You expect a lot from your collaborators: To produce, to deliver, to reach their goals, and to contribute to the entreprise’s strategic stakes.
In parallel, you’re hired to give them the keys to perform: An adapted work environment; responsibility; accompanying them to make sure they answer the entreprise’s needs; learning processes to improve themselves and continue doing so; yearly trainings; etc.
Today, your difficulty is to identify and deploy the best teaching methods for the collaborator to upskill quickly, be in a mindset of lifelong learning, while still delivering the result expected by the organisation.
In this post, you’ll find 6 techniques used by Wemanity Learning Center, from the Wemanity Group, to accompany, train and fix learning of over 10,000 collaborators every year.
1. The 70/20/10 Method
One of the most trending teaching methods of the past few years is the 70/20/10 method:
- 70% of learning by doing, to better understand what’s being taught
- 20% of learning by experience-sharing from the trainer, other participants, and colleagues
- 10% of learning thanks to traditional training, meaning raw theoretical content
When a training is based on this model, chances for a change of habits from collaborators after the training are much higher. Indeed, participants can practise and experiment their new knowledge, allowing them to identify how they can apply it in their daily work, and therefore to operate change as soon as the following days.
2. Practice Before Theory
Another teaching technique is one that can work as a complement to the previous one. It works extremely well to involve participants into practising and directly discovering the concept instead of going through a phase of learning and theory. In the previous model, we insisted on the distribution of theory and practice. Here, we focus on the order of those.
Collaborators take part in trainings all year long, and those ones are usually crafted in a ‘’standard’’ way, meaning one or several concepts are explained before entering a gamification / experimentation phase on those same concepts. We encourage you to test this new teaching technique: Welcome your participants with an interactive animation, catch their interest, make them experiment, and then and only then, explain the theoretical concept to them, as the link with the training of the day.
You’ll see: Dynamics are totally different in such a method. The participant has more attention as their curiosity is awaken, and they will be more involved in the lifelong learning curve.
3. E-Learning
It can be via a platform (LinkedIn Learning, Udemy) or a gamified solution (Further, Curiculla): E-learning is now an integral part of teaching techniques used by Human Resources to manage the yearly training of collaborators.
At Wemanity Learning Center, we’re certain e-learning brings added value trough three levels:
- To make all collaborators of an organisation aware of a topic (the importance of data within an organisation, the reason why cybersecurity is becoming a major issue for entreprises, etc.), as e-learning is a training method that allows for less costs by industrialising the raise of awareness.
- To apply the concept of flipped teaching, consisting in sending content to learners ahead of the training, so that they can understand and assimilate theory before coming to the training and therefore come with precise questions and ideas on how to apply the concept. E-learning leaves room for on-site training for experimentation and experience-sharing.
To adapt to everyone’s learning pace and allow participants to choose the format and length of topics to learn. Collaborators can therefore be trained all year long.
4. Personalised and Relevant Training Programs
Many entreprises offer mandatory training programs to all collaborators of the organisation. The advantage is this raises awareness of every collaborator on the selected topic. The disadvantage is however that collaborators stop feeling involved and join the training program as they are obliged to do it, instead of choosing to by interest. This issue is very important for Wemanity, who discussed it more deeply in another post on “how to create relevant training groups”.
In order to avoid a loss of interest and enthusiasm in joining a training program, letting collaborators create their own program could turn things around.
An exemple would be a program offering collaborators the choice among a dozen workshops or trainings on strategic topics for the entreprise. The collaborator would be invited to choose 3 to 5 topics and would therefore select what seems more relevant to them, within the framework set by the organisation.
That way, the learner turns into the actor of their training and crafts their own lifelong learning program.
The key to this type of program lies in communication and change management of those custom trainings in order to make sure participants remain active in the program.
5. Serious Games: The Fun Way to Raise Awareness
We discussed this above: Learners need experimenting, practising, living an experience in order to understand and assimilate new concepts, hard or soft skills. Such a better solution to mimic a situation like in real life with a concrete case, a common thread, similar to collaborators’ daily life and experience, in order to innovate and offer a different experience to learners! And what about succumbing to surprise and going deep into a gamified universe to learn professional concepts? It’s proven: Collaborators give more of their time to yearly trainings when they are original!
Several methods exist to craft those serious games:
- Look for inspiration in your favourite board games and adapt them to your concepts. Our facilitator Loïc Losson uses this concept often and loves getting inspiration from Dungeons and Dragons to craft serious games from scratch. He uses existing materials to create new characters (e.g. a development team) who are linked together by a joint mission (the development of an IT project) and will face a troublemaking element (problems the team may encounter during the project). Participants can therefore work on the troublemaking element (let’s say, the problems), but also on their reaction to those problems and their adaptability to change. An original and approved learning technique!
- Create your own escape game. For example, the Wemanity Learning Center developed one to promote the importance of cybersecurity. During this escape game, participants are hacked and must find the solution to get out of the game… Such a training turns out to be an absolute day to remember!
- Use Lego® Serious Play®, a very popular concept with awesome results. This process allows a collective to give birth to ideas, to model a project, and to validate ideas and actions. It can be used for many, various topics, and can be useful to allow decision-making for collaborators on a complex topic.
Ninon Stref, Co-Leader at Wemanity Learning Center, describes her vision of serious games:
“Our trainers are full of ideas to craft personalised serious games according to our clients’ context and core business, and therefore create a link between the game and reality. It’s a thrilling topic for which ideas can be impressive.“
Ninon Stref, Co-Leader of Wemanity Learning Center
6. Quizzes and Other Quick Assessment Tools
Teaching techniques such as quizzes and other quick assessment tools can be improved with the help from innovative interactive and digital tools.
For example, Kahoot is a tool that allows participants to answer questions via a QR code they scan with their smartphones. Answers of the group are visualized afterwards in real time.
At Wemanity, we love testing new tools on a regular basis in order to keep innovating and create different experiences all year long.
Wemanity has been using those techniques to train over 10,000 collaborators since 2020.
We are your ally in the creation of a diversified and original lifelong learning culture!
To learn more about this, follow Wemanity Learning Center on LinkedIn to get other tips and best practices about training.
In Summary
Benjamin Franklin used to say ‘’Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.’’ That’s exactly what we have in mind when using the 70/20/10 method. Trainings from Wemanity are made of 70% experimentation, 20% experience feedbacks, and 10% theory. The collaborator feels more involved with this learning technique.
First of all, allowing collaborators to experiment their knowledge from the first training session hugely opens to possibilities to use this new knowledge in post-training. Moreover, it’s a wrong idea to think a training stops at the end of the session. Organisations must actually offer lifelong learning to their collaborators. That’s the only way to be proactive in giving new skills today that collaborators will need tomorrow.
In 2023, organisations can opt for a diversified and innovative corporate learning strategy. Collaborators will adopt a lifelong learning culture thanks to a good mix of teaching and learning techniques. In that case, use and exploit e-learning, serious games, and experimentation! It’s the key to your training’s success!
