Employee training is most effective when you convert classroom training to eLearning. Employee training is not a spectator activity although it can feel like this if it is conducted improperly.
But when is it done improperly? And why would someone do that?
At one point in my career, I focused on improving the efficiency and impact of employee training, having experienced both roles—as trainee and trainer. Over 16 years in automotive software development, I have supported many companies in automotive software development. Many times I have experienced that the work packages are not done according to the process/standard (ISO 26262).
Why? What is wrong with the employees?
1.No Training in the Work Process — The First Mistake
Many companies don’t provide structured training to teach employees the work process. This is the number one mistake. Lack of time, money, and personnel often prevents proper onboarding.
Even companies with quality departments often fail to digitize training materials, leaving employees unsure how to meet verified standards. Companies developing products by standards also have a quality department in place. This department runs regular assessments of the products that employees develop. But employees are not shown/trained on what exactly they have to do in order to fulfill the quality that is verified later on by the quality department.
Solution: Companies should convert classroom training to eLearning. By transforming instructor-led training to digital modules, employees receive consistent guidance anytime, without waiting for a trainer.
2.The mistakes in face-to-face training
We use this training method for so many decades, what can be the problem with it? Well, exactly this is the first problem. There were no significant changes in the training methodology. In training, we copy the school teaching system, which is 200 years old, and used ever since without being adapted to the employee’s needs.
Employees arrive with different experience levels. Some are advanced, some beginners, and some fresh from university. Yet traditional training treats everyone the same.
Problems include:
One-size-fits-all pacing
No repetition for knowledge reinforcement
Difficulty accommodating advanced learners
Solution: To create online training from offline material, convert existing classroom content into eLearning modules, based on level of competences. Employees can:
Learn at their own pace
Repeat modules when needed
Focus on areas relevant to their current tasks
Even recording training videos and following digital training best practices ensures employees retain knowledge effectively.
You can not sit all these people with all these ranges of expertise in one room and teach them the same thing, at the same pace, once and for all. Because usually, every employee visits every training only once.
1. Mistakes Related to Timing and Attention
Timing is crucial. Trainings often occur at inconvenient times, either during a busy day or at a stage when employees lack necessary fundamentals.
Examples of mistakes:
Employee training at the wrong time of day
“Different parts of the brain may be ready to learn at different times” (How people learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School)
Some people concentrate best in the morning and some are at their sharpest during the night. Other people have during the day their focus distributed to other problems. And they can focus on learning only when the disturbing factors disappear.
Training knowledge applied too late in the project
Trainers often schedule sessions based on their availability, not employees’ needs. Trainings frequently skip the natural order, preventing employees from connecting new information to prior knowledge. When employees receive training before acquiring the basics, they get disconnected pieces of information—like puzzle pieces without the box cover—and quickly forget what they learned.
“Knowledge must be “conditionalized” in order to be retrieved when it is needed; otherwise, it remains inert.” (Whitehead, 1929)
3. First doing, then training — employees figure it out themselves before formal instruction
4. Training knowledge applied too late in project
If employees don’t apply new information soon after training, they forget much of it. Forgetting is natural—German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus described this in 1885 as the “forgetting curve” in Über das Gedächtnis. The curve illustrates how information fades over time when it isn’t immediately used:
- 50% of information is lost after one hour,
- 70% is lost after one day and
- 90% of the information is gone after one week.
2. Duration and Focus Mistakes
Too much is too much!
Another common mistake in employee training is its duration. Research shows that people can focus for only 10 to 40 minutes, depending on the individual and task. Extending training beyond this period reduces attention and diminishes the return on time invested—information is lost instead of retained.
“The spacing effect demonstrates that learning is more effective when study sessions are spaced out. This effect shows that more information is encoded into long-term memory by spaced study sessions, also known as spaced repetition, than by massed presentation”( Hermann Ebbinghaus).
Primacy and recency effect is the reason why it is more efficient to divide your learning time into more shorter sessions than one long one.
“When we mentally attend to whatever we are learning, the brain can map the information on which we are focusing … When we don’t pay complete attention to what we are doing in the present moment, our brain activates a host of other synaptic networks that can distract it from its original intention. Without focused concentration, brain connections are not made, and memory is not stored.” (Joe Dispenza, D.C – The Science of Changing Your Mind: Evolve your Brain)
Solution: Break content into short eLearning modules. Use digital training best practices like spaced repetition and interactive exercises to boost memory retention.
3. Missing Time to Process Information
Even if training is delivered correctly, employees often lack time to process, link, and internalize new information. Without this, knowledge is forgotten.
Only a deep understanding of the subject matter transforms factual information into usable knowledge. The big difference between experts and novices, besides experts having extensive knowledge, is that experts organize all the information they get. Well-organized knowledge supports understanding and makes new learning easier. It is easier to construct on a solid base. Understanding allows experts to see patterns, relationships, or discrepancies that are not noticed by novices.
After the presentation, the employees need time in order to process, understand, link, and organize the information. Brain-related activities for these activities are
- memory consolidation
- elaboration (elaborate on the ideas)
- generation (create your own examples)
The brain processes the information during sleep. We have a dedicated sleep phase, called REM sleep. In this phase, the brain decides which information is moved into long-term memory and which is not.
4. Lack of Motivation and Engagement
Employees learn best when training is relevant and immediately applicable. Motivation drives retention—learning sticks only when the need is clear. Just like a dog learns to open a door to go outside, people learn when they have a reason to do so.
“Motivation is essential: we learn well only if we have a clear goal and we fully commit to reach it” (Stanislas Dehaene – How We Learn)
How do you motivate your employees to learn, and how do you make the training employees’ first concern?
Solution: Assign task-specific eLearning modules. If employees can access training that helps them solve current problems, the training becomes their primary focus.
5. Trainer’s presentation
Lectures and presentations are the passive teaching method with the lowest retention among all existing ones. They offer retention of 5%. Even reading doubles retention. In conclusion, your employees would retain more if they would read the information than from presentations.
The fact that the trainer’s presentation pace can’t be adapted to employees’ needs is actually not a “mistake” per se but a drawback of the face-to-face training method. Employees cannot adjust the pace or revisit content, causing boredom for fast learners and confusion for others.
How to Improve Employee Training
If you are responsible for training, ask yourself:
How can I avoid the common training mistakes?
When should each employee receive specific training?
How can I make training the first concern for employees?
The answer: Convert classroom training to eLearning.
Digitalize all processes, standards, and work-phase trainings
Provide access via an LMS (Learning Management System)
Include online or offline support for application and memory consolidation
Benefits:
Reduces onboarding costs (up to three lost work months per hire)
Have you ever calculated the hidden costs of turnover? Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister have calculated those costs in great detail in their book Peopleware Productive Projects and Teams.
“We all know that a new employee is quite useless on Day One or even worse than useless, since someone else’s time is required to begin bringing the new person up to speed.” … “A reasonable assessment of start-up cost is therefore approximately three lost work-months per new hire”.
Preserves company knowledge even if experts leave
Allows consistent, scalable, and repeatable training
