business plan for training program

Business Plan Template for Training And Development

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Are you ready to take your training and development program to the next level? Look no further than ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Training and Development. This template is a game-changer for companies and entrepreneurs looking to establish or expand their training initiatives.

With ClickUp's Business Plan Template, you can:

• Clearly outline your goals, objectives, and strategies to attract investors and secure funding
• Create a comprehensive financial plan to effectively manage your training program's budget
• Streamline your planning process and collaborate with your team in one centralized location

Don't miss out on the opportunity to make your training and development program a success. Get started with ClickUp's Business Plan Template today!

Business Plan Template for Training And Development Benefits

A Business Plan Template for Training and Development can provide numerous benefits to companies and entrepreneurs:

• Clearly define training and development goals and objectives
• Develop a comprehensive strategy for implementing training programs
• Identify and allocate resources effectively to support the training initiatives
• Create a roadmap for measuring the success and impact of the training programs
• Attract investors and secure funding by showcasing a well-thought-out business plan
• Ensure alignment between training and development initiatives and overall business objectives
• Enable effective management and monitoring of training programs
• Provide a framework for continuous improvement and adaptation of training strategies
• Facilitate collaboration and communication among stakeholders involved in training and development efforts

Main Elements of Training And Development Business Plan Template

ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Training and Development is the perfect tool to help you create a comprehensive plan for your training initiatives. Here are the main elements of this template:

• Custom Statuses: Track the progress of each section of your business plan with statuses such as Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, and To Do.
• Custom Fields: Add important details to your plan using custom fields like Reference, Approved, and Section, allowing you to categorize and organize your information.
• Custom Views: Utilize different views to gain insights into your plan, including the Topics view to focus on specific areas, the Status view to track progress, the Timeline view to visualize deadlines, the Business Plan view for an overview of all sections, and the Getting Started Guide view to easily navigate the template.

With ClickUp's Business Plan Template for Training and Development, you'll have all the tools you need to create a successful plan that will propel your training initiatives forward.

How To Use Business Plan Template for Training And Development

If you're looking to create a comprehensive business plan for training and development, the Business Plan Template in ClickUp can be a valuable tool. Follow these six steps to make the most of this template and ensure that your training and development initiatives are well-planned and successful.

1. Define your objectives

Start by clearly defining the objectives of your training and development program. Are you looking to improve employee skills, enhance leadership capabilities, or onboard new hires effectively? Identifying your objectives will help you tailor your plan to meet specific goals.

Use custom fields in ClickUp to outline and track your training and development objectives.

2. Assess your current situation

Evaluate your current training and development practices and identify areas for improvement. Look for gaps in skills, knowledge, or resources that need to be addressed. This will help you determine the specific training programs and initiatives required.

Utilize the Gantt chart in ClickUp to visualize your current situation and plan for necessary changes.

3. Identify target audience and training needs

Identify the specific audience or employees who will benefit from the training and development program. Conduct a needs analysis to determine the skills and knowledge gaps that need to be addressed for each target group. This will help you tailor your training programs to meet their specific needs.

Create tasks in ClickUp to assign training needs analysis to team members and track progress.

4. Develop a training plan

Based on the identified training needs, develop a comprehensive training plan. Outline the specific training programs, workshops, or courses that will be provided. Include details such as content, delivery methods, and timelines. Consider incorporating a mix of internal and external training resources.

Use Board view in ClickUp to create a visual representation of your training plan and track the progress of each training program.

5. Allocate resources and budget

Determine the resources and budget required to implement your training and development plan. This includes identifying trainers or facilitators, training materials, technology platforms, and any other necessary resources. Allocate a budget that covers all aspects of the training program.

Utilize custom fields in ClickUp to track resource allocation and budget for each training program.

6. Implement, evaluate, and adjust

Implement your training and development initiatives according to the plan. Monitor the progress, evaluate the effectiveness of each program, and gather feedback from participants. Use this feedback to make necessary adjustments and improvements to your training and development plan.

Set up Automations in ClickUp to schedule regular evaluations and collect feedback from participants. Use this data to continuously improve your training and development initiatives.

By following these six steps and utilizing the Business Plan Template in ClickUp, you'll be able to create a well-structured and effective plan for training and development in your organization.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Business Plan Template for Training And Development

Companies or entrepreneurs who are looking to establish or expand their training and development programs can use the ClickUp Business Plan Template for Training And Development to streamline the process and ensure all aspects are covered.

