Top 5 Tidying-Up Tips to Get Your Training Initiatives Ready for Spring!

Posted by Alicia Seguin - April 05, 2018

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Ah, Spring. The first hopeful little green shoots of life spring up from the ground. The birds begin their early morning symphonies of sound.

And here in the Midwest, the hopeful of us start hesitantly packing up their sweaters and coats, ready to bring them back out at a moment’s notice. It’s the time when you may start thinking, “Dang this place is looking a bit worse for wear! I should probably do something about that…” You know what I’m talking about - Spring Cleaning!iStock-639365138

While you’re thinking ahead to all of the tasks you have to accomplish before you’re “spring ready,” I encourage you to apply this same concept to your training. You’re probably thinking, “What? How the mud are you supposed to “clean” a training!??” Well, consider this: let’s say you built and launched an onboarding training initiative last year, and in that same year your company’s code of conduct changed twice and your company logo was updated for the first time in 20 years (of course). Have you thought about how that might have affected the training you created? And what about the learning initiatives that were a prime focus at the start of last year, but had to be shelved as other urgent trainings took the focus?

I call it “Spring cLEARNing” (ok, the name is still a work-in-progress…). It’s the perfect time for you to consider what could use some good ol’ L&D elbow grease to make your trainings shiny and new! Here are our top 5 Tidying-Up Tips to help you get working on your own Spring cLEARNing:

Make the time.

Does the thought of going through all this seem daunting? It doesn’t have to be! Set aside a few hours to solely go through this clean-up, send yourself a calendar invite if you have to so you can block off the time. You will feel so much better prepared going into the rest of the year.

Assess what’s changed and what your learners need.

Evaluate what you’ve created and projects you’ve been involved in during the past year. What were the main goals? Has anything changed in the past year that needs updating? Is there anyone else that needs to take a look that wasn’t able to before? This can also be applied to assessing training data and impact. Did you set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and have you checked them since the training launch? Now is a great time to assess goals you set at the start, along with any feedback your learners may have provided as they went through the training. Update as necessary and keep track of the changes through document versioning so you’ll already have an easy assessment model for next year

Formulate a plan.

Ok so that old company logo needs to GO! Do you need support from anyone on yours’ (or anyone else’s) team to make these updates happen? Write down who you may need help from and commit to contacting them the same day.

Pinpoint your Spring Cleaning focus.

Dust those old initiatives off the shelf. Think about any ideas you and the L&D team had last year that never really came to fruition. Has your company already identified goals for the current year? See if anything you’ve been wanting to work on might now align better with those goals. Talk with your team to brainstorm what these new initiatives could look like. You never know where a good Spring Cleaning can lead!

Create a checklist that lasts.

Once you’ve gone through this process once, the beauty of it is you’ll be able to reuse it for years to come! Add, delete, modify as necessary, but keep the list going so it gets more efficient every year. Tidying up your training now will give you an awesome foundation to keep it going for years to come.

As evidenced by the half a mile long donation drop-off line I witnessed at the local donation center, Spring Cleaning is here! I hope these Tidying-Up Tips will help you get the cobwebs off that training you’ve been meaning to review, and maybe even get some new ideas started!

 

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Blog author: Alicia Raff, Account Manager 

Want to share Spring cLEARNing tips? Comment so I can see how your own Spring cLEARNing goes!

I will be at the ATD International Conference and Exposition in May in San Diego at Booth #114, please feel free to stop by and say “Hey!”

 

Visit us at www.reflectionsoftware.com.

Topics: Learning Management System (LMS), eLearning, training module, employee development, millennial training, gamification, eLearning developer, human resources


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