Training reinforcement is the most important part of your organization’s learning ecosystem. If you don’t reinforce the knowledge that you’ve transferred to employees during training sessions at a later date, you’ve essentially lost the investment of time and money you made by having the training session in the first place.
While many companies understand the value of training reinforcement, they are often missing the mark on how to execute it effectively. If your company doesn’t have a strategy in place, it’s not too late.
Let’s get into what reinforcement training is, why you need to prioritize it, and strategies for implementing it.
Training reinforcement is the process of reinforcing the new information that you introduced to your team during a training session. The purpose of reinforcing training is to help your learners commit their new knowledge to memory, ensuring that they not only remember it as time goes on, but that they also apply this knowledge in the relevant places.
Understanding that learning and training is not a one time event, but an ongoing process, is the first step in approaching training reinforcement.
What is the importance of training reinforcement?
The importance of reinforcement in teaching and learning cannot be overstated. If you’re skipping reinforcement training you might as well throw the majority of your training budget out the window. Without it, you’re losing 50-90% of the initial learning spend. This is because learning in isolation leads to almost zero retention.
By reinforcing training employees can put what they’ve learned into action. With this, they are far more likely to retain information for longer. In fact, without reinforcement, learners forget up to 90% of their learning within a month. The rapid decline of memory retention over time was studied by German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus. The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve explains the importance of revisiting and reinforcing learning.
Without learning reinforcement strategies, your training money can be wasted. Post-training reinforcement in the form of refresher training helps employees remember and use what they learned in their jobs. This can increase your ROI and save the company money.
Untrained employees often feel frustrated and overwhelmed. This is especially true of the deskless employees who work in the field. Unsupported staff may be unhappy and feel resentful for not being set up for success. When these feelings bubble up, they’re more likely to leave. Staff turnover leads to higher recruitment and onboarding costs. Combat this by having a 360 approach to training through reinforcement.
One of the biggest reasons to fully train your staff is to optimize safety. TalentCards partnered with Schindler, a global elevator and escalator business to do just that. With their machines moving more than 1.5 billion people every day, safety is their number one priority.
But reaching their global workforce proved to be a challenge. They needed a mobile training option to make resources and information accessible to everyone. Because of the nature of their jobs, training cannot happen just once. Employees need constant reinforcement training to remember important technical and compliance information.
“Schindler’s primary goal is to seek for a safer environment around the world. One of our main objectives is to really fight the forgetting curve.”
Antonio Rivas Cortes, Quality & Training Zone Manager for the Americas
By making training more accessible and helping employees remember what they learn, Schindler has achieved and maintained the highest level of safety in their machines. Read the full story here.
How do you reinforce training concepts?
In the fast-paced world of professional development, reinforcing training concepts is essential for maximizing learning outcomes. Let’s go over some of the most effective concepts:
Leverage microlearning
Microlearning is a training method that uses short modules to reinforce learning. These modules can be delivered digitally through a mobile app. Instead of learning everything at once, microlearning focuses on key points. This prevents cognitive overload and improves retention.
Use visuals
Visuals such as pictures, diagrams, and infographics go hand in hand with microlearning. They can help staff remember information and apply it to work. For instance, infographics simplify complex ideas and make them easy to understand.
Managers can use visuals to reinforce training when employees return to work. Diagrams or flowcharts can help employees remember concepts. They can also serve as a quick reference when on the job.
Identify learning gaps
Through periodic assessments and training needs analysis, you can efficiently pinpoint critical areas for improvement. Your reinforcement training can’t reasonably cover every single topic you’ve ever trained team members on. By identifying learning gaps you can ensure that the reinforcement training you create and deliver focuses on these areas, and not on the areas that employees are already proficient in.
Make use of spaced repetition
Spaced repetition involves reviewing and recalling information at specific intervals. Spaced repetition apps present info to learners in shorter intervals, and gradually increase the time between reviews. This technique often uses flashcards, reinforces what you’ve learned, and fills gaps in your understanding.
Incorporate gamification in training
Gamification is an engaging approach that adds game-like elements to training programs.
Incorporate storytelling to enhance interest and memory retention
Reinforce skills learned through frequent participation
Administer quizzes
Quizzes can be an interactive approach to learning reinforcement. They are used to reinforce concepts, test progress, and identify areas for improvement. Be sure you give varying quiz questions in difficulty and format to engage learners and ensure retention.
Encourage social learning
Social learning can be tricky for your mobile staff, but it can take place virtually. Promoting social interactions in virtual training is beneficial for learners to collaborate and learn from each other. This might look like group activities, discussions, and interactive learning experiences. Encouraging social interactions fosters a supportive and engaging learning environment. Some might even get a new perspective from someone they don’t usually interact with.
Use a mobile learning app
Investing in a mobile reinforcement training platform will save your organization time and money. By making training accessible on mobile devices you’ll cut back on the time managers have to spend answering the same questions again and again, and you’ll give employees the chance to improve their skills directly on the job.
Reinforce employee training with a powerful microlearning app
How do you reinforce learning in a training session?
Reinforcing learning in a training session has some similarities to reinforcement after training occurs. Make sure the training is relevant to the employee. Present information in an engaging way. This can be done through various methods such as visuals, gamification, and microlearning modules. Provide consistent check-ins to ensure understanding. Offer on-the-spot clarification.
How do you enforce training?
Enforcing training and reinforcing training are two very different concepts. Here are a few recommendations for enforcing training:
Clearly communicate training requirements for each position
Create a curriculum tailored to employee needs
Distribute quizzes and assessments
Use a learning management system to track progress and completions
Provide certifications
Foster the long-term success of your employees and business
Learning is not an isolated experience. For your training to be impactful you must view learning as an ongoing process. By engaging employees before and after their main learning activity, you can enhance knowledge retention and practical application of key learning concepts. Skipping reinforcement training can lead to wasted training budgets, ineffective staff, and potential safety hazards.
Key takeaways
Reinforcement training is crucial for long-term success in organizations.
Without training reinforcement, a significant portion of the training budget can be wasted.
Reinforcing training helps employees retain information and apply it to their jobs, leading to improved performance.
Using various techniques such as microlearning, visuals, spaced repetition, gamification, quizzes, and social learning can enhance training reinforcement.