To get started, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to create a comprehensive business plan:

• Use the Topics View to break down your business plan into different sections and topics
• The Status View will help you track the progress of each section and topic, with statuses such as Complete, In Progress, Needs Revision, To Do
• The Timeline View will provide a visual representation of your training and development milestones and deadlines
• The Business Plan View will give you an overview of your entire plan, allowing you to easily navigate and make updates
• The Getting Started Guide View will provide step-by-step instructions and guidance on how to use the template effectively
• Utilize the custom fields Reference, Approved, and Section to add additional information, track approvals, and categorize different sections
• Collaborate with team members to brainstorm ideas, set goals, and develop strategies
• Monitor and analyze the progress of your business plan to ensure it aligns with your training and development objectives.
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11 powerful training plan templates and examples for your business.

Your company can get ahead of labor shortages and the ever-evolving skills requirements of the market by investing in employee development.

Training your workers will help you resolve common workplace issues like lack of motivation, poor productivity, inadequate domain knowledge, and confusion or uncertainty about their role.

"Creating a successful employee training plan requires ongoing assessment and adaptation . You must frequently analyze your team's skills and assess any gaps that need to be filled, then design training programs to address those needs and provide ongoing support for growth and development." Sarah Watson, Chief Operating Officer at BPTLAB, personality testing solutions provider .

But if it's your first time designing and executing a structured training program, you might need guidance on how to begin or what to include in your plan.

We've put together some of the best employee training plan examples, templates, and checklists. Use them as a starting point when building robust training programs for your organization.

❗️ 7 Must-haves in an employee training plan template

There are different kinds of training opportunities that you can offer your employees. And templates tend to come in different shapes, forms, and structures because they are made by people with varying organizational needs and goals.

However, whether you're creating your own or building upon someone else's, here are some essential elements that any good training policy template should have.

Training objectives 

List out how you hope the training program will benefit your workforce and company. Your goals must be specific, measurable, and relevant. Learn more about soft skills and hard skills . Employee training assessment can also be helpful to understand your employees needs.

Type/method of training

How do you intend to deliver the training? Will it be instructor-led, self-paced, virtual, in-person, or blended training? Or maybe you want to use a role-playing, virtual training , gamification , on-the-job training and mentoring approach? Think about your options and note them down in this section.

➡️ Check out our new hire training plan for the ultimate training for your new hires.

Training curriculum and materials

This column in your training plan template should cover what employees will learn during the training. Mention the learning resources and materials you'll need or provide and any regulatory guidelines that employees and course creators must follow. 

Audience and stakeholders

This template section is for defining who needs the training, who will be creating courses, conducting, or overseeing the training, and the expectations for each of the roles. 

Learning outcomes 

What specific knowledge, skills, or competencies do you want employees to take away from the training?

We recommend first filling a skills matrix , to understand your people's current skills levels and identify any gaps.

For instance, your marketing team has a training objective to improve their social media advertising skills. The learning outcome you should see after training is a strong understanding of Facebook Ads.

What is the duration of the training program? What dates and times will training sessions take place? What are the deadlines for completing performance milestones? When will you check in with employees to see how they are progressing?

KPIs for effectiveness

Finally, every training plan template must have a field where you can define how you will measure the effectiveness of your training efforts. 

Tip: Note the KPIs or metrics you will use as a benchmark.

📝 11 Examples of employee training plan templates

We've put together these ready-to-use training templates and checklists that you can customize to suit your company's learning and development needs.

1. Training needs assessment template

What this template includes: This training survey helps you uncover insights about gaps in employee performance, knowledge, and skills. It tells you what your workers want to learn, their preferred learning methods, and their schedule.

When to use it: To assess your organization's training needs and know where the skill gaps are for each department and individual employee before you begin planning a training program.

Why it matters: This information will enable you to identify your business case for training and design targeted learning and development experiences that produce better outcomes for you and your workforce.

2. New-hire training template

What the new-hire training template includes: This template covers everything that new hires need to know to help them settle into their role and do their jobs to the best of their abilities.

It contains essential knowledge, training, and skills that you want to equip new hires with, such as:

• company policies;
• role descriptions;
• starter projects; 
• chain of command;
• standard operating procedures;
• orientation, integration, and performance review timelines.

