Employee engagement is the key to employee performance. And employee development is a great investment to engage and retain your employees. However, to fully reap the benefits of your employee development programs, they have to be one thing—engaging. That’s right. Engagement being the key to employee performance doesn’t pertain only to their general work, but also to the activities that they participate in. One of them, namely, are the training programs your company wants them to attend. And with the shift to remote learning, making your online training programs engaging can be a challenge.
So, here are some golden rules you could follow to make them engaging!
6 Golden Rules to Make Your Training Programs Engaging
Make sure the training program is relevant to the participant
The first rule to make your online training program engaging is to make sure that it’s relevant to the participants. And this applies to all types of training. A participant will only be engaged if they know that a program is something that will truly help them—that they can apply what they’ll learn at work or in their life. Not knowing your audience is one of the corporate training mistakes that you should definitely avoid.
Familiarize yourself and the participants with the platform
To conduct online training programs, you need a platform that can accommodate what you need. For tech-savvy participants, this doesn’t pose a problem. But what about those who aren’t as tech-savvy?
That’s why you have to make sure to familiarize yourself and the participants with the platform you’re going to use. Provide your participants with Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) or tutorial videos on how to use the platform. It’s even better if you have responsive tech support before, during, and after the program in case anyone needs assistance.
You could take this a step further by using a platform that is compatible with multiple types of devices. Not all participants have laptops or high-end computers. Most of them use mobile devices. They’re also more skilled and experienced at using their mobile devices, meaning that you may not need to assist them as intensely as when they use their computers.
Start your training program with a bang
First impressions last. So, to make your training programs engaging, you have to captivate your audience right from the beginning. Make them interested right from the start. With good impressions, your participants are more likely to be attentive throughout the entire training.
While the level of attentiveness and engagement may vary throughout the session, you can always recapture their attention with other activities. But, it’s essential to start your online training program with a bang to make them enjoy. When they enjoy learning, engagement becomes easier.
Gamify and diversify
As mentioned above, the attentiveness and engagement level vary throughout your online training program. There will always be parts that may not be as interesting. So, you have to ensure that you recapture attention.
Gamification in learning and development has emerged as a powerful tool for engagement. Some simple things you could do to gamify is to add quizzes or simple games related to your topics. Some websites can help you do this, such as Kahoot and Quizlet. You can also have scoreboards and give prizes to the one with the highest score to encourage competition among participants. The crucial thing is to make your remote learning more interactive and social.
It’s also important that you diversify the mode of delivery. Different people have different learning styles. Videos can be a good addition to your online training program. A blog post by eLearning Industry even names video as the eLearning medium of the moment. Make your presentation visually pleasing, and add visual aids to help your learners better understand the topic.
Relate and captivate
Online training programs will be more engaging if you can captivate and make your participants relate to the content. Try to simulate real-life situations of the topic so that your learners can better connect with it. You could also incorporate role-plays to immerse them in the learning process. If the learner can see themself in the situation, they can better understand how to apply the knowledge they gained in real-life circumstances.
Encourage discussions and question and answer portions are also good ways to captivate your learners. These allow them to further explore certain topics, letting them gain a deeper understanding.
Wrap it up good
The end is as critical as the beginning. If you start it with a bang, your wrap-up should be as equally good. There are different tactics to wrap up a training session. You could list down the main points of the program, or you could share practical tips that’ll help your participants when they apply what they learned into their lives. You could also use this time to ask them for feedback.
Just because online training is a type of remote or distance learning, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have to or can’t be as engaging as face-to-face ones. With these 6 golden rules, you can make your online training programs engaging!
