4 Tips To Write Learning Objectives For Employee Training

 

Employee training is a training program that focuses on providing the necessary knowledge, skills, and direction for better employee performance. Employee training is a major part of corporations. Apart from the initial training, an employee has to go through to enter a company, several types of training are focused on different roles and have different goals. Below is a list of the different types of training corporations conduct to improve employee skills and performance quality!

 

 

 

 

The Orientation Training is the first training an employee goes through when entering a company. Some companies have an orientation period of one to two days when the employee learns about the inner workings and internal processes of the company and his/her position. This training can be formal or informal and includes among others; corporate culture, policies, company mission and values, administrative procedures, etc.

 

 

Onboarding is the process that starts from when an employee is hired until he/she can work independently within his/her department. The Orientation Training is usually a part of the Onboarding process.

 

 

A technical skills development program is focused on developing and improving the hard skills of the employees. Technical Training is the development of the primary skills that the employee will need in his role. Technical Trainings tend to be very specific, like seminars on learning a new designing program, or on content writing. Technical Skills Trainings are essential to keep up with the rest of the industry in new methods and technologies that improve efficiency.

 

 

Soft Skills Training improves employee communication and teamwork performance. They are in place to enhance problem-solving, work ethic, team communication, and conflict resolution among others. 

 

 

This type of training focuses on the introduction of a new product or service of the company. It's mostly information on what the product is, production price, final price, benefits, warranty, etc.

 

 

Quality Training takes place mostly at production-focused companies. It includes staying up to date with policies regarding the quality standards for a product, quality control processes, etc.

 

 

Safety Training is for employee protection - mostly conducted for production companies that include the usage of heavy and dangerous machinery. It also includes fire drills or the introduction to the company's violation policy.

 

 

Team Training is referring to employee teamwork enhancement. It is focused on improving teamwork communication and trust. It is essential for creating a positive work environment, to have informal conflict resolution practices, and generally keep the employees excited and motivated.

 

 

Learning objectives are often confused with learning outcomes. The difference between them is that learning objectives are the instructor's purpose when creating the course, seminar, or training while learning outcomes are what the participants actually know and can apply after the training. Thus learning outcomes must be discovered in the form of a survey after the training took place and learning objectives are the expected goals of the educational activity, and they are stated before the training.

 

 

Figuring out the learning objectives of the training is a core task of the training's structure. First, you need to identify the type of training your employee needs. Is it training for a specific department? Is it a soft skill training aimed at all employees? Who is your target group? After these questions have been answered, you can continue with the learning objectives. 

 

 

Learning objectives must be really specific, especially if the training is short. Learning objectives are not general learning goals. They should answer to the training curriculum. For example, if you are doing quality training, ask yourself: What exactly will the participants learn? What are the new policies you are introducing? How are they going to implement them? These are all questions that you should answer when writing the learning outcomes. For example:

 

"Employees will learn the programming language Python"

 

The above is a very vague sentence for a learning objective. The correct structure of that will be :

 

"Student's will use the programming language Python to complete a data mining analysis"

 

 

Learning objectives must also be realistic, and this comes hand in hand with the specification of the learning objectives. When writing the learning objectives you should consider if you set the bar too high or too low for the participants depending on the information you are going to provide, the methods you are going to use, and the way you are going to measure their performance. Writing realistic learning objectives can be difficult. For this purpose, you can use FreeEssayWriter to gain inspiration and advice on writing perfect learning objectives.

 

 

As mentioned briefly before, learning objectives are connected to learning outcomes. That means that the learning objectives need to be measurable. How are you going to know if your training was a success? A simple evaluation in the form of a quiz could be the answer to that, but there are a hundred different ways to measure learning objectives and outcomes depending on the training you are conducting.

 

For example, if you are doing a training on a new design program, a learning objective could be :

 

"The participant at the end of the training will be able to design a logo using the X program"

 

The way you are going to measure this objective is by actively engaging the participant into processing the information you are providing and applying it to a project that is close to where he/she is going to use this knowledge in the future.

 

 

Learning objectives must be short, concise, and to the point. One sentence is ideal. Your learning objectives should leave no room for clarifications or questions. A good vs bad example is the following :

 

"Students will be able to apply one of the many theories of social psychology and apply those theories to a number of real-world situations."

 

The above sentence has too many words and is not concise. You can phrase that as:

 

" Students will be able to apply theories of social psychology to real-world situations."

 

 

 

When writing your learning objectives, you should also use Bloom's Taxonomy. It is a system for categorizing the various skill sets that instructors assign to their students. There are six different levels, and you can use them to structure your learning objectives:

 

 

To conclude, learning objectives are very important for the structure and communication of the training. They should be thought through and reflect 100% of the training you are preparing. Keep them short, clear, concise and realistic, and in line with your business goals!