When to use it: Use your training plan to set new employees up for success from day one and guide them through their first few months or year on the job.

Why it matters: How you onboard and train new hires can make or mar their experience and performance at your company.

"Investing in employees at the start with a well-thought-out and comprehensive training program demonstrates a willingness to invest in their growth, which leads to enhanced loyalty, meaning you won't have to fill the position again anytime soon." — Mitch Chailland, President of Canal HR . ‍

Tip:💡 Make sure to check out our blog post on how long onboarding should take and the best practices.

3. New hire training checklist

What the new hire training checklist includes: You'll find all the logistical items, preboarding activities, and action plans you will need to manage to guide new hires through your onboarding and training process from the moment they accept your job offer to their first annual performance check-in.

When to use it: Start ticking off items from your checklist to prepare your new hire for their first day and acclimate them to their new role, team, and company in the early months.

Why it matters: The strength of your new hire training will determine: - the employee's experience with your company;  - their speed to productivity;  - how well they perform in their role.

A checklist keeps things from falling through the cracks, guaranteeing all new hires a uniform onboarding and training experience.

➡️ Check out the new hire training checklist .

4. Pre-training checklist template

What the pre-training checklist template includes: This template breaks down the materials, schedules, tools, tasks, and activities you'll need to create, arrange, track, and execute to conduct a training session successfully.

When to use it: Create a training curriculum, prepare a memorandum, invite instructors and trainees, get feedback from participants, and disaster-proof upcoming training schemes by working through the checklist.

Why it matters: The last thing you want is to pour your time and energy into planning a training only to realize on D-day that you forgot essential elements.

You want to ensure that you remembered to:

• Book a conference room. 
• Send out email invites to some employees.
• Print out enough assessment forms.

Preview of Pre-Training checklist template

☑️ Prepare training memorandum and email invite.

• Determine which employees are mandated or free to attend.
• Provide training agenda. 
• Provide training date, time, location, and other pertinent information.

Completion date: 2 weeks before training day.

Assigned to: HR.

☑️ Confirm attendance.

• Make sure all mandated attendees have signed up.
• Book a suitable conference room.

Completion date: 1 week before training day. 

➡️ Download the complete training checklist in excel .

5. Individual employee training plan template

What the individual employee training plan includes: This template gives you an overview of where a specific employee currently is regarding skills and performance and where they need to be. It details the following:

• Employees' skill gap ;
• Training goals;
• Development actions;
• Training methods and materials;
• Learning outcomes;
• Progress metrics;
• Training timeline.

When to use it: Use this template to sharpen an employee's existing skills or prepare them to transition into a different role. Or as a component of your performance review process to support staffers who seem to lag behind before their performance becomes a severe issue.

Why it matters: A proactive training approach boosts employee productivity and efficiency by pinpointing the skills they are lacking and helping them develop those areas.

Tip: Sit down with the employee who needs the training and work with them to develop their training plan.

➡️ Get the individual employee training plan template.

6. Employee development plan template

What the employee development plan template includes: This template acts as a guide for documenting and nurturing each employee's professional growth plans. It covers:

• their career goals;
• the skills and knowledge they need to reach their goals;
• the training and actions they will take to gain these skills;
• the timeline for completing the training and hitting milestones.

When to use it: Create development plans to:

• Speed up time to productivity for new hires as part of the onboarding
• Improve performance of underperforming employees
• Help members of your team grow their skills and advance their careers, whether that means progressing toward a management role or making a lateral move.

Why it matters: Hiring new employees, especially at a higher skill tier, is far more costly and time-consuming than providing upskilling and career development opportunities for your current employees.

➡️ Get the employee development plan template.

7. 70-20-10 development plan template

What the 70-20-10 development plan template includes: A 70-20-10 training plan gives you a framework for structuring your development programs using:

• experiential, 
• peer-to-peer, and 
• formal training methods

To maximize engagement and performance.

When to use it: Use this template before launching your program to divide your training into sections, so everyone knows which skills trainees will learn on the job, from their peers, or through formal training sessions like seminars, presentations, and courses.

Why it matters: Offering employees the 70-20-10 blended learning experience supports better knowledge retention and the development of practical skills.

➡️ Download the 70-20-10 development plan template.

