Five mistakes that you should avoid in your personnel training programs

We all know how important it is to launch a successful staff training program so we can improve the skills, knowledge or attitudes of the employees and achieve a positive impact on the strategic objectives of the company.

Often, however, due to lack of time, lack of resources or poor execution, personnel training programs fail. On this post we tell you the 5 most frequent mistakes observed, so you can identify and especially avoid them.

  1. Lack of alignment with the goals of the company.
    The main and the most serious mistake, is not to link your personnel training program with a specific and measurable objective within your company. A positive impact on the whole organization must be your top priority, so you have to know your needs and define a training program that can satisfy them. Make sure that this goal can be measured and that it is understandable and taken by everyone.
  2. Low quality content.
    At present, at the digital world, with excellent learning resources within one click (video tutorials on YouTube, MOOCs, platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, Linda or LinkedIn, Google, the TED Talk …) many staff training programs (often through of their LMS) offer poor quality content.

    This may be acceptable a few years ago, as information and training were more limited, but today is an unacceptable error.

    So make sure that the content you offer your employees are of the highest quality and exceed what you can find with a simple search on the Internet.

  3. Old boring and repetitive formats.
    Employees feel dull of facing the same type of training. Sometimes they can be face-to-face classes where they are sitting and listening for hours; in others, some online course are based in moving forward on a PowerPoint slides and answering test questions.

    This type of training does not motivate employees, so you should look for other types of formats, such as virtual reality, gamification or Serious Business Games, to improve engagement.

  4. Lack of support from managers.
    By being so focused on our training programs, we often make the mistake of not seeking support from other departments, particularly managers or senior managers of the company.

    These figures can lead by their acceptance and support your training, they will help you to identify the most important objectives of the company, even to give the information to the rest of employees and they can ease the implementation of the courses.

    Do not make the mistake of forgetting them.

  5. Poor or sometimes null communication and marketing.
    You may have designed an excellent training program, taking into account the goals of the company and even with the highest quality content … but, have employees heard about it? Are they aware of the advantages of conducting the training? Have you explained how to sign up for the courses? Do they know what to do if there are any questions?

    If this is taking place, it is probably because you have forgotten to carry out a communication and marketing campaign.

    And remember to be as innovative and visual as possible, calling the attention of employees through some humour, mystery …or surprise.