Employee Training Design Process: Steps and Best Practices
This paper outlines the core steps involved in designing an effective employee training program. Beginning with the recognition of an organizational deficiency, it walks through goal-setting, resource acquisition, scheduling, communication, and measurement of training outcomes. Using a practical example of social media skills, the paper illustrates how vague organizational needs must be transformed into clearly defined training objectives. It also addresses the importance of evaluating training effectiveness both immediately and over time, and emphasizes that adjustment and reporting are essential final steps in any well-structured training design process.
- Introduction to the Training Design Process: Overview of training design and organizational deficiency recognition
- Defining Training Goals: Setting clear goals as the first formal training step
- Resources, Scheduling, and Course Development: Budgeting, timing, and building or buying training content
- Communication and Training Delivery: Explaining rationale and expectations to employees
- Measuring Training Effectiveness: Evaluating outcomes immediately and over time
- Adjustment, Reporting, and Continuous Improvement: Refining programs and reporting on training success
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves logically through each stage of the training design process, making it easy to follow as a practical framework for practitioners or students new to the topic.
- The use of a concrete example — employees lacking social media skills — grounds the abstract concept of "organizational deficiency" in a relatable, real-world scenario.
- The paper balances breadth and brevity, covering all major stages without unnecessary repetition, which is appropriate for an introductory overview of a structured process.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates process analysis writing, a technique in which a complex organizational procedure is broken down into sequential, clearly defined steps. Each step is explained in terms of its purpose and relationship to the steps before and after it, creating a coherent narrative arc from problem identification to continuous improvement.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a precursor stage — recognizing an organizational deficiency — before moving through six identifiable steps: goal definition, resource and schedule planning, course development, communication, effectiveness measurement, and post-training adjustment and reporting. Each section builds on the previous one, and the conclusion reinforces the cyclical, iterative nature of good training design.
Introduction to the Training Design Process
There are several steps in the employee training design process. A training design process takes a company from the initial step of identifying whether training is needed — and what training is needed — through to the final stages of evaluating the training and making adjustments to make the program more effective (Noe, 2012).
A precursor step in the training design process is recognizing that there is a deficiency in the organization that training can help resolve. This is a necessary step, because without it the training design process will never begin. For example, if a company recognizes that its employees lack the social media skills needed to maintain a positive company image, all it really knows at that point is that there is a need to improve employee knowledge and skill in that area. That is too vague to be useful for training purposes, and this is precisely where the training design process begins.
Defining Training Goals
The first formal step in the employee training process is to define the goals of the training program. At this point, the company has a sense of where it currently stands; what it needs to determine is where it wants to go. If it knows where it wants to end up — in terms of employee knowledge and capabilities — then it is in a much better position to set out an effective course of action. Clear, well-articulated goals give direction to every subsequent step in the process.
Resources, Scheduling, and Course Development
The next step is to acquire the necessary training resources and create a schedule. Experience with training is usually required in order to accurately assess the resources needed. The company must understand how much money is required, how much employee time is involved, and how much trainer time is needed, as well as whether these resources are available in-house. A training course can be developed internally, or it can often be purchased as an off-the-shelf solution. There are limitations to the latter approach, as off-the-shelf training materials tend to lack customization for the specific needs of the organization.
The schedule can be developed concurrently with the course content, so that the company's time estimates can be confirmed. The schedule sets out the timetable, which should already have been considered in the context of the training goals, as those goals should include a time dimension.
References
Mann, N. (2014). Seven steps to develop an effective employee training program. Business Bee. Retrieved January 23, 2015, from http://www.businessbee.com/resources/operations/7-steps-to-develop-an-effective-employee-training-program/
Noe, R. (2012). Employee training & development. McGraw-Hill.
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