8. Training matrix template

What the training matrix template includes: This template supplies all the data you'll need to get a comprehensive view of the state of your training initiatives, such as:

• employee names, roles, and departments;
• active training courses and topics;
• learner progress;
• course completion rate;
• failure rate.

When to use it: Keep track of specialized and company-wide past and present training efforts and the individual employees or teams that have participated in them with this template.

Why it matters: Building a training matrix is a great way to monitor your active training programs, how trainees progress through the program, and the training needs you should be working towards meeting.

➡️ Get the training matrix template .

9. Leadership training plan template

What the leadership training plan includes: Get an overview of your company's current leadership abilities and the areas where there's room for improvement. This template addresses the following:

• training needs assessment;
• training objectives;
• your leadership training topics ;
• the core leadership skills your (future) leaders will obtain from the training;
• the training methods and formats you'll use to facilitate this; 
• your use of facilities and stakeholders.

When to use it: Provide your workers with leadership training to develop and improve the skills they'll require to manage a team effectively. Plus, use leadership training to teach about your organization's code of conduct for supervisors.

Why it matters: A leadership training plan example allows you to transform your newly promoted employees and staffers with management potential from "actors" to "directors."

➡️ Get the leadership training plan template .

10. Product training template

What the product training plan includes: This template makes it easy to train your employees and other stakeholders on new or existing products. It presents information about the following:

• the product's benefits and features;
• product use cases;
• how the product works;
• why it is better than that of your competitors ( product comparison ).

When to use it: Break out this template whenever a new team member starts in your company to get them up to speed with your products. Alternatively, use product training to help current employees learn everything there is to know about newly launched offerings.

Why it matters: To convincingly sell your product to customers, your employees must first understand its WHAT, WHY, and HOW.

11. DEI training plan template

What the DEI training plan template includes: This diversity, equity, and inclusion template is designed as a microlearning journey. It touches on everything from why DEI matters to your company's DEI policies and aspirations, as well as actions employees can take to tackle bias and foster inclusivity.

When to use it: Put this ready-to-use course to work to educate new and existing employees about DEI topics so that everyone feels respected, safe, welcome, and empowered in the workplace.

Why it matters: A lot goes into designing an effective diversity training initiative. Work from a structured template to keep track of all the moving parts and ensure you deliver consistent messaging about the importance of cultivating a healthy and inclusive workplace culture.

➡️ Get the DEI training plan template .

💪 Why use a training plan template?

A training plan template is a document that outlines how you intend to carry out your training initiatives. It breaks down what has to happen to ensure the success of your training efforts.

Here are some advantages a good training plan template can offer you.

1. Saves you time

The more time you use in creating your training plan, the longer it will take to launch your training program and start upskilling your workers .

Rather than spending days or months strategizing and building your training plan from scratch, you can fill out a template or modify it to suit your needs. Again, this frees up time you can spend on other important tasks.

2. Makes the training process less stressful

A training plan template streamlines your company's training journey by providing a roadmap outlining the steps you need to take to achieve specific goals.

It takes the pressure and worries out of analyzing training needs, preparing strategies and objectives, and developing a curriculum to support individual learning goals. 

Templates help you address your organization's present and future skill gaps.

3. Keeps things on track

Without a training plan template, it's easy for things to fall through the cracks because you may not be able to remember or keep track of all details.

You can invest a lot of money and time only to end up with a training program that doesn't deliver on its promises or meet the expectations you set for it. 

A template helps you stay on schedule and manage all the components of your training process so that everything flows smoothly.

4. Helps anticipate employees' training needs

To create successful skills development programs, you first need to know what areas your workers need upskilling or reskilling to remain competitive in their careers. And to ensure the continued survival and profitability of your business.

A training plan template takes the guesswork out of the equation, empowering you to design and execute engaging training programs that help your employees grow as individuals and as a team.

➡️ Learn how to create an effective employee training plan in 9 steps.

➡️ Plan your training with Zavvy

Training plan templates can be a helpful guide for standardizing your training initiatives and mapping out how you will empower your workforce with the skills they need to grow and perform better.

But to build sustainable and scalable training initiatives, you also need the right training tool.

Zavvy's training solutions are ideal from onboarding onwards to create a continuous learning culture for your company.

