76% of employees are always looking for career growth opportunities. In order to impart commitment and integrity to the business organization and seize personal, career, and job-related benefits, employees need to undergo continuous employee training.

Consequently, this will push for the continuous improvement of the current and future performance of the business organization. This will also lead to numerous opportunities for employees as they acquire job-interrelated skills, attitudes, and information that will contribute to the overall realization of organizational goals. 

40% of employees with poor training leave their jobs within the first year because of inadequate employee training. Without the inclusion of employee training on the agenda of a company, employees will not be guided with certain strategies that can positively affect the overall productivity of the business organization or the employees’ service quality. 

What to Prepare for Employee Training

As a member of the top management team, your responsibility is to ensure that the personal and professional needs of your employees are met. Ensuring the location, content, support, and cost is not enough in preparing employees for their respective training. 

Listed below are important things you should prepare in conducting or facilitating employee training. 

Agenda and Training Plan 

Setting the agenda of the training is like answering the question “Why are we conducting this training?” and “What outcomes do we desire that will contribute to the work productivity and effectiveness of the business organization?”. 

The agenda and training plan will determine the standards and outcomes desired by the company. These standards will also help in measuring the performance of trainers and trainees after conducting the training. Of course, the standards and outcomes that will be crafted should be based on the needs of the business organization.

For example, in order to foster harmony through communication skills in the business organization, the outcomes and standards in a certain training should effectively address and enhance the communication skills of the participants that are vital in day-to-day business operations.

In this phase, you are going to determine the objectives, schedule, and format of the training. You can consider the following questions below in crafting the agenda and training plan of a certain employee training: 

• What objectives am I going to set in:
  • the organizational level?;
  • the administrative level?; and,
  • the employee level?

• Is the type of training that I am going to facilitate applicable during:
  • on-duty schedule; or,
  • off-duty schedule?

• What format of training am I going to conduct? Will it be a/an:
  • formal training; or
  • informal training?

Outline the answers to the questions in a document that will be reviewed by the training team for additional input and structuring. Whatever the answers may be, these must be considered and subjected to approval by the upper management.

This process ensures alignment across all stakeholders.

Training Manual 

Designing training is effective when you craft a handbook or training guide for employees. In this way, the standards and outcomes set in the training are concretized and narrowed down by way of listing the things that should be discussed for the entire duration of the training. 

Several things that should be considered in this phase are listed below. You can also use this as a checklist in this phase. 

• Craft a training handbook with its location, time and respective schedules, and objectives emphasized;
• Code of conduct should be written on the things that should be prepared and done BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER  the duration of the employee training;
• The type of topics or skills that should be discussed in the respective schedules should be written in the training manual. Make sure that it should be relevant to the outcomes stipulated;
• The training method that will be used should be emphasized on every topic discussed in the training manual. Examples are instructor-led training, group discussion activities, brainstorming, simulation, and others,
• The guidelines set in every activity or topic discussed should be written for the employees to be guided in the conduct of the training.

Worksheet and Other Logistics Tools

Focus questions and interactive activities should be crafted in the worksheets that will be used in employee training. The facilitator should effectively maximize the worksheets and activities highlighted in the training manual, as this ensures proper monitoring of the trainees and their progress in relation to the objectives set.  

In addition, head committees and their members should be set in the conduct of the training activity. Spearhead, finance, communication, food, crowd control, secretariat, documentation, and aftercare committees are some of the examples you can consider.

In this way, the success of the activity is attained without having much sweat because of the teamwork and unity in the conduct of the training. Protocols in these worksheets and activities should be set BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER the conduct of the training. Doing so will help employees abide by the behavioral constraints and conflicts indicated and expected. 

Training Session Tools 

Putting the plan into action is a challenging phase; thus, calling for facilitators and organizers to effectively maximize the tools and innovate activities for the employees who are going to attend the activity. For further engagement of the employees during the training, energizers and basic mental or physical exercises should be included in order to let the employees enjoy the training. 

Interactive PowerPoint presentations, game-infused training, use of relevant data and statistics, and crafting applicable activities that they can employ after the training should be considered as well. These initiatives can help employees refresh their minds and give friendly suggestions on the contribution of the business organization’s success.

For organizers and committee heads, do not forget to conduct a briefing and debriefing activity before and after the training, respectively. After the training program, there should also be an evaluation survey for the training team to immediately get feedback that will be helpful in planning for and conducting more training programs. f

Memorandum for Trainees

Call for the attention of the employees through releasing an official company memorandum on the matter. The memorandum serves must be curated and delivered properly and clearly to avoid confusion among the prospective attendees. The memorandum should contain the following:

• Date/s and location of the training;
• A detailed schedule of activities;
• Objectives and purpose of the training;
• Protocols that should be observed BEFORE, DURING, and AFTER the training; and,
• Committee heads and members of the training.

Conducting training that can effectively address the professional and personal needs of the employees in the business organization effectively contributes to the overall success of the organization in terms of efficiency and productivity.

Employee trainers should find this pre-training checklist helpful especially if they want to ensure a successful training program.