about the challenges and also the successes they’ve had so that you can use that experience.
Just like the leader of a warrior clan heading into battle, it’s important to create your training plan with high expectations. Use your training program to set the bar for your new employees and also raise the bar for existing employees. You need to know exactly why your employees should perform these training activities and how, in doing so, they’ll strengthen your organization as a whole.
Keeping in mind that the organization of your syllabus is as important as its content. Keep the progression reasonable and don’t overwhelm your team with too much information at once. Learning is a life long activity just as the development of a learning and development program, is a process that companies make a commitment to.
Step 4: Launch your training programs
When companies launch their training programs they have rarely gotten to this point without reaching out for some help. By partnering with the right team time and also money can be saved and stress is reduced. Companies that make the choice to go it on their own can get overwhelmed and limit their chance to make a considerable step forward.
Include a variety of resources in your learning and development program is a great way to create a diverse and engaging training program. Be sure to make these resources available so that your existing employees from across the entire organization can access them easily. This is a great way to get feedback about the way things are actually happening versus how you “think” they are happening. If a course is idealistic, but not realistic the information that your new employees learn will quickly become unraveled as they start to take their seats and your existing workforce teaches them about “the way we actually do things.” Plus, knowing that these resources are at their disposal will give all employees greater confidence as they reinforce the information that they have already learned.
Although you should expect high standards for your business training plan, when looking at all the information you need to depart to newer employees, it may seem like you are never going to be ready to get started. Don’t let this overwhelm you. Start by creating courses that contain information applicable to all new employees, and also find an agency to partner with that can help build your business a customized course template and develop a visual style that is as highly engaging as the content you need to deliver.
As you start to deliver the information you’ve developed to your employees, you will notice that at first, it feels like a drop in the bucket. But just as a pebble in the ocean creates a ripple, as your program reaches more and more people, this tidal wave of information will start to inundate your workforce. Of the first 4 steps, we’ve discussed each one comes with an investment in your time and resources, but finally, this implementation step will start to show you a return on your investment. Even if your entire training program consists of general information that goes out to all new employees, now at least you’ve developed a consistent message, that can be shared with your entire employee base so that they can learn it, understand it, and share it. In fact at PresentationGeeks we recommend this as a starting point.
Q. What does running a marathon, climbing Mount Everest, and building a Learning and Development Program have in common?
A. They all start with the first step, and also a professional can help you accomplish your end goal.
Step 5: Evaluate each of the steps in your training program to make sure they are effective.
Similar to any initiative, your learning and development program should have a feedback system so that you can understand whether you are meeting your goals. How many of your newly trained employees retain the information for one month, six months, and even a year later? What do the employees think about the program? Was the information beneficial to their development as employees? Are the hiring managers noticing that the training is helpful? Are there other areas that you feel more information could be developed?
These are the kind of metrics and business’s will use to reaffirm their investment in training. The analysis will be different for each program depending on its objectives, but this type of information is the final piece of the puzzle. Although this is our 5 step all five steps create a loop. The type of metrics you want to achieve are often determined before developing the program. If there are some pain points that are leading you towards a program, these are good starting points. Write down all the pain points your business faces when it comes to training new employees, and then develop a plan that is used to instructional opportunities that will help drive these results. This is likely not the first article or even social media post you’ve read about a training model or program.
When you speak to your customer base, you may find that it’s something that they are looking into as well. We encourage as much discussion on this topic as is needed to clarify the goals of your program.
- What areas of your business do your customers feel training would be beneficial?
- What areas of your business do your customers feel you are excelling at?
- What areas of your business do your customers find that your competitors are excelling at?
A customer that knows you are actively working to improve your business and drive better results will help them see you as a good partner. Thanks to a conversation about your Learning Program, you may find that it helps to build stronger customer relationships in addition to learners out of your employees. Don’t forget to include your entire employee base in your plan. Conduct interviews with the veterans and ask them what topics they would like training on. An employee that is learning is an employee who is engaged at their job, and working hard to improves their performance.
A Final Word
A boring, lackluster learning and development program isn’t going to spark excitement and motivation among your workers. Your learning and development courses should have them inspired by their own potential and the skills that will soon be cultivated. Without thoughtful content organization, a cohesive theme, and appealing visual aids, you’ll find your audience’s engagement slipping mid-course.
Combat a lack of engagement with a modern, attractive, and well-designed presentation design. Coordinate the color scheme and font with your brand’s “look”. Offer digestible and relatable statistics. Don’t bloat your slides with information; instead package each slide with a compact, absorbable amount of content.
Dedicated to keeping your workforce cohesive, competitive, and conversant with new developments in your industry, a solid learning and development program corresponds with reliable progress in the business. Here, you’ve learned how to build a learning and development program from the ground up. From the underlying strategy to the delivery of invaluable information, this should spark your employees’ interest in the process of learning and maintaining new skills.