Zavvy makes it easy to:

• Plan, create, distribute, and manage your learning and development content in one place.
• Automate your entire training program to reach people with the right content at the right time with ready-to-use training courses .
• Deliver effective and engaging learning experiences with creative training solutions like microlearning, peer learning, and learning in the flow of work.
• Develop leaders and everyone else based on data with precision.
• Track course completion, engagement, learner performance, and training ROI.

Ready to build a worry-free training program? Book a free demo anytime.

Berfu is an Employee Experience Specialist at Zavvy. She has a background in learning psychology and helps our customers get the most out of their people enablement programs.

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A culture of learning & empowerment: Our guide to creating an employee training plan

If you’ve recognized a need for broader skill sets and knowledge within your organization, you’re not alone. 46% of learning and development leaders say skill shortages are escalating within their companies, likely due to an increased reliance on automation tools and shifts in the way people work.* 

In the face of constant change, businesses need to take a more proactive approach to development by implementing strategically designed training plans. Why? They act as repeatable learning processes that meet long-term business goals and cater to employee needs. As a result, they allow you to deliver on your training initiatives more successfully and efficiently while driving employee engagement and satisfaction.

In this article, we share what makes training plans impactful and walk you through the steps needed to implement one within your own company. We even include a training plan template you can use to create your own.

* LinkedIn , 2023 ‍

Why is a proper training plan important?

An employee training plan is a written resource that details how your company will approach a specific training initiative. If, for example, you want to offer leadership training to independent contributors interested in becoming managers, the learning and development (L&D) team could create a plan to ensure that training is results-driven, effective, and aligned with company goals.

Training plans play a central role in moving specific learning initiatives forward, which is why organizations shouldn’t confuse them with employee development plans . In contrast to training plans, which are skill-based course guides for groups of employees or even the whole company, development plans are long-term, high-level guidelines for individual employees that may encompass training plans to build specific skills. As such, training plans are useful tools for taking short-term action on the gaps managers and their reports identified when putting together a personal development plan.

Some key benefits of training plans include:

• Increased retention rates — 76% of respondents to SHRM’s 2022 Learning and Development Executive Summary said they were more likely to stay with a company that offered continuous training. Training plans are ideal methods to provide those opportunities as they streamline the employee development process and enable L&D teams to deliver more frequent, higher-quality training opportunities.
• Enhanced productivity and growth — Upskilling staff means they can achieve important goals and deliver the results required to keep the company operating at a high level. That’s one reason why research shows that organizations that take training seriously are 59% more likely to grow .
• Better adaptability — As companies seek to meet the challenges of remote and hybrid work, training plans can empower employees with the skills they need to adapt to the ongoing advancements in technology and changes in the world of work. We’re not the only ones who share that sentiment: 72% of employers think training helps their organization stay dynamic and flexible.
• More empowered employees — Investing in learning and development should be a priority for any organization that cares about people enablement . Why? It pays off. According to our 2023 report, 89% of employees agree that people enablement has benefitted their workplace.

“In the past, we had a laissez-faire approach to training, allowing employees to select any kind they wanted. This sometimes resulted in misalignment between the training content and our company culture or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). To remedy this, we’ve since adopted a more structured approach, designing our training programs to align with our company’s culture and objectives. This has ensured that every piece of training employees receive is relevant and applicable to their role within our organization.”  — Jennifer Morehead, CEO of Flex HR , on the value a training plan has brought to their business

6 steps to outlining your employee training plan

Your company needs a step-by-step strategy to develop a training plan that can empower team members with the right learning resources and meet long-term organizational needs at the same time. ‍

1. Identify knowledge & skills gaps

Skills gaps within your organization likely have more to do with technological advancements and market fluctuations than with employee competence. Bearing that in mind, it’s essential to consider short and long-term business goals when assessing skills gaps. Let’s say one of your objectives is to make artificial intelligence (AI) more central to the way you run your organization. You may identify that team members are still unsure how to apply these new tools to increase the business’s operational efficiency.

