It’s all about needs. You need students (staff) and you need material. In this chicken-or-egg scenario, it makes no sense to have one without the other.

You need buy-in from your staff, since they have to want to be there and see the benefit of their training. Force-feeding them doesn’t really help. In fact, it diminishes their retention to near zero. They need to know how and why the training is good for them.

In my previous career, I took a two-day training session and, for the life of me, I can’t tell you what it was supposed to teach. The only things I got out of that training session were some good sandwiches and the little flashlights they gave out on the second day.

The material needs to be relevant, it needs to be good, and it needs to keep the students’ attention. What’s the point in training staff on outdated hardware or on skills they will never get a chance to use?

However, having great material isn’t much good if the delivery system isn’t up to the task. That delivery system can be an engaging trainer or a polished eLearning LMS, depending on your preferred instructional method.

What about location? You need somewhere to actually present the training if it’s going to take the form of instructor-led training. A good classroom is a key in getting your message heard – sometimes literally. You don’t want the instructor competing with the sounds of forklifts and trucks just outside the door.

If you can provide informative and relevant material using a great delivery system in a suitable learning space, and make sure learners know why the training will benefit them, you can present a good training program. So keep these things in mind when you’re planning to deliver training to your staff or to an outside group. It’s important.

Ben Jodrey is a content strategist at Velsoft Training Materials.