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I can tell you, I've been there.
You know you covered the content, the process, the procedure, the expectation. You talked about it, demonstrated it, and know they were there for all of it. And yet, there are questions, mistakes, and inconsistent performance.
It's not possible that a single blog post could accurately analyze and identify the one, or many, WHYS behind the struggle, but I can provide you a few basic questions that might lead you in the right direction.
ASK YOURSELF...
1: Are your trainings passive or active?
Passive trainings are not just B-O-R-I-N-G, they are ineffective. The oft-quoted phrase, "Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime" is pertinent here...just replace "fish" for "information" or whatever skill you want to convey to others.
If you just GIVE them the information, they might remember it for a day, but if they are actively engaged with the information, and are made to do the heavy lifting of the work, then you will increase the chance they be successful with that skill later on. Learners should be given ample opportunities to try and practice any skill, before being expected to perform on their own. This means your role as a training is to put in the work before a training and be there to facilitate while the learners are working through the material.
2: Is the training a one-and-done?
Memory is a funny thing...we can go 30 years and never forget our childhood address, but then we cannot remember what we had for dinner the night before. Even if you have a stellar, interactive, highly-personalized training, people can still forget what they learned. So, ensure you have set up an easy way for learners to access the information anytime after the training. This can be anything from video tutorials to text-based job aides. Just be sure to include in your training how learners can access this information later on (and, using tip number 1 above, have them actively practice this skill while they are with you).
3: Does the training account for cognitive load?
I get it...time is money...but time constraints can be a real pain in the butt when it comes to learning outcomes. All too often, the expectation is to sit people down for several hours at a time (sometimes days), and dump as much information on them as possible so they can get to work. Unfortunately, most minds just can't effectively process that amount of information in one go, let alone turn around and apply it to real-world scenarios. Instead, we need to consider the cognitive load of individuals. This is the amount of information our working memory can process at any time. If we dump too much information, the brain will overload, often causing increased stress, confusion, and frustration because the learner feels like they can't keep up or meet these unfair expectations.
What should happen instead is chunk the information into smaller, bite-sized pieces, and spread these learning pieces over time. An example of this could be:
Give the learner 10-20 minutes of content.
Ask the learner to apply/practice with the content right away.
Give the learner another 10-20 minutes of related, or different, content.
Ask the learner to apply/practice with the content right away (bonus if they can include the skills they already learned about in the first part).
Wait at least 16 hours.
Ask the learner to apply/practice both skills to see what they remember.
Review and correct as needed.
The combination of breaking down bits of information and then having them wait to re-practice can go along way in moving information from short-term to long-term memory WITHOUT stressing out their cognitive load.
Hopefully, these three tips can get you going on the right path to effective training processes!
If you want additional support, let's connect!
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