Most Effective Employee Training Techniques

Employee training techniques are vast and diverse, just like the learning models and philosophies which identify by them. There are countless methods, some ancient but traditional, others new and somewhat untested. As a result of this variety, there are the learning models we’ve talked about in the past to some great length, such as organizational learning, knowledge management, constant learning and many more. These models are flexible in what techniques can be employed in them, but they offer a guideline for the best types of techniques, and call for some specific ones as anchors. These models eliminate, in many cases, a lot of debate and uncertainty when it comes to choosing employee training techniques, to make a leadership role less of a nightmare. But, as we’ve said before, any one of these techniques is guaranteed to not be right for everyone, and as a result, there’s going to be a small remainder percentile of people for which none of these techniques are practical, viable or possible. In a population of billions of people, a decimal-sized percentage is still a lot of people when you convert it to real numbers. Well, far be it from me to just exclude such a wide demographic, so today, I’m going to look at a few stand-alone families of technique in and of themselves, and hope that the enlightenment regarding them empowers this demographic to design their own models and no longer be left high and dry. First, there is the group dynamic technique, which is actually a fundamental basis, and therefore an anchor technique, in many learning models. While group training is traditionally considered to be a pretentious way of saying “classroom”, this is in fact not what I am talking about. Group learning involves team work, cooperation and individual goals culminating in group goals for all involved. It is very much more of a workshop environment than a class or lecture – models which simply do not work anymore. I strongly suggest a team dynamic centrism in your training, no matter what. Second, there is a family of progressive linear learning, which is a little confusing by its name. What this means basically is that there is no grading system. This works well in tandem with a group dynamic. The solution this brings is that traditional grading methodologies act to discourage those who do nto succeed, and devalue them morally. With a progressive linear methodology, trainees can only progress forward. Backward regression does not happen. This is usually done utilizing points that can be gained but not lost. Failure simply provides no progress. On top of this, with the group dynamic, there can be a greater group progress dependent in some level upon individual collective progress, which will encourage teamwork and alleviate uneven learning and progress. Finally, along with these, is the hot new concept of gamification, which the group learning and linear progression are ripe for aiding in its implementation. Gamification solves the problems of agency and engagement, by making the whole thing a game. You can take this as far as you want, but it’s best to model it after a tabletop game model rather than a video game. The statistics of group dynamics and progressive grading only serve as the perfect engine to assign stats, experience points, parties and even storyline if you really want to have fun with it. In the past year, gamification has gone from a tenuous theory to a widely practiced and accepted standard. These employee training techniques basically form an open-ended model base for you to design your own learning methodology from. I leave it to you to massage this to your needs, and hope its simple diversity allows you to design something right for you, where popular big models failed to help.