The well-being and satisfaction of your employees can be defined in several ways, not the least of which concerns their continued professional development. Employee training is an essential aspect of ensuring that your coworkers are fully engaged and committed to whichever project you assign them to.

According to published findings, nearly 66% of employees feel disengaged from their work, with only one in five being confident in their manager’s training abilities. This makes it difficult to retain talent and ensure that everyone is motivated and has a personal stake in the workflow. Let’s discuss how you can write practical learning objectives for your employees’ training and why you should do so in 2021.

The Benefits of Writing Good Learning Objectives for Employee Training

What are learning objectives all about? Learning and development, or L&D, is an integral part of any respectable business model and concerns the continuous process of personal and professional employee development. Based on recent data, effective L&D can lead to 21% greater employee profitability and 59% lower turnover. However, only 15% of employees are engaged globally.

People want to work for companies that care for their mental health, personal goals, and professional aspirations, no matter how minuscule the effort may be. As such, writing and implementing solid learning objectives for employee training can bear fruit in many ways, such as:

  • Faster and more effective adoption of new technologies and strategies
  • Better alignment with modern B2C/B2B servicing expectations
  • Increased employee satisfaction, morale, and retention rates
  • Leadership grooming opportunities for ambitious employees
  • Improved reputation and industry recognition due to employee training
  • Become more competitive against other companies in your industry

The Process of Writing Learning Objectives for Employee Training

1. Audit your Business Goals

While employee training should be centered on enabling your employees to learn new skills and competencies, it should also benefit your company. The learning objectives you write should closely tie into your long-term business goals, company statement, and existing culture to avoid misalignment and confusion.

Talk to your managers about their staff’s training needs and create a wish list of possible avenues to explore for future employee training. Study how you’ve performed employee training so far and put your findings on paper. With the reviews of best writing services at your disposal, you can write a solid report within a reasonable word count. Once you’ve found out enough information about your company’s current state of affairs, you can proceed to brainstorm your employee training’s end goals.

2. Define Employee Training Outcomes

Is the purpose of your efforts to redefine employee training implemented and tracked? Do you already have ideas on how to justify your plans to your superiors and managers? Think about how new and improved learning objectives can benefit your company long-term.

Refer to the benefits of employee training we’ve listed above and use statistical data on employee engagement to your advantage. According to published reports, 89% of HR professionals agree that ongoing employee check-ins and feedback are important for positive morale and moment-to-moment workflow engagement. Every employee likes to know that their bosses “care” – list all the ways in which your employee training initiative would help your coworkers grow.

3. Adopt an Objective Goal Methodology

To define solid learning objectives that you can track effectively, you should make them as objective as possible. Abstract objectives which are open to interpretation can often backfire when it comes to employee training. Different people may understand your goals differently and track them improperly.

Use SMART as a go-to goal-setting methodology to ensure that your goals are as practical and understandable as possible. You can break down bigger goals into smaller milestones which employees can track day-by-day. This will further boost their engagement and agency by making sure that almost every action they take adds to their development.

4. Write your Goals with Actionable Verbs

Once you write a list of learning objectives for your employees, you should edit them and add actionable, practical wording into the mix. Actionable verbs will ensure that each person is engaged by what they read enough to care about fulfilling the objectives. Some actionable verbs you should include in your learning objectives are:

  • Demonstrate
  • Develop
  • Complete
  • Report
  • Appraise
  • Distinguish
  • Recognize

Let’s take a look at a learning objective with and without actionable verbs present to distinguish it:

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Actionable wording and verbs can make all the difference in making sure that your employees care about the learning objectives you set up for them. Take time to write the types of objectives you yourself would care to track and fulfill rather than just expect your employees to accept whatever.

5. Practically Introduce your Learning Initiative

With learning objectives now defined, you should apply them as soon as possible and start tracking your employees’ training. There are many platforms for project management that can also serve as great hubs for learning objective tracking. Platforms such as Jira, Asana, and Trello can help you delegate learning objectives throughout your company and let managers and employees track them manually.

The best way to introduce the learning initiative to every employee is to organize a company-wide seminar or webinar and focus on employee training. Regular check-ins, surveys, and feedback from employees should also become the norm, as it will allow you to redefine your learning objectives more clearly. After some growing pains, you will write learning objectives suitable to your employees and their professional affinities more precisely.

The Bottom Line

Kick-starting your company’s L&D from scratch may seem like an enormous undertaking. However, it’s simpler than that. Start by evaluating your current learning processes and set up a long-term end-goal to use as a guiding star. Once you’ve gotten a handle on what kind of training and development is suitable for your coworkers, it will be easier to meet them halfway. The fruits of your labor will slowly manifest in everyone’s improved morale, productivity, and teamwork, marking the successful implementation of your learning objectives and training.