The 2018 Retention Report of Work Institute asserted that one out of four workers leaves their jobs. One-third of those said that the turnover was due to unsupportive management and a lack of developmental opportunities.
As training advocates for further development and learning of the trainees, their engagement plays a huge impact in making the training a successful one that they can be able to achieve the desired outcomes of the training.
To boost the trainees’ engagement, there are ways to do so in order to make sure that their interest and participation are fostered.
1. Study the Needs of Your Trainees
You cannot boost the engagement of your trainees if you haven’t studied their needs in the first place. All efforts that serve as an attempt to address the needs of trainees will be put to waste if the needs of the trainees are not studied.
To do the needs analysis of the trainees, you can employ specific ways to ensure accuracy in the achievement of this way to boost the trainees’ engagement.
Identify the Overall Goal of the Training
To boost your trainees’ engagement, the first thing you need to do is to identify the overall goal of the training. This will play a crucial role in boosting the engagement of the trainees as this will set a guide for them.
The overall goal must be value-committed and contextualized to the company’s goals and vision. Make sure that it is also concrete so that trainees can be able to measure their own progress throughout the training properly.
Determine the Specific Training Outcomes
To narrow down the overall goal of the training, the next thing you should do is to determine the specific training outcomes divided into competencies, skills, and attitudes. Achieving holistic learning among trainees will boost the engagement of trainees in their minds, skills, and values.
Administer Pre-training Tests
The pre-training tests determine the existing knowledge of the trainees prior to the execution of the training. To identify the specific needs of the training, pre-training tests should be aligned with the training goals and outcomes. Surveys, questionnaires, formal tests, and observation of work tasks are some pre-training tests.
After administering the pre-training tests, make sure to use the data of the test to determine the training time that could be allocated per specific training outcome.
2. Know What Motivates Your Trainees
After laying down the training goals and outcomes, the next foundational step to boost the trainees’ engagement is to determine what strategies or methods motivate the trainees to get going in the achievement of the training goals and outcomes.
Talk to Employees
Not all training boosts the engagement of trainees. Take the time to have a talk with employees to note the different points of making their jobs better.
Asking questions regarding their state of emotion and ways that could make them happier should be done. In this way, the trainees match the achievement of the outcomes to the trainees’ desires and needs, which will lay down the foundation of boosting the engagement of trainees.
Talk to Direct Managers
Managers serve as a bridge between employee-trainees and executives. As they directly lead their subordinates in different ways, they give suggestions that could better motivate the trainees. Administering questions on what can be improved for the team and the trainees should be asked; hence, could be used as a way of boosting the engagement of trainees.
Match Feedback With Goals
After determining what worked and could work better on the employees, match their feedback with the goals of the training. This will ensure constructive alignment between the outcomes and context of the trainees; thus, boosting the engagement of trainees by tailor-fitting it to their needs.
Evaluate the Current Training Resources
Training resources will serve as an effective support to the training. To boost the trainees’ engagement, make sure that it is contextualized and fits the written objectives and goals. In this specific way, you can determine which resources need fine-tuning and retention prior to the deployment of materials and resources to the trainees.
3. Identify Any Barrier
Barriers in the training are inevitable; however, by anticipating several barriers and making strategies to address these immediately, the trainers cannot worry about the ways that could further boost the engagement of trainees.
In order not to compromise the trainees’ engagement throughout the training process, barriers should be identified and addressed immediately.
Setting a Focus Hour for Trainees
Technological factors such as trainees using cell phones during the training become a learning barrier as they are distracted throughout the training. If this elevates, it produces a ripple effect on the trainees and might contribute to the situation where they could not contribute to the achievement of the goals and outcomes.
To sustain the engagement of trainees, set a focused hour for trainees where they cannot use their mobile phones and other devices that drift away their attention to the training. In this manner, they can concentrate on the overall duration of the training.
Drive the Prior Knowledge of Trainees
Training sessions produce activities that need brainstorming among trainees. Possibly, intellectual attacks might happen due to differences in terms of perception.
To address this, make sure that the facilitators and training team should drive the prior knowledge of trainees that voice their concerns before and during the training course.
4. Keep Your Communication Open
To boost the engagement of the trainees, the next step that you should do is to ensure open communication. Communication either written or spoken should be fostered throughout the training session. Giving everyone the opportunity to speak their opinions and views towards a certain activity could be done.
Have Social Engagements
The first way of making open communication is to make use of more social engagements. Learning groups, Q and A sessions, and open forum discussions pave the way for learners to have further social engagement. This will boost the engagement of the trainees as they are communicating with the different learning pieces imparted.
