Workers usually find inspiration during training sessions. However, when they call it a night or after the end of the training, they tend to forget the skills, information, and knowledge acquired during the session. In order to maximize knowledge and skills retention, you can utilize these techniques during and after training.
Tell them a Story
An excellent way to increase knowledge retention is exploiting the fact that people tend to remember things ways better when they have an emotional connection to them. A good way to establish that link is by storytelling.
Creating a narrative, with characters and situations that your employees can relate to can help get across key objectives in an engaging and easy to understand manner. However, do not get too carried away and tell an overly complex story. It is particularly easy to be swept along with a narrative that’s too detailed and forget the learning objectives.
Utilize Social Networks
You should consider creating social networking groups for your employees. Allow them to utilize social networks to share information and ask or answer questions that relate to the training. This not only helps the people that attended the training session retain what they learned but also gives those who were not able to participate access to information.
Introduce the Intranet
You should also use an LMS or an Intranet site to post and share information during the training program. This can be a blog or just a place where the employees can access presentation slides as well as worksheets. This enables the trainees to access training materials whenever they need them, even outside the training schedule.
Test or Quiz the Trainees
One of the simplest and most effective knowledge retention technique is to incorporate quizzes and tests in your training content. It helps the trainees keep track of their progress and enables them to see what they have retained or learned. It ideally gives you data of how effective your learning mode is, and whether it needs tweaking.
However, a final test or quiz is not enough. To maximize knowledge retention, you should test them regularly after every module. This way, you will be testing for more defined learning objectives, and the workers will find it easier to remember and concentrate on the specified module, instead of a lot of things.
Draw Knowledge Maps
These create a direct line between knowledge and specific skills to the training program. These maps are diagrams instead of textual references. They help in knowledge retention because people tend to learn better through visual means compared to audio training.
Create a Mentoring Program
It is also a good idea to bring in experienced workers to become the trainers so that they can pass down their skills, experience, and knowledge to a generation of new employees. This kind of program can begin in the classroom training, but continue even after the training program is complete. People that handle the job duties on a regular basis are usually the best teachers for a new group of employees.