5 Steps for Creating an Impactful Training Workshop

Any business that invests in its employees will grow exponentially. Better job satisfaction leads to improved employee productivity. A very effective means of achieving this is by conducting training workshops. These may be targeted towards the skillset, functions and operations of the employees or it may focus on enhancing their business soft skills. Here are five steps for creating an impactful training workshop suitable for your requirements:

Identify Training Objective

The first step is to identify your training objective. Decide the end result you want to achieve through the training workshop. Most common objective for businesses is to update their employees about new procedures that may have remained unchanged for a long while. For instance, there may be new equipment, machinery, software, etc, deployed to make company tasks more effective. Training workshops, in this regard, would be ideal to refresh employees’ skillset. Another common objective is to boost morale and build a more networked team of individuals by keeping the workshop focused on teambuilding, communication, decision-making and time-management among others. So before you proceed any further, chalk out the training objective.

Know Your Audience

Once you’ve decided on a clear objective, the next step is to map out your target audience. It may be a group of senior management, personnel from a specific department or even the entirety of business employees. The last one is beneficial for introducing new core features, processes, procedures, updates and likewise. But in most cases, the workshops focus on a certain group. Depending on who your audience is, you will have to design your training workshop based on their skillset, understanding and culture. For instance, a workshop for interns or entry-level employees may not be the same as the one for senior executives. Similarly, for customer service staff, specialized customer service training programs are designed which meet specific industry needs. Hence, know your audience to create more accurate and effective workshops.

Plan the Sessions and Activitie

The third and the most crucial pre-engagement step is to plan out the workshop session and the activities within. Keeping in mind the objective and audience, design games that will fulfil the requirement in a fun and creative way. For example, if it’s team-building you’re focusing on, let the participants play games that require them to work together. If it’s to educate them on something new, make it playful so as to keep the content memorized for a long while. In case it’s a getaway fun activity to boost morale, utilize games and quizzes based on your business to revise and reeducate your employees. As long as the workshop achieves the desired result while making it memorable experience for participants, consider it a success.

Engage All Participants

Once the planning is complete and the big day arrives, there will be quite a few things you would have to consider while the training workshop runs its course. While your business may boast extrovert employees, it is bound to have introverts too that may not be too keen on staying in the limelight. During the workshop, it will be important to bring them forward and ensure that all participants engage equally to the best of their capabilities. If the training is for soft skills improvement and teambuilding, it will be crucial and necessary to get the ball rolling and making everyone participate. After all, you want to make it a workshop, not a conference or a lecture.

Ask for Feedback

After the successful completion of your workshop, it will be essential to ask for feedback from everyone including participants, conductors and organizers. As most businesses hold regular training sessions, this feedback will aid in improving the experience and quality of the workshop for future. The feedback is also important in terms of reengagement of employees and calculating the effectiveness of the workshop. It will also aid in replicating further trainings based on an existing successful model.