5 secrets to engaging and impactful workplace training
We’ve all been there. Your manager decides it’s time for some mandatory training. Perfect, you think: an opportunity to learn! Only to be disappointed when by “training” they meant two hours of someone reading 30 PowerPoint slides to you.
That’s not training. That’s lecturing. And it’s the bane of the corporate world.
No one learns best by sitting through endless talking. You might learn one or two things, but you’ll forget the rest. Deciding that training is needed, then reading a script and calling it a day, is the opposite of effective learning.
Learning is not transactional.
Without engagement from your team, well-designed activities, opportunities for discussion and sharing best practice, your team won’t learn anything. It’ll come back to haunt you when they mess up on the job.
I was a teacher for 8 years, and here’s the thing: it doesn’t matter whether you’re designing learning for children or adults, the structure remains the same. It just might involve less cutting out and sticking.
Here’s five things you can do to create unforgettable sessions and get the most out of your team.
1. Choose a clear, skill-based learning objective
What single, tangible skill do you want your team to learn by the end of this session?
A good training session focuses on one skill at a time. Not only does this give a clear direction for the session (helping everyone stay on track and on time), but it also gives your team a crystal-clear idea of what they’ll walk away with.
Without a focus, the session will derail into an open conversation where nothing gets done. A waste of time for everybody.
Strong vs weak objectives
🚫 “Learn how to use Software X”
Why it’s bad:
- You haven’t defined a skill — what if you cover something they already know?
- You haven’t clearly defined success, so you can’t measure it.
- Because it’s too vague, how will your team know when they’re successful? It’s like saying “today, you’ll learn to play the piano”. That can mean anything from hitting a few keys to playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto №3.
✅ “Generate a financial report in Software X”
Why it’s good:
- You’ve focused on a specific skill and process.
- You can easily measure success: can they generate the report?
- Your team knows exactly what you want them to learn and what success looks like.
Start with the end in mind
When designing learning objectives, always work backwards from the end goal.
What do you want your team to do?
What do they need to learn to do that?
Let’s say I want my team to deliver a great business presentation.
To do this, they need to:
- Understand how to structure a presentation (introduction, body, conclusion).
- Use tools to create visual aids, like charts and graphs, to support their message.
- Develop strong public speaking skills (voice modulation, body language).
- Use storytelling techniques to engage the audience.
By listing out all the skills, I’ve created a scheme of work. Four sessions, with clear objectives ready to go.
2. Active learning: get your team involved
There is nothing worse than a training session where one person info dumps for an hour and expects anything to stick. It’s the idea of one person (a teacher, lecturer etc) “transmitting” knowledge to the “empty vessels” (the students or employees).
Research has proven that people learn best when they actively take part in their learning, even if they don’t think they’re learning as much.
In one study, students “learned more when they were actively engaged in the classroom than they did in a passive lecture environment” (Louis Deslauriers et al, 2019).
Deslauriers also discovered that “student evaluations seem to be completely uncorrelated with actual learning”. People feel they’ve learned more in a traditional passive lecture when they actually learned less.
Active learning is as simple as doing anything where your team isn’t passively listening.
Examples of active learning
There’s a near infinite amount, but some good ones you could include in your sessions are:
- Group discussions
- Hypothetical scenarios/‘What if’s
- Quizzes
- Problem-solving
- Role-play (who doesn’t love playing the angry customer?)
- A “fix it” scenario: give them a broken example and ask them to figure out what’s wrong.
You don’t have to include all of these at once: break up a long session with just one for a quick win.
The activities you choose depend on the group you’re working with. If your team’s mastering your concepts well, for example, you can turn the quiz idea around and get them to come up with questions to test each other. Now the learning is entirely in their hands.
3. Formative assessment
Formative assessment is you checking, at any point in the session, what your group has learned. You can do this with an activity like a short quiz or even 1–2 quick questions. Use this data as a turning point.
💪 If your group is smashing it
Pick up the pace and skip sections they clearly don’t need to know, or use the time saved to introduce more advanced concepts.
🤔 If your group is struggling
Spend more time on the things they’re not getting. You can even go back a few more steps and cover something they learned previously.
🌓 If the group is 50/50
Breakout activities. Get the knowledgeable groups to work on something more advanced, while you spend a bit of time with those who need your help.
Make sure what you’re sharing is beneficial to the group. A good teacher adapts quickly to the needs of the class.
It’s important to plan for these possibilities in advance. Always have a plan, even if it’s just a mental note to yourself. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but failing to plan is planning to fail.
4. Make it as fun as you can
The best training is the one people remember, and you achieve that by ensuring people enjoy themselves, if only just a little.
I’m not saying you have to fill the time with endless games, videos, and jokes. Nothing will get done that way. But there are quick wins you can do:
🖥️ Use interactive tools
Use Kahoot, Mentimeter, or Poll Everywhere to create interactive quizzes or polls. These tools can turn a standard Q&A into a lively activity that keeps everyone engaged. Plus, the Kahoot quiz music will get stuck in everyone’s heads forever.
😄 Add humour
Get people laughing! The occasional joke or funny personal (relevant) anecdote keeps people engaged. People love stories and feel good when they laugh. They’ll remember those positive moments, meaning they’ll remember your session.
⏩ Keep it moving
Make your session well-paced. Don’t give people the chance to even think about getting bored.
Introduce short, fun activities between more intense learning segments. If you’ve spent 10 minutes explaining a difficult skill, go straight into a Kahoot quiz or practical activity that assesses what they’ve done.
When people can’t spot a pattern, or don’t know what’s coming next, that’s when you’ve got them hooked.
🎉 Celebrate successes
It’s not just kids who enjoy a gold star once in a while.
People want to know they’ve done well, so celebrate the small wins throughout your session. Even if it’s just the occasional bit of encouragement, recognising when the team’s doing well can boost morale and make the experience more enjoyable for everyone (including you).
5. Design for impact
It’s natural to want to cover as much ground as possible in a session. Time is money, after all. And the more you teach, the more your team learns, right?
Not necessarily.
It’s not like we’re cooking a meal, decide to cook for eight people instead of four, and double the ingredients for double the food.
This is where the Pareto Principle (80/20) rule comes in.
Most people wear 20% of their clothes 80% of the time. This means 80% of your lesson’s value comes from just 20% of the lesson. That beautiful diagram you spent hours on? It could have the smallest impact.
Before you dive into creating a life-changing session, ask yourself: is half of what you’re saying even worth it? It usually isn’t.
Identify the moment in your training where you expect things to click for everyone, where they’ll go “Oh yeah! I get it now!” and their face lights up. That’s your 80/20 moment.
Trim the fat, focus on what matters, and don’t waste time.
Make every second count
Designing great training sessions doesn’t have to be hard, but it requires effort and proper planning.
By starting with clear, skill-based learning objectives, engaging your team through active learning, and adjusting things based on formative assessments, you’re already on the way to your training becoming more impactful and fun. And yes, it’s possible for it to be both!
Remember, it’s not about cramming in as much content as you can.
Focus on the key elements that will drive the most value for your team. Use tools that make learning interactive and fun, and always consider whether every part of your session is necessary.
Successful training is about more than just throwing information at people — it’s about making sure your team gets the skills and confidence they need to apply what they’ve learned.
Keep it focused, keep it fun, and keep your team at the heart of the experience.
