Ok, we just attended an all day workshop or seminar and we are pumped up to use what we learned. We get back to work and realize we have a lot to do and little opportunity to apply what we have learned. Weeks go by and our passion and excitement for what what was taught dissipates. Why, because the content was not reinforced. Training needs to be reinforced or a learner will lose 80% of the content within 30 days of the training.
Training Reinforcement is a topic that gets very little attention but can drastically improve organization's performance and bottom line. For the longest time we have had challenges applying training to our "Real Worlds". Training reinforcement is simply reinforcing what we teach at our organizations, but it begs the question why don't we do it more?
Training reinforcement can be very powerful when it comes to changing people's abilities and the learning culture within an organization. The key is to understand how to keep training reinforced without disrupting day to day business operations. Here is a key list of training reinforcement attributes:
- Keep training reinforcement activities shor
- For example: Have staff read an article a week on the training topic and email two things they learned from the article.
- Keep reinforcement activities required on a consistent basis
- For example: Have employees complete daily or bi-daily activities that require them to learn such as reading an article, viewing a short video, and/or listening to a podcast. The key is then to make it accountable by asking them two main questions:
- What did they learn?
- How will they apply the content to the real world (this gets them thinking about transferring the content versus it just sitting on its own)?
- Draw upon your real world for application to actual business imperatives
- For example: Have employees name a customer they tried to apply the content to and email their manager the results. The key is to build in a "required" real world activity to ensure application of the training content.
Training Reinforcement is very powerful if done correctly. The key is to make it consistent with accountability that is applied to our real worlds. If done results will be achieved within a short period of time.
Download this FREE Whitepaper: Training Reinforcement
