You spend a ton of time planning for and conducting training for your new team members. You want them to feel comfortable and confident in their new position. But how much are they remembering? Training videos are your answer!
Typically those first days with a new company is like being fed information through a fire hose. It can be overwhelming and even discouraging. But there’s an easy way to improve the information retention of your new team members: visuals.
What Is Information Retention and Why It Matters
Information retention is basically the transition information goes through when it moves from your short-term memory to your long-term memory. By moving from one side of your memory to the other, it allows the information to be more easily recalled after training.
Not only does training need to provide the important knowledge your new hire needs to thrive in their position, but it also has to ensure that the information is retained. Without the information retention, your new hire will quickly get in over their head performing their day-to-day tasks.
In fact, information retention has a direct link to your turnover rate. With the average company spending about $1,252 per employee on training and development, and with U.S. companies as a whole spending as much as $70 billion in 2016 alone – training your employees in a way that keeps them around is crucial.
By providing effective training, you keep your employees because it reiterates their value. Training your employees is a way of investing in them and reinforcing their ability to help the company continue to grow. It’s also a way of boosting their existing skills, making them a more valuable asset to your company.
How Visuals and Training Videos Can Help
Across the board, visuals consistently rank as the most effective way to achieve information retention. The Visual Training Alliance estimates that the human brain can process visuals around 60,000 times faster than text alone and around 65% of people are visual learners.
Think about the last time you had to learn something by text alone. How long did you remember everything you read? It’s estimated most people forget about 50% to 70% of what they learn after one day. One reason: text is impersonal. It doesn’t connect to your employee the way visuals and training videos do. That human-centered approach can make a big difference in your employee turnover and your budget.
3 Tips For Using Training Videos and Visuals
There are many ways to use video and visuals to improve the retention of your training for new hires. Here are three you should consider:
Encourage Engagement and Participation
If your new hire isn’t engaged in the training process, they will be far less likely to recall the information they are being taught. Visuals are an easy way to keep them engaged.
Some of the best ones to use are:
- Infographics
- GIFs
- Graphs
- Videos
Another aspect of using training videos is gamification, or the tactic of using goals, working together, and rewards to incentivize your employee to engage with the training. Because tactile and visual memory almost always beat auditory learning, gamification is a great tool to ensure better information retention.
Some visual ideas you can use to engage your new hire are:
- Asking questions
- Using interactive slides
- Asking them to do something to illustrate your point
- Having “secret words” for them to remember
Highlight Real-World Applications
Relevance is important, especially during a training session. All your training materials should have images of real people in real places. Recreating the real-world situations in your visuals can help your new employee to connect with the situation.
With the emergence of remote work, you can use video calls to simulate on-the-job events. By making that personal connection through visuals, you will make your training more motivational and effective.
Microlearning
As you’re planning your training, keep in mind that your employee will tend to learn better with microlearning. You can facilitate microlearning with visuals a lot of the time. Essentially, microlearning is the process of shorter training sessions that span days, weeks, and even months, rather than cramming all the information in one training session.
Here are the key elements:
- Microlearning Objectives (MLO): These are specific titles and MLO to help your more distracted employees focus more easily. It can also help you better index your training for future on-the-spot sessions.
- Microlearning Content (MLC): These should have the core training information and activities. During these sessions, focus on one key idea, and surround that with three supporting subtopics per unit.
- Microlearning Delivery (MLD): Rely heavily on infographics and videos – these are by far the most popular MLD method. In particular, infographics can enhance your employee’s comprehension and retention.
- Microlearning Evaluation (MLE): The ultimate goal of your training should be behavioral change. Evaluate the efficacy of your training by keeping that goal in mind. The key is to combine activity, context, and feedback.
Ready to get started with more powerful training videos in your organization and grow learning retention? Contact us today about getting started with HR videos for your organization.