Make Use of Purpose
To ensure that there is open communication, make use of purpose as the focal point in the training session. Having goal-oriented and outcome-driven training sessions will give them a sense of accountability that serves a crucial purpose in achieving the different things necessary for a specific training session.
Having purpose-driven training will give everyone an opportunity to speak up and give suggestions through sessions that can help them enhance their work productivity; hence, boosting the engagement of the trainees not just in the training session, but in their entire work journey.
Diversify Training Groups
Do not isolate the trainees into the same groups. To boost the trainees’ engagement, give everyone the chance to meet all of their colleagues in the training session. To make an open communication, change the groupings of the trainees from time to time and make use of enough time to harmonize different groupings per training session.
5. Use the Necessary Technology
In 21st-century learning, trainees’ engagement should be fostered by means of having a great interplay between conventional and technological tools. Using the necessary technology in every training session will ensure adaptability in the different tasks that trainees might encounter in the future.
Make Use of Diverse Technological Tools
Give trainees an opportunity to make use of different technological tools. These tools must achieve the task immediately and give immediate feedback to the trainees. One of the benefits of using diverse technological tools is that all of the trainees get to engage with the different tasks and challenges they might encounter when pursuing different work tasks.
Have a Technical Support Team
We cannot eradicate the fact that not all trainees are well-versed with technology. If there is no support that can be given to these trainees, all outcomes and goals of the training session will be put to waste.
To address this concern, make sure that the training facilitators should have a technical support team so that it will save time for the facilitator to relay the instructions again. The technical support team will give additional support to the trainees to sustain their engagement with the training process.
6. Innovate Your Learning Materials
Especially with the different changes that are emerging to the needs of the trainees, all earning materials can be used; however, there is a need to modify the learning materials in accordance with the changing needs of the trainees. To do this, make sure that you innovate your learning materials to sustain the engagement of the trainees throughout the times.
Use of Blended Learning
Nowadays, most trainees want to experience a convenient way of learning. They want to achieve different goals and outcomes anytime and anywhere. Most trainees get engaged when they are given the freedom to learn in accordance with their most convenient time and place.
To do this, blended learning is used in order to address the needs of the trainees in the engagement process without compromising their most convenient time, place, and pace.
Having Interactive Guidance
In today’s modern world, the newest technology that enhances knowledge retention and engagement of the trainees is through interactive guidance. In this way, trainees can still recall and have frequent walkthroughs to perform tasks that are still new to them.
With assistive technologies and virtual assistants that guide the trainees, they can revisit the different learning tasks and sessions.
7. Gamify Your Training
According to research, gamifying your training has been one of the most convenient specific ways to enhance the engagement of the trainees. This helps establish a learning culture, fix learning gaps, create efficient employee onboarding, and make learning fun and exciting. This also trains employees, especially on the new technologies used.
Have a Results-Oriented Gamified Training
As gamified training sessions give efficient and effective results, make sure that the results help trainees to understand the demands for their role and expectations for behavior. Make sure that the results that gamified training provides must teach trainees about different real-life work scenarios. In this manner, trainees get to remember the information they have learned on a more engaging one.
Foster an Engaging Experience
There are proceedings in the training that trainees find it boring. To boost the engagement of the trainees throughout the duration, make sure that the gamified experience should provide a more engaging one by disseminating the goals, providing leaderboards to show their progress, a community that divides them into groups, giving tips and tricks to help them accomplish different tasks, and motivating them through rewards to sustain the engagement of the trainees.
8. Personalize the Training
Personalizing training makes trainees engage more in the entire training process in a feasible and effective manner. Aside from that, it gives the most convenient benefit, personalizing the training helps employees and leaders to effectively own the process. The influx of the most convenient training methodologies and strategies will allow further personalization of the training among trainees.
To do this, training programs should address the needs of the trainees according to their different learning preferences. Asking the trainees at their most convenient time and manner of learning the fundamental concepts in the training, and the way they effectively learn on the overall process should be taken into a note. Some trainees may be flexible or analytical learners, but make sure to give a variety of experiences where trainees get to effectively own the training process. They can also engage in training.
9. Gather Regular Feedback
Aside from giving several strategies to boost the trainees’ engagement, the next way of sustaining the engagement of the trainees is to gather regular feedback. In this manner, you will get some points on what worked and should work better.
Frequently Conduct Check-Ins
After the duration of the training sessions, make sure to ask the trainees how they have been for the entire duration of the training session. Giving them the opportunity to speak up in terms of the strong points of the speaker and the training session could be facilitated further.
Administer Survey Questionnaires
Frequently conduct survey questionnaires to immediately gather on what points should be informed and strengthened for the future activities that might be conducted among the trainees. With this method, you will get to determine how the trainees are engaging throughout the process.
