How to engage learners and keep them interested must be one of the main questions that L&D managers ask themselves.
The challenges that the training world faces are increasingly complex and everyone is still trying to figure out how to reach their audience — mostly in a society where:
Our attention span keeps on decreasing over the years, while external stimuli are unstoppable.
The generation gap is widening if we talk about technical skills and learning methodologies, which makes it difficult to produce standardized material.
Our audiences are under high levels of social and work stress, which affects their approach towards the training.
Today, there are more remote workers than ever, and new forms of training must be created.
With this in mind, designing effective courses or presentations that engage the audience and keep them involved throughout the entire experience is an undeniable challenge. But one that can be overcome if you follow these tips with an open mind, creativity, and professionalism.
1. Understand your audience
Now more than ever, it’s primordial to really understand who is the person sitting in front of you (or the computer).
Diversity within companies is increasing and this directly influences the effectiveness of your training programs. That is why, from the hiring process, you must begin to know your learners deeply.
In addition to the classic data (demographics, knowledge and skills, and previous experience) you want to know their learning style, what they like, what they consume, how they spend their free time, what are their media and technology preferences, how they spend their money…
Once you have this clear, you can, for example, create different groups of learning and adapt the methodology to their needs. And if your group is not big enough to do this, then try to identify what they all have in common, what brings them together regardless of the differences, and use it to your (and their) advantage. This will make them feel seen, considered, and appreciated, which will grab their attention and interest.
Here is when you and your team can get creative and start building a killer strategy.
2. Give them something to react to
Once you know your audience and have figured out the logistics of your training, it’s time to go deeper into the methodology.
How to keep them engaged throughout the training?
One of the best tactics for doing this is to make your course or presentation very dynamic. We already spend too much time sitting in front of screens, so invoking physical responses is a strategy that keeps them awake, attentive, and involved. Some ways to do this are:
Asking provocative questions that create some healthy tension and curiosity in the group.
Asking for a volunteer to help you with some representation of a specific case or situation.
Sharing your personal experience with a topic related to the course and inviting someone to do the same.
Making a point by triggering reactions to certain stimuli (sounds, smells, images, textures, tastes).
This should be done throughout the whole experience in strategic moments when the content it’s starting to get too flat, to make sure that you catch their attention back.
3. Involve your company leaders
If you could spot the “influencer” in your company, who would that be?
Every organization has formal and informal leaders and they can be your "influencers". Working together with the people who have the greatest influence on your staff will help you make the training more interesting and engaging.
Some activity ideas they can help you with are:
Formal leaders such as managers and senior staff — get them to share their experiences and trajectory during training. Getting leaders to explain how they got to where they are and how important it was for them to adapt to change, integrate the tools they received in training, etc., is very inspirational.
Informal leaders such as workers with good credibility and reputation — involving respected workers in your training strategy will definitely pay off. Get them to show up in videos, audios, or other tools you’re creating for your programs, make them understand the importance of training for personal and collective purposes, and they will inspire many other people to join.
4. Set goals and give feedback
Recent studies have shown that setting goals and providing feedback is a great way to keep your learners engaged and motivated.
Incentives like prizes or waivers are not as effective as challenging them towards a goal and providing comments and information about their progress. This helps them to feel noticed, appreciated and motivated to keep on doing what they’re doing in better ways.
This feedback can also be done between colleagues who are doing the same training or who have already done it, which in turn will strengthen the camaraderie and team spirit.
CONNECT WITH ME
I’m a training specialist with 10+ years of experience working with many Fortune 500 companies in Canada, the US, and Europe. If you want to create a successful training and don’t know how to, feel free to connect with me and we can work together!
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