Category Archives: Team Leader

Corporate Learning Best Practices, e-Learning, Employee-Training, QuoDeck, Sales, Team Leader

Why is measuring training effectiveness important to team leaders?

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Be it a well-established company or a start-up, investments in training employees is something one cannot afford to skip as it helps the organization grow and remain competitive. However, there is no one-size fit training program that suits all. Hence, it is important to consider various factors like the company objectives, size of the investment, type of audience, etc. to design a training program. But it does not end at designing a training program and executing it. It is important to understand the effects of the program and analyzing them to look up if the program was successful, isn’t it?

Let’s assume all companies in the world conduct training programs – online or offline and procure analytics in some form or shape. However, these analytics are at a broad level across organizations. To achieve the expected objectives, it is important to deep dive into the real problems. All of us have heard that learners must be pushed to take up the training programs at all points in time. And, hence companies are now catering to e-learning, micro-learning, game-based learning, AR, VR, interactivity, and engagement. These fancy mechanisms are new age developments and have cropped out of millennial generation problems.

However, pushing your learners is only going to take you so far. So, what is the real problem?

The real problem is the belief a learner has a training program and the value it adds to his career or personal growth whatsoever. You as a team lead can help your teams believe in the value-add of the training program. How will you do that?

In all companies, training programs are run and executed by team leads across their respective teams at a grassroots level. It hence becomes important for team leads to measure the ROI on these programs. Well, the investment here can be considered in time and efforts.

How do you measure the ROI of a training program?

We will look at the elements a team lead should look at while measuring the effectiveness of a training program.

The reaction of the employees As a team lead, it is important for you to understand the responses of your learners to the program. It helps you find out if the course content was easy and relevant to understand, identify and discuss strengths and weakness, view on the key takeaways and if the program was successful in matching the learners’ perception and expectations –

Have your learners learned It is crucial to identify if your learners have learned from the program which is one of the key objectives you have for the training program. You can analyse this by looking at test scores and course completion percentages, etc. These numbers help you identify the gaps in your learners’ understanding giving you a holistic picture of required improvements in your program –

Behavioral Patterns You can easily identify if your learners are using the knowledge, they have gained looking at their performance and attitude at work. Also, surveys and feedback from peers, supervisors, reporting managers of your learners will give you concrete data on your learners

These outcomes help you capture the results of your training program and answer the question of “Why a training program?” with actual data and facts. The results can include: Increased employee retention Increased productivity Higher employee engagement

Understanding the roadblock in the training programs your learners must go through is your responsibility as a team lead. Once you identify the roadblocks, you will be able to conduct your training program effectively and efficiently. This helps you line up with your business objectives with the program enabling you to achieve your goals and KRAs with a more logical approach.

By Shruti Shinde, Head- Enterprise Origination at QuoDeck

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e-Learning, Micro-learning, QuoDeck, Team Leader

How should team-leaders use Micro-learning to train their team?

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Why micro-learning?

Research says that assimilation of content is higher when it is presented in a concise and interactive manner. Traditionally, learning comprises of long classroom sessions and large documents or videos in their online avatar. As a team leads, your aim of training your team should be keeping your learners engaged, emphasizing on key take ways of the course rather than the entire course and making it fun for them to improve adoption. Therefore, micro-learning proves to be an effective way of imparting learning to your team.           

“As a team lead, your aim of training your team should be keeping your learners engaged.”

Case Study

Let’s look at a case study and understand how you as a FMCG team lead can use micro-learning for your team.

You are a team leader and want to train your sales team of 350 people spread across various regions. You have an option of doing classroom training and have a couple of videos, documents, and PDFs. You have used various options, but you see that the learners are not engaged and do not retain what they have studied. You recently learned about micro-learning and want to apply its principles to training. How will micro-learning help you?

How can micro-learning help you?

Micro-learning comes in many forms and has elements of short to-the-point videos, interactive interface, quizzes and assessments, gamification and infographic representation of information. These help in knowledge retention and skill development. As these elements are short and concise, reviewing information is an easier task for the learners.

Elements of micro-learning and explanation in brief

Videos: Traditionally, long videos of recorded sessions were used in training courses. However, with the advent of micro-learning, the approach to video-based e-Learning has changed. Short videos of not more than 3 to 6 minutes with the relevant information focused on the subject matter can help better retention and save time. Whether your training content is regulatory, on-boarding and induction related or new policies, videos can engage your employees and can be interactive as well.

Interactive Interface: We always think that a lot of content means a lot of information. However, large chunks of content in the form of long PDFs just become too frustrating for the learners to read also leading them disconnected with the material. One of the easiest ways to train your learners with engaging content is an interactive interface which can consist of small and short learning modules. It becomes self-satisfying for the learners as completing smaller modules but too many of them give a sense of accomplishment to them.

Quizzes and Assessments: You always want your learners to learn more along with higher retention. It is a great idea to use quizzes and assessments at the end of each topic or course. This helps learners retain better and gives you an idea of how much the learners have retained for designing your further courses. You can also use quizzes and assessments as contests while you launch content courses and give rewards to your learners. This suffices both your aims – retention and reward.

Gamification: It is important for your learners to come back to your courses and use them as refreshers to the topic. Gamification will help you do this. With games, your storyline becomes engaging for them and playing small games instead of going through plain quizzes keeps them on their toes. Your customized learning module can allow your learners to collect points, atop the leaderboard and level up continuously. Giving them a feeling of accomplishment helps keep them engaged.

Infographic Representation of Information: We all know about infographics. They just make your content look simpler, engaging and effective at the same time. Data in the form of graphics and charts make a unique experience for the learners. With infographic information, you can focus on key takeaways of data and statistics that a learner needs to know.

Start using micro-learning and help your team retain better!

By Shruti Shinde, Head- Enterprise Origination at QuoDeck