The Best Ways Increase Knowledge Retention When Training Employees

Speaker at business workshop and presentation. Audience at the conference room.

Employee training is vital to your business as it increases the knowledge of your employees and increases employee retention. However, there is no point in completing training if your employees are unable to retain the knowledge that is being imparted. If you have this problem, or want to avoid this problem, there are some steps that you can take to increase knowledge retention after training.

Repetition And Immediate Application

When your employees are being trained to use specific programs or perform specific tasks, the best way for them to retain the knowledge is to use the new skills immediately after the training or during the training. This is due to the fact that memory retention is generally time-sensitive. To maximise the retention, the employees should use the skill as soon as possible after learning them. For example as part of Warp Training Australia’s traffic management refresher courses (www.wta.edu.au/course/basic-worksite-traffic-management-traffic-control-refresher/) the students go out and actually apply their knowledge on the road, right away. This really helps cement the knowledge in the students minds.

Research has been carried out by the University of Washington St Louis to test active recall. During this study, the participants were shown a slideshow of images. Some of the participants had to write down which images they could remember while others were not asked to do this. When asked about the images at a later date, the group of participants who wrote down the images after the show performed better than those that did not.

Micro-Learning Using Knowledge Nuggets

There is a new and increasingly popular learning format known as micro-learning which can help your employees retain knowledge more. This form of learning will have training divided into micro-content or small nuggets of information. The basis of this training is that bite-size pieces of information are easier for people to take in and remember than large amounts of information.

Micro-learning will include short lectures which cover a small part of the overall training. The training will need to have clear learning goals for each micro-learning section. This ensures that your employees will be able to hone certain skills before they move onto the next one.

Contemporary Learning Solutions

There are a number of contemporary learning solutions that can help your employees retain knowledge. These solutions include eLearning and mobile learning which are easy to access and work in the increasingly interactive world that we live in. Digital training is ideal because it is available to your employees at all times and they will be able to refresh their knowledge at any time.

Another benefit of digital learning and contemporary learning solutions is that they are self-paced. This is important because it ensures that your employees are able to learn at a speed which suits them. When employees have to learn at a set pace, there could be pieces of information which are missed and this will lower overall knowledge retention.

There are many ways that you can increase knowledge retention when training your employees. The best way to do this is to use a training technique that makes it easier for your employees to process and remember the information. Using the skills that they have just learnt will also help them retain the knowledge.

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