At a lot of companies, employees have a tendency to dread mandatory training because it’s just not designed to be enjoyable. Fortunately, there are a lot of things that managers and business owners can do to enhance the appeal of training sessions for staff members.

Successful training sessions are essential to ensuring that your staff members know everything they need to so that they can do their job right. If your employees are bored and developed a lazy or indifferent attitude about training, they might be overlooking essential productivity and safety procedures and thereby cost your company a lot of money.

The following are five suggestions on how you can ensure that you get the required information across to your staff members by making training enjoyable and engaging:

Select a trainer that everyone likes

Don’t underestimate the importance of the trainer you choose. You need to learn to pick trainers that your staff members are going to find are charismatic and entertaining. You’re also going to need to learn to select trainers who still manage to get the lesson across to staff members so that they understand it.

In a lot of situations, you might not be having your own staff member do the training and might be hiring somebody from the outside to come in. In this case, don’t just evaluate that person’s professional credentials. Also evaluate what kind of presenter that person is and how well liked that individual is likely to be by your staff members. Choosing someone who’s instantly likable around your company can make your training sessions much more productive.

Go somewhere new with your staff

One of the biggest mistakes you can avoid if you know your staff members are getting bored with training is have training sessions in the same old place. Make things memorable by bringing your staff members to a more enjoyable venue.

You should try to hold a training outside the office if it’s possible. This will break up the routine for your staff members. You might be able to select a perfect venue if you find a meeting room for rent that’s located at an attractive destination. Perhaps there is a resort or conference center in your area that’s generally very popular. It might be worth splurging on the expense if it will make your employees appreciate your company more while also enhancing the effectiveness of the training.

Bring out your employees’ drive for competition

If you’re looking for a great way for how to make training fun and interactive, you should consider setting up a competition. Turn training into a competition and offer some great incentive or rewards to employees who perform the best. This can really motivate employees to master the subject at hand. It can also enhance camaraderie and make the training process exciting.

Ideally, you should choose several awards rather than just one major award so that everyone feels included and there are many opportunities to win. Think about your staff members and what they would most like to win to determine the best incentives. It’s best if you can include some complimentary prize just for successful completion of the training course if at all possible.

Ask employees how they’d like to do things

If you’re not sure about how your employees would handle training best, why not ask them? No one knows better than your staff members what your staff members like. Consider sending a survey around to all your staff members about which venues they prefer, what trainers they like, what rewards would be most appealing to them, and what aspects of the subject matter they’re likely to have issues with and need further explaining for.

Your employees will appreciate the fact that you’re clearly valuing their opinion. This will motivate them to make your training exercise more of a success. In addition to asking your employees what they would prefer, you might even want to give your employees multiple options for handling their training if you have the resources and your staff is large enough.

Cut out unnecessary content

One of the most important things you need to do before you even start deciding on where you’re have training and who will orchestrate it is pinpoint exactly what you need your staff members to know.

You’re wasting time and valuable resources when you’re training staff members on things they don’t really need to know. You should take some time to analyze training needs. Do what you can to consolidate all the information that needs to be presented to the greatest extent possible.

To figure out what your employees really need to know, you’re going to need to consider their individual job responsibilities. You also may want to consult with management and individual employees on whether or not they think a particular topic is relevant or not to their job description according to everyday operations at your company.

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