Before creating employee training materials, take time to learn what skills or knowledge your team actually needs. From there, map out key objectives, decide on a simple structure, and use stories, diagrams, and exercises to keep employees involved and learning by doing.
- Get to know your learners beforehand – Send out a very brief survey to learn about skills gaps or do research on the expected audience.
- Set clear goals – Create clear and relevant aims and objectives that suit the intended learning outcome and what successful training would look like.
- Map the flow – Arrange the training topics in a logical order that guides the participants through the aims and objectives sequentially.
- Make the training relevant – Look for ways to make the training relevant to the learners’ work and interests. Consider using brief stories, and short group tasks to make the content relatable.
- Match time to content – Estimate how long each section takes and adjust pacing for discussion or reflection.
- Gather reactions – After running the session, make sure to gather feedback and learn what to improve in your next session.
For more resources like this, also take a look at our full corporate training design library, which has many other guides for trainers, HR, and L&D professionals, for creating workplace training.
12 Practical Tips for Designing Effective Employee Training Materials
1. How Do You Identify Your Audience Before Designing Training?
One of the very first things you will need to do and pay careful attention to is to make sure that you know clearly who your audience is.
Who is the training for?
What level of understanding do they already have of the subject you will be teaching them?
There is no point, for example, in teaching the basics of marketing and the marketing mix to marketing managers with 20 years of experience.
Likewise, you do not want to be teaching advanced Italian if the students will be beginners.
This point might seem obvious, but I have lost count of the number of times I have seen the wrong type of training created for the students in question.
Get the level wrong and your students will quickly lose interest, and it’s downhill throughout the training.
Action: Think about who the training is being designed for. What level of experience do they already have, and will they share a similar knowledge base on the topic?
2. What Are the Key Steps in Designing a Training Program?
There are certain stages that I recommend you follow in the training program design process or for creating employee training materials.
These stages though, are affected by whether or not you are:
- designing the training program in-house for a company you work for
- designing the training for someone else, such as if a company is paying you to go in and train their staff
- Or if you are designing training for workshops that you have decided you want to run (such as because you will do weekend workshops for an introduction to mindfulness training materials).
Designing Training In-house or for Someone Else
If you are designing the training for a company, then follow these steps:
- Assessment Stage – Spend as much time as it takes to truly understand the needs of the client you are providing the training for. This stage is essential. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to hit the right note at the beginning in terms of requirements before you start creating the training program.
- Ensure you talk to everyone involved in the training, including HR (if they are bringing you in) and anyone with an interest in the outcome of the training.
- Be clear on timeframes such as the length of the course and number of days, location, and how many people will be getting trained, and whether the training will be in a classroom or online.
- Desired Outcome – in essence, you want to understand what the desired outcome of the training should be. What will your client see as a successful training program?
- Equipment and Facilities – Be clear on what facilities and tools you can design the course materials if designing for a client. Will it be okay for you to use a PowerPoint presentation as part of the materials? Or if this is a computer-based course (such as because you are teaching computer programming), what software and hardware will be available for students?
For extra guidance, see our Instructional Design Tips for Trainers, covering how to align learning goals with outcomes and improve material structure.
Next, continue with the following steps:
Designing Your Training and Workshops
a) Set Objectives
Create a clear set of objectives that, in essence, are the outcome of the training.
If designing the training program for a client, then get the client to sign off on these objectives.
These objectives will form the basis of the actual training materials.
b) Start Designing the Training Materials
- Work through each objective one at a time and in order as you work your way through the materials.
- Proofread all materials. If designing for a client or in-house, you may need to have their SME (Subject Matter Expert) cross-check the materials.
- If needed, get a sign-off on the materials.
| Step | Focus | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Audience analysis | Identify learner level and needs | Use surveys or HR data to spot skills gaps |
| Design stage | Choose delivery format and structure | Plan PowerPoint slides, workbook, or role-play activities |
| Evaluation | Gather feedback and refine | Post-session feedback form or team review |
These stages reflect the ADDIE model – Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate – a proven framework in instructional design.
3. Save Days or Weeks and Buy Pre-made Training Materials
If you are determined to spend a few days or weeks creating course content or a program yourself, then you can jump to point number four below.
If, on the other hand, you are designing training because you have been asked to deliver training and you would rather save a few days or weeks (for longer training design), why not buy training that:
- is already designed by someone who has taught at the university level, is trained in pedagogy (teaching methods), and has years of experience in training design
- can be customized
- includes the PowerPoint PPT file, trainer notes, and participant workbook
- and can be downloaded immediately.
Designing a training program, if you are not used to it, can definitely be time-consuming!
Action: Take a look at the examples of predesigned training materials
4. How Can You Use Activities and Adult Learning Principles in Training Materials?
In the training, make sure to include consideration for the different ways in which various participants learn.
Some people learn best, for example, by listening. Others learn best through activities or by touch. Some people learn best by self-studying.
These teaching and learning styles are all part of pedagogy and are important to consider as you design a training program or materials.
This aligns with key adult learning principles, encouraging engagement through real-world relevance and participation.
5. How Should You Evaluate a Training Program After Each Session?
Make sure, after the training takes place, to evaluate how effective the training program was, what can be improved, and what went particularly well.
Providing training participants with a feedback form can be a very simple way to better understand how the training went.
Many training programs and materials are reused, and this evaluation stage can be incredibly useful for fine-tuning the training for future use.
Tip 1: Make sure to hand out feedback forms at least 10 minutes before the end of a training session. This will allow participants enough time to complete the feedback form properly.
Tip 2: Also, make sure that the feedback form can be done anonymously so that you will likely get much more honest and accurate feedback.
6. Use High-Quality Images in Your Materials
It is essential to use high-quality images and graphics when designing a training program or set of course materials to make the training appear appealing, interesting, and professional.
You need, at the same time, to make sure that you meet all copyright requirements.
The great news these days is that there are many great free stock image and photo sites offering images you can use commercially for free.
There are also several sites and services where you can get great images at a very affordable subscription rate.
Some sites to look at for images include the following:
- Pixabay is one of the most well-known and popular free stock photo sites online, and they have over 2 million images available.
- Burst is another great site for free use for commercial purposes. Burst is owned by Shopify.
- Pexels is another of the key players if you need free stock images that you can use for commercial purposes.
You can also find practical ideas in our Employee Training Materials Guide, which covers structure, visuals, and examples of professional design for workplace learning.
7. How Do You Plan the Timing of a Training Program?
Timing is essential when designing training, as there is nothing worse than a trainer needing to rush through the last part of a course because of time constraints.
Likewise, it can be embarrassing if you are meant to be providing a full one-day course and you have already gone through all of the training materials an hour or two before you are meant to finish.
Understanding timing when designing training materials does come with experience.
You can, though, consider doing the following:
- Make sure to spend time adding up the timings and be realistic (so consider things such as the time participants spend getting into groups and anything that adds on time)
- You can, if you wish, include an extra activity for the end that is only used as a time-filler if needed. This activity can be designed as a reflective exercise to help participants reflect on everything they have learned during the session.
- If the course is a fairly short one, you might want to consider doing a trial and using a friend or colleague to do a dummy run to test the materials (get feedback) and to test the timings.
(Read our post also on How to organize a workshop)
8. How Do You Design Effective PowerPoint Slides for Training?
If you plan to use PowerPoint to present slides as part of the process when developing learning materials, there are some simple things that you can learn that will greatly improve the look of the slides.
I’ve already written a post on how to develop great PowerPoint slides with 9 design tips included to guide you along the way. These include how to:
- Design with colors in mind
- Make use of white space
- Make uncluttered slides
- How to use the trainer and teaching notes section, and much more.
Read the full post on PowerPoint Design Tips for Trainers for visuals, layout examples, and color guidance.
You can also find more corporate trainer instructional design tips here in the post I also did about instructional design.
9. Use Real-World Examples in Training Material Development
To create training materials that are as effective as possible, when you are giving examples to highlight and drive home key points in the training, use real-world examples that participants will be able to relate to.
This takes us back to the idea of thinking about who your audience is, as we discussed in point one.
If you are designing a training program for medical staff, then provide real-world case study examples that relate to a medical setting.
If, on the other hand, you are designing training materials for accountants, then make it more office-related.
If the training is all about emotional intelligence and trying to make it relatable to accounts, maybe explain case study examples that highlight the difficulties with becoming qualified and the struggles along the way, with the way in which being a good active listener and showing compassion for others can help you to be more accepted and build better working relationships.
10. Why Are Recaps Important in Training Materials?
As you design training materials, structure is key, and as you go through each key point, make sure to recap and reclarify each clear point and objective.
A good way to reinforce key points is to use a training activity or game that relates to the points you are looking to drive home.
If you are teaching problem-solving skills, for example, include a training activity where participants can work together in small groups (of three or four people) and have them work on a mini-problem scenario that you provide them with via a handout.
For more creative ways to engage participants, check out 12 Types of Classroom Activities for Adults — practical ideas you can adapt for any corporate workshop.
11. How Can You Use Microlearning in Employee Training?
Truth be told, not all the training that you provide for employees is interesting and easy to deliver or to teach.
With microlearning, though, you can break the training down into more manageable and digestible sections to make it easier for learners.
You might, for example, want to break down Growth Mindset training materials into very small, bite-sized pieces of information, perhaps delivered as online learning.
The use of mobile phones is so high nowadays that making training suitable for mobile learning is an option.
Employees having the chance to dip in and out of training can be a possible option for non-key training, such as time management training.
12. Why Is Consistency Important in Training Materials?
Try to also be consistent when designing training materials.
You might want to have a training materials template if you are designing training programs on more than one topic so that you create a standard design.
Make sure to use the same font family, font sizes, and consistent image sizes throughout the training.
Further Resources
- Free soft skills training activities that you can include when designing training materials.
- Free team-building training activities that can also be included
Conclusion
If you are designing training materials, keep these 5 points in mind:
- Think about who your audience will be
- Create clear aims and objectives, and design for your audience
- Use easy-to-understand language
- Include activities and visual aids
- Update the materials often
These same practices are invaluable when creating employee onboarding materials, ensuring that new staff quickly meet defined learning outcomes.
Also, remember when designing a training program to consider:
- How will you deliver the training, i.e., will the training be delivered in-person or online (the training materials we sell include instructions in the trainer notes on how to do the activities in online classrooms)
- How long will the training sessions be? Is there a set amount of time that you have to ensure that the training is delivered in a timely manner? This will affect the design and number of objectives you might be able to cover.
- Designing for your own training business – If you are a corporate trainer or freelance trainer, it is worth thinking in terms of groups of training titles, i.e., titles that fit into first-time manager training, Equality and Diversity training materials titles, or as a group of Leadership training materials titles.
- For some more ideas on professional training development, you can also take a look at the Association for Talent Development (ATD) for ideas on research and learning design standards.
