6 steps to starting your employee training program

Learning is the key to every satisfied employee. Educated employees can generate better results for your company. In this article we have six basic steps in developing a successful training program for any organization.

  1. Set your program goals
  2. Do a Gap Analysis
  3. Choose the right training software
  4. Offer Self Managed Learning 
  5. Define your Training Road Map
  6. Measure your Employee Performance

Step 1: Set your program goals

Before setting up your program goals, you need to understand your organization’s needs. It is not enough to just listen to your gut, rather ask your team what they need and what is required.

Gather an honest, integrated set of requirements that will help you to establish the benchmark as the measure of success in aligning those needs and wants for your organization’s training program.

Some practical ways to gather feedback from your company is by using tools like:

This will help you automatically gather and formulate results.

Step 2: Do a Gap Analysis

A Gap analysis is essentially a report indicating where your employees are today versus where you need them to be with regards to their capabilities.

There are 4 steps in achieving this (learn more here):

  1. Analyze your employees’ current knowledge 
  2. Identify where you want them to be in the future
  3. Find the gap and evaluate solutions
  4. Create and implement a plan to bridge the gap

Check with your HR as to whether or not you have existing information with which to begin the analysis. Your official HR records may hold information like:

  • Employees’ sets of expectations;
  • Execution assessments; and
  • Wellbeing reports.

Start with these and build onto this with whatever other information you may have.

Step 3: Choose the right training software

Using a Learning Management System (LMS) is the best way to track and provide more personalized training experiences at wide scale across your employee database. Your software will make a significant contribution in providing the educational resources to bridge your employee knowledge gap as determined in step 2 above.

An LMS is a software tool which enables you to create courses, upload content, add your employee database and monitor their learning progression. 

You must consider the following when choosing the right LMS software: 

  1. Ease of Use
  2. Customer Support
  3. Functionality
  4. Value for Money

Click here to see leading industry LMS providers being compared using the above parameters.

1) Ease of Use:

Your LMS should be easy to use and be able to deploy quickly. Click here to launch an LMS site in 15 minutes. The last thing you want is a complicated system with very little support guides.  

2) Customer Support

Does your LMS provider support your time zone? How fast are they to respond to queries and issues? How helpful are they when they do respond? The only way to find out is to try the service or view public reviews

3) Functionality 

Most LMS services come with standard features such as course creation, assessment, user management and customized branding, however do they provide:

  • Native content authoring tools?
  • Machine Learning? 
  • AI reports to let you know which employees are at the risk of not completing programs?
  • Dedicated and secure server environments for isolated hosting?
  • Single Sign On to connect with your existing database? 
  • And the list goes on 

4) Value for Money 

Depending on the type of features you need and the amount of users you require, most LMS providers will offer different pricing plans. You may want to compare the industry leaders and make this decision for yourself. Some factors to consider:

Finally, does the provider offer a free trial? This is the best way to review a service and software as it will give you a hands on experience. 

Need to talk to someone? Schedule a demo to review the Pluto LMS training software by clicking here.

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Step 4: Offer Self Managed Learning

With Self Managed Learning, you can open your learning library to employees so they can discover your training courses and programs and learn in their own time. If your training is online, they can also learn from wherever. 

There are some advantages to self-coordinated online learning:

  • It accommodates different learning styles
  • It does not require travel and hotel booking 
  • It’s more affordable with greater ROI
  • Employee interactions and time spent on your courses are recordable 
  • More automated results can be generated

Overall the advantages of online learning far outweigh traditional classroom learning. 

Step 5: Define your Training Road Map

You want to deliver your training program in ways that will effectively improve employee knowledge growth.

So how can you map this all out? Some useful questions to ask yourself in defining your training journey:

  1. What knowledge gaps does my organization have? 
  2. How can I share content with my employees to fill this gap?
  3. What path will they take in completing these courses?

The next step is creating your course material and content. An effective LMS system will allow you to easily do this (learn more). Next comes the assessment (learn more).

Need professional input for your curriculum development? Contact [email protected]. We can connect you to our content development partners.

Step 6: Measure your Performance

Development and learning are dynamic and can evolve continuously.

Employee interaction with your online training will help you gather valuable feedback in improving your training. Some ways to measure your employees’ performance: 

Conclusion

After setting up your program goals by speaking your employees and establishing a gap analysis to see how those goals can be incorporated, it’s time to implement the right training software to offer flexible learning libraries for you employees. 

Your Learning Management System should help you track employee performance and give you the insight you need to successfully implement your training program. 

If you’re still not sure where to start, Pluto LMS can help your organization. Why not start a free trial? Get started below.

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