How to Create Employee Training Programs That Stick

By

Amy Vidor

Learning and Development Evangelist at Synthesia

Create engaging interactive video courses in 160+ languages.

It is estimated that while American industries annually spend up to $100 billion on training and development, not more than 10% of these expenditures actually result in transfer to the job.

Does that statistic feel familiar?

Would you be surprised if I told you that it came from a 1988 article about transfer of training?

The point is, it’s been nearly 40 years since Baldwin and Ford introduced their transfer of training model to illustrate how workplace training translates into job performance through inputs, outcomes, and conditions.

While I won’t be doing a deep dive into that model, I bring it up to illustrate that we’ve been having the same conversations (and citing the same statistics) for decades. These conversations lead us back to one place: how can we design programs that translate into measurable outcomes, for our employees and the business.

But it feels like the conversation is finally progressing, and that’s due in large part to AI.

What is an employee training program?

As I reflected on how I would articulate the definition of an employee training program, I did something I often do these days. I went to an LLM and asked them to explain an employee training program to me, like I was 5 years-old. Here’s what they said:

Someone teaches you how to do a job. First you watch them. Then you try it yourself. They help you when you mess up. You keep practicing until you're really good at it. Then you do the real job. But you have to keep doing it. If you stop doing it, you forget. So they keep reminding you and helping you practice again. Eventually it becomes something you just do without thinking.

Truly, it’s that simple.

And yet, enterprises struggle to design effective training programs. That’s because we design, deliver, and then move on. We spend so much time crafting the perfect experience, that we rarely have the capacity to measure whether the capability has been developed.

But the reality is training programs can shape expectations, only if they’re reinforced. If you teach a manager how to coach an employee in an hour session, but never give them an opportunity to practice (let alone gentle reminders of how to do it months later), then how can we expect them to become good coaches?

That’s where AI is changing the way we should think about training programs. Instead of discrete experiences, they’re robust systems that include learning experiences, but are surrounded by scalable implementation efforts, like practice loops and reinforcement.

And for the first time in my career, I’m confident that’s possible to execute sustainably at scale.

Let me show you how.

Phase 1: Analyze

Before you can build any training program you need to know what's not working for your targeted audience.

Grab your detective hat, because we’re doing some sleuthing to find where employee performance is diverging from expectations.

This is a needs analysis. You want to move from generic training requests, like "we need to develop our managers" to concrete behavioral problems, like "our managers are not delivering constructive feedback to their direct reports in a timely manner."

1. Define the performance gap
   What should people be doing? What are they actually doing instead? Where can you observe this behavior and how?
2. Gather evidence
   Search data you have access to, conduct listening sessions or interviews with stakeholders, or directly observe. Multiple sources give you a fuller picture than any single one.
3. Synthesize patterns
   Collate the data to understand root causes of the performance gap. Look for consistent breakdowns across inputs.
4. Validate your findings
   Ask 3–5 stakeholders (a manager, an HR Business Partner, a member of the targeted audience) to review your findings. Don't skip validation!
5. Translate into a capability statement
   Write something like: "After participating in this training program on [X], [target audience] should be able to [observable action] so that [business outcome]."
6. Align on success measures
   Determine what observable evidence can support whether or not your training impacted the performance gap.

Phase 2: Design

The next phase builds off your needs assessment. You're going to take the capability statement you wrote, and the success measures you identified, and begin planning the learning experience.

My capability statement looks something like this:

"After participating in this training program on the GROW coaching framework, newly-promoted, first-time people managers in engineering should be able to ask goal-focused questions to surface obstacles and options and confirm the direct report identifies and owns their own next step so that their direct employees report increased clarity on expectations and meet or exceed performance targets."

I know, it’s a mouthful, but you’re not publishing it anywhere. This is for you to document so you can successfully design an effective training program. You’ll appreciate the level of detail later.

From there, you can also determine what content and assessment methods may support the learning experience. In situations like this, where the training is focused on skill-building, I'd highly recommend identifying opportunities for practice and feedback, whether with facilitated exercises or even with peers.

Phase 3: Develop**

With your learning design in place, you can finally start developing your program. This is what most people think of when they think of "creating a training program" – the content.

But this phase is about more than authoring courses or crafting workshops. It's about developing an intentionally sequenced system that supports learning, practice, feedback, and reinforcement.

Phase 4: Implement**

At this point, it’s time to implement your training plan.

Whenever possible, I recommend running a pilot, ideally for each component of the training program. (You don’t have to run them concurrently, unless you have time for a full run-through.) Pilots give you an opportunity to see where there’s friction in the design and delivery, whether that’s issues with Zoom breakout rooms or instructions in a practice scenario being confusing.

Phase 5: Evaluate**

We've finally arrived at the last (and most important) phase, evaluation. Remember, this is the difference between a program that's completed and a program that drives behavioral change.

That begins with a rigorous measurement of the training. In Phase 2, I briefly mentioned needing to map out assessments, and then skipped right along. Well, I want to come back to it now.

In L&D, I've seen a variety of assessments being used for training programs. That includes diagnostic assessments (pre-training), formative assessments (during training), and summative assessments (post-training), plus behavioral assessments over time.

There are so many ways to approach measuring training programs.