To discover where your current upskilling and learning opportunities are:

• Survey employees — Even a short, two-question pulse survey asking staff what skills they need to better execute their roles can provide useful insights. ‍
• Re-examine your career progression framework — If you’ve made updates to your company structure, there may be new skills or competencies that employees need to flourish in their current roles. ‍
• Study your industry and competitors — Leverage your network or reach out to peers to learn what skills and knowledge gaps they’re currently facing and prioritizing. ‍

🛩️ Discover what propels employees forward Leapsome’s Impact Drivers help you quickly identify what motivates employee survey responses.  👉 Learn more

2. Determine training objectives

Now that you have a better grasp of the skills employees are missing or need to expand on, you can begin to outline a set of objectives that’ll guide each plan. While your training plan objectives should align with your company vision, it’s best to keep them more attainable and specific than any high-level, long-term business goals. 

Let’s look at some common training objectives:

• Enhancing a technical skill or competency with software
• Developing intercultural competencies that support diversity, equity, and inclusion
• Expanding industry and regulatory knowledge
• Improving customer service skills
• Sharpening decision-making skills
• Becoming more confident with conflict resolution techniques
• Managing time more effectively

🔎 When considering a set of training objectives, stakeholders should ask themselves these questions: What’s the desired outcome of this training? How will the new skills or knowledge contribute to our business goals?  How will trainees benefit from the new skills or knowledge? What do employees need to do to succeed with this training plan? How will trainers or leaders know when employees have successfully completed the training? How will trainers overcome challenges to the training, if any?

3. Choose the type of training

Each training plan should invite you to consider what methods and resources are most appropriate to meet skills gaps, stay within budget, and accommodate team members’ needs. Consider, for instance, that DEI skills training for managers may require sensitivity and involvement from expert speakers, as well as focus on topics like intersectionality, unconscious bias , microaggressions, and power dynamics. This is markedly different from, for example, a simple training session on how to use a new type of software. Similarly, think about how distinct training remote employees can be from training an in-office team. The various needs and requirements relating to different skill sets should be taken into consideration when planning this out. 

Let’s explore a few different training plans and discuss the specific competencies each one might address. ‍

New hire training plans

Typically part of the orientation and onboarding process , new hire training plans focus on familiarizing new employees with job expectations, policies, and procedures. The objective is to integrate recent joiners into their new team so they can become comfortable and reach their full potential quickly and sustainably. ‍

Customer service training plans

Sales and customer relationship management are challenging skills to build, so this type of training should provide resources and techniques that employees can review to retain customers and bring in more revenue, such as client relationship building and consultative selling.  ‍

Technical training plans

This type of training isn’t only for companies that specialize in IT and software. Organizations that rely on powerful tools to operate their businesses need to provide specialized resources — and ample time for employees to learn about and practice with them — so they can get the most out of their investment. ‍

4. Establish how to measure effectiveness

Evaluating the success of your training plan is vital as it highlights possible refinements and improvements which ultimately will increase the return on investment of training for the business. Doing so also helps gauge whether the training is meeting your established objectives and helping you make progress on broader company goals.

Great training should positively impact different areas, like performance, productivity, engagement, and retention. That’s why you should utilize multiple approaches to measure effectiveness, such as:

• Completion rates — Quickly determine whether training is too difficult or too long and investigate what might be hindering people’s progress.
• Survey scores — Gather post-training employee feedback via anonymous surveys to determine whether the plan succeeds in enhancing skill sets, allowing team members to perform their current roles more effectively, or helping them move to a higher position.
• Percentage of goals reached — Observing how many team members are reaching their individual training goals means you can understand how quickly people are progressing through the program. Leapsome’s flexible Goals module allows you to set both OKRs and SMART goals and track results in real time.
• Qualitative feedback — Leaders can set up 1:1 meetings with training participants to discuss how everything’s going and explore what could be improved. ‍

5. Set your timeline

Depending on what you need your training plan to achieve, you may choose to establish a stricter or more flexible and self-paced timeline. For instance, mandatory short-term technical training might require a hard deadline, while employees should be enabled to complete voluntary time management training at their leisure.

The key is giving team members a visual tool to track their progress throughout the course, which is why you should break your timeline down with the following :

• A training schedule — For courses happening in multiple sessions over several months, provide employees with a weekly or monthly schedule so they can plan their time accordingly.
• Checklists — For self-paced courses, allow staff to mark tasks off a list of projects and activities.
• Milestones — Managers can let participants know when they’ve reached specific achievements or met certain targets. ‍

6. Create & choose training materials

Creating materials internally helps make training more relevant and specific to your business goals. It also allows you to keep your messaging more consistent with your company values and tailor teaching materials as you go. However, there are a few benefits to sourcing training externally, which can do the following:

• Provides external perspectives to diversify your insights, broaden your thinking, and introduce new approaches to problem-solving.
• Allows access to professionals with specific expertise or specialized certifications.
• Supports employees in connecting with industry experts and helps them build their professional networks.
• Is less time intensive than creating plans internally, as resources and materials are created separately.

While they require an initial time investment , in-house materials can be just as effective and may include:

• Webinars or online presentations
• Training videos
• Games and bite-sized courses
• Online forums or internal communities 
• Interactive elearning modules

🕴️ Tailor-made learning that engages your people Leapsome’s Learning module lets you incorporate external resources and customize training so it’s always relevant to employee needs. 👉 Learn more

Employee training plan template

Employee training plans should be easy for leaders, managers, and team members to understand, follow, and implement. Here’s a sample template you can fill in — simply tweak the details and structure based on your branding, messaging, and needs. ‍

Course overview

This is where you’ll write the following:

• The name of your organization
• The course name
• The department, team, position, or specific employee the course is for
• How long it will last, especially if the course isn’t self-paced
• When the course was last updated ‍

Training objectives

Clearly state your learning goals for the course. What short- or long-term objectives do you want the training to achieve? For example, if you’re building a management training plan, your goals may include:

• Helping managers develop their confidence as coaches and mentors
• Sharpening decision-making and problem-solving skills
• Better identifying strengths and areas for improvement in direct reports
• Enhancing team collaboration and effectiveness ‍

Delivery methods

Explain whether the training will take place in-person or online and give a brief overview of its structure. For example, for new hire training, the learning process may be completely asynchronous, and trainees might be expected to spend two hours a day working through tasks, activities, and quizzes over the course of a week. ‍

Training content, schedule, or modules

Here, you’ll break the training down into smaller components to help employees digest the information and stay organized and on task. If, for example, team members need to complete a set of learning modules and activities to finish their training, you can provide a checklist here. ‍

Monitoring & follow-up

Explain what metrics and tools participants and organizers will use to measure their progress and success throughout the training.

For example, L&D teams may ask trainees to track progress throughout the course by monitoring their module completion rates, reviewing scores on quizzes and tests, and updating their individual training goals. Then, after the training is completed, leaders will follow up in regularly scheduled 1:1s and discuss how the employee is implementing the training in their day-to-day role. ‍

What to avoid when planning employee training

Implementing a new training plan takes trial and error and may not always produce the results you hope to see right away. However, taking note of common training plan pitfalls ahead of time can help eliminate the need for extensive refinement down the road. Some possible issues include:

• Setting unrealistic expectations — Making your plan too ambitious could result in discouraged employees who feel it’s out of touch and impossible to complete. When in doubt, keep timelines relatively short and make objectives as specific and achievable as possible. 
• Providing employees with insufficient time — Even if training isn’t mandatory, not giving people enough free time to take advantage of learning opportunities might send the message that their success isn’t your priority. Allow employees to carve out time away from tasks to complete training, and encourage them to create recurring calendar blockers to focus on their personal development.
• Not explaining ‘the why’ — If you’ve created training plans in response to specific organizational challenges or skills gaps, let team members know. Otherwise, failing to be transparent about your reason for implementing training might lead people to draw unfavorable conclusions or lead to a lack of motivation. 
• Not asking for feedback — Employee input is a powerful way to evaluate the effectiveness of your training plans. Without those insights, you risk investing in training that doesn‘t align with your team’s needs or preferred ways of learning.
• Implementing a plan that doesn’t align with individual goals — Not taking their personal development goals into account might prevent trainees from feeling a sense of empowerment and ownership over their new skills, which can harm motivation and engagement — not only during the training phase. ‍

Train & develop your people with Leapsome

By providing a structured, strategic approach to learning, a well-crafted training plan can help upskill staff members more efficiently while addressing the knowledge gaps that might be holding your company back. 

Still, it takes time and collaboration to gather the data, resources, and materials you need to develop and implement a successful training plan. What’s more, you may find that your current people enablement tech stack overcomplicates the process.

Leapsome is the perfect platform for organizations that want to simplify planning and offer training at scale. Users can take advantage of our Surveys and Meetings modules to collect employee feedback, our Goals module to track learning objectives against company targets, and our Learning module to deliver interactive courses. Plus, configurable analytics dashboards allow you to monitor completion and success in real time so you can tweak your training plans on the fly.

👊 A platform that helps you roll with the punches Leapsome’s Learning module integrates with surveys, goal-tracking, and powerful analytics so you can roll out training efficiently and adapt it as you go. 👉 Book a demo

FAQs about employee training plans

1. what is an employee training plan.

An employee training plan is a centralized resource — typically a document — that a company creates to systematize a specific training initiative. It’s essential for organizations that want to: 

• Take a more structured approach to learning and development
• Facilitate autonomy around training 
• Create more consistency across all training materials and courses
• Roll out future training initiatives efficiently ‍

2. What should be included in a training plan?

Employee training plans should include these four elements:

• Objectives — Explain why you’re implementing the training and the skills and competencies employees need to build. Perhaps your company is transitioning to a more digitalized business environment due to the ongoing advancement in technology and wants to train the team in digital literacy and cybersecurity awareness.
• Key metrics — The short and long-term skills team members want to develop will also help you decide what key performance indicators (KPIs) you’ll use to track the training’s progress and success.
• Delivery methods — Determine what setting, timeline, and curriculum would work best to facilitate and meet your objectives.
• Action plan — Specify how training will happen step-by-step. How many learning sessions will there be? What tasks or homework will trainees need to complete? How will they be monitored? ‍

3. How do you write an employee training plan?

When designing and writing an employee training plan, people and learning and development (L&D) teams should:

• Perform a needs analysis to determine what performance issues or skills gaps are currently holding the team or organization back. There are also many useful tools to support your team in working out what these gaps are.
• Develop a set of measurable goals you want your training plan to meet in alignment with those gaps and business objectives.
• Collaborate with stakeholders to decide on content and training methods. We’d recommend consulting a well-rounded team to ensure the training is relevant to the business and the employees who will participate.
• Assign ownership. Decide who’s responsible for each aspect of training, including sourcing materials, tracking success, and checking in with team members about their progress.
• Write your plan and share it with stakeholders and trainees. ‍

4. Is there a difference between employee training programs & plans?

A training program involves a series of long-term, strategic employee development initiatives, as a training plan is a single document that outlines how to approach a specific training initiative. A training program is more comprehensive and considers all of your company’s training needs and objectives, while training plans are the focused, written resources within a training program that deliver on those objectives in detail.

Leapsome Team

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How to Create an Employee Training Plan [With Templates + Checklists]

Learn step-by-step how to create a customized training plan for your employees. Use our free templates and checklists to help.

Last Updated

May 17 2022

I think we’d all agree that effective employee training is crucial to business success.

(In fact, roughly 70% of teams are investing more into employee training and skill building than in pre-pandemic times.)

As with all areas of your business, effective training requires effective and strategic planning. Here, we’ll be looking at the key elements of various employee training plans — and discussing all that goes into creating templates for all training occasions.

What is an Employee Training Plan?

An employee training plan is a document that describes a training initiative in clear detail.

While individual plans vary in scope, all plans typically explain:

• The purpose and goals of the initiative
• Who is involved, and in what capacity
• How the training will proceed

Training plans can be created for individual employees, specific segments of your team, or for your entire organization to take part in. Plans can apply to short-term (and even one-off) training initiatives, or to more long-term training campaigns.

Throughout this article, we’ll be discussing the many common threads that run through your various employee training plans — and how to use these common threads to develop effective templates for your training initiatives..

Essential Elements of an Employee Training Plan

On that note, let’s take a look at the key elements all employee training plans should include regardless of other variables.

Objectives and Rationale

All training plans should explicitly state the purpose of the initiative, in terms of both the trainee and the company as a whole.

This purpose should be backed by clear rationale, connecting the trainee’s efforts to their future performance — and, in turn, connecting their growth to overall business growth.

(An accompanying business requirements document will be needed to flesh this info out. Check out our recent post for more.)

Targeted KPIs & Measurement Methods

Employee training plans should also define key performance indicators as a way of measuring performance and success.

You’ll also define overarching business KPIs, again connecting employee and team performance to changes in your bottom line.

Audience and Stakeholders

Training templates should identify all parties involved in