How to Make Your Employees Feel Less Overwhelmed During Training Sessions

In many companies around the world, employees (and even trainers) find themselves exhausted during training. Everyone seems to be waiting for the break, even though there is usual plenty of time left before such break is scheduled. The reason for this is basically the complexity of the training sessions, with people not being used to absorbing (or dictating) a huge amount of information in such a short time.

There are many examples of cases when, due to the highly technical or theoretical degree of the training courses, learners become quickly bored and unable to pay attention to what the trainer has to say, despite all his efforts. Research has demonstrated that the best way in which people learn is not represented by the “all at once” method, but rather by the splitting of content into small chunks.

Therefore, when planning and scheduling your training sessions, it’s important to keep in mind a few key points:

– People have short attention spans
– Supplying too much information at once will only lead to it being mixed and ultimately forgotten
– The goal of training your new employees should not be for them to memorize a series of instructions or facts, but rather to apply what they learned on their everyday job, over an undefined period of time.

A company should keep in mind that the real goal is to develop talents within employees and help them reach a higher performance level on their own, and not just supply them with dry facts which can be memorized on the moment but quickly forgotten on the long term. The need for concise and compact information is now higher than ever, and people should be taught how to do certain things by themselves, over a relatively short interval of time. After all, what really matters for a company’s development is how the worker performs in the long-run, and not just how many information he can keep in mind at once. For this reason, quality information needs to be supplied in a pleasant form.

In addition to the short duration of training sessions, one should also take into account employee engagement throughout them. If the learner is treated well and is interested in the training session, then chances are he’ll learn more information from it and operate at a higher level within the next period. In addition, a manager should not perceive training as a manual which gets opened open only when the need arises, but rather as a product which the employee learns to operate ever since the first package opening. Training can’t be regarded as a one-time event anymore, and many companies have understood this principle already and implemented an adequate continuous learning strategy.

There are many things which can help in the creation of a continuous learning environment, but one of the most important of them is undoubtedly technology. For instance, an online guidance system such as WalkMe can greatly facilitate the employees’ overall learning process, by guiding them to accomplish their tasks in a subtle, yet engaging manner. This can do more than just reduce the training costs and increase employee creativity over time (it does those too), but it can actually lead to a workforce which gets better day after day. The ultimate result of this is increased company productivity, which will benefit everyone from the lowest secretary to the ultimate executive director.

Another trend which companies need to pay attention to is the rapid growth of the mobile-driven environment, which represents the main asset of the next generation of workers. People are constantly checking their emails, reading business news and even working online beyond the traditional training hours, which happens either because of their choice or because their bosses imposes them to. With the aid of technology, the training world becomes a lot more interactive and easy to join. M-Learning and e-Learning are just two concepts which revolutionized the way people learn, and those who understand the advantages they offer will only have to gain on the long run.

However, because employees are becoming more stressed as time passes by, it’s important to allow them some freedom, freedom which transposes in both office and on-the-go environments. If you want your employees to understand their full potential, you have to allow them some self-powered decisions, which will help them experiment and learn what it needs to be done when real-world situations arise. It’s important not to tighten the chain too much, otherwise the only thing which your employees will do is to try and escape from it.