😂 Tips for making your training boredom-proof (and extra sticky!)

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This week’s must-reads:

• Create fun and effective employee training with this template.
• How to transform traditional onboarding to something that really sticks.
• The importance of verifying your business documentation.
• And how a connections-first culture can boost moral, alignment, and more.

STARTER PACK

Template of the week: Creating Engaging and Effective Training Programs Process

Unfortunately for a lot of us, training (for anything!) isn’t as exciting as it looks in a movie montage. There’s no uplifting soundtrack or fast-forward through all the tough bits. It’s usually a lot of monotony and mundanity (AKA, boring and hard to remember).

But imagine if you had training that was exciting — something that could engage your team and get them pumped and prepared to tackle anything that comes their way. 

👉 Why settle for dull and tedious? When it comes to creating your employee training, start with this Creating Engaging and Effective Training Programs Process template. Including everything you need to prepare fun, interactive, and easy-to-retain training.

‍Check out our entire template archive of free and customizable policy, process, and role starters. New to Trainual? Get a demo.

TIME FOR A MAKEOVER

How to make employee training not suck! 

Ready for a jumpscare?
In honor of spooky season, we wanted to share something genuinely frightening: Some businesses are still using PowerPoints to train their teams. 😱

Apologies — maybe that’s a little too scary. But some employees have to live in that nightmare scenario, where new hires are still being onboarded with yawn-inducing traditional training methods. And in our fast-paced, media-heavy world, there’s a better way.

And we went to the experts to find out what that looks like.
According to Sara Berry, founder of Out of the Office Learning, there are ways to make training fun — while also increasing effectiveness and memorability. And in this podcast episode of Inside the Process, she shared some tips for creating engaging learning experiences that can help build more innovative and adaptable teams:

• Build training into daily tasks to create a continuous learning culture.
• Adding humor, storytelling, and interactive elements can keep employees engaged during training. Fun and relatable content makes learning more memorable and enjoyable.
• Deal with a lot of complex topics? Break them down into small, focused lessons that employees can easily absorb and apply. Short bursts of information also help improve retention and save time, so it’s a win-win.

🎧 Find more of Sara’s tips in the full episode.

TRAINUAL TIPS & TRICKS

Is your Trainual content up to date? Here’s how to tell.

As your company grows and evolves, so do your best practices and policies. And when you’ve documented a bunch of them in Trainual (we see you!), you want to be able to identify what needs updating as things change. Even more challenging? Keeping track of what you’ve updated and when.

Time to stay organized with content verification reminders. 

How they work.
You can mark a subject as verified (which tells your team the subject is up to date) and set the verification to last a certain amount of time. When that time runs out, a notification is sent out to the subject owner that reminds them to look it over. After they make all necessary updates, they can mark it as verified again. 

The verification symbol lets viewers know that the content has been recently checked for accuracy — giving them confidence that what they’re viewing is up to date.

How to get them set up.
Follow these three simple steps to set verification reminders:

1. Assign an owner to your subject. (This person will be in charge of keeping it up to date.) 
2. Head to advanced subject settings and check the box next to “Set a reminder to periodically verify content.” 
3. Set the number of days you’d like the content to be reviewed again after it’s verified.

👉 See how content verification reminders work.

TRUST FALL

The importance of employee connections for business success

“Teamwork makes the dream work.”
It’s a saying you’ve probably heard before. It gets tossed around a lot when people start talking about the importance of the team dynamic and culture on business growth and success (guilty party right here!). And not just because of the clever wordplay — it’s actually true.

Here’s the proof: In a connection-first culture, where employees care about and trust each other, you get:

• An environment where it’s easier to communicate and resolve conflicts openly.
• Boosts to company morale, motivation, and productivity.
• Comfortability in delegating ownership of tasks and responsibilities.

But what does it take to actually build meaningful connections?
You can’t just cross your fingers and hope that your employees will start to like and trust each other just because they work together every day. You have to provide opportunities for your team members to build genuine human connections — which can be especially difficult for companies with remote or hybrid employees.

You can get creative with what this will look like for your company, but here’s an idea to help you get the ball rolling: Organize company offsites or virtual events where the focus is on camaraderie and fostering team dynamics — from hikes and cooking classes to digital gaming experiences and remote-optimized trivia nights. 

You may not see the results after your first after-hours event, but if you can play the long game, the benefits of this connection-first culture makes the dream work a lot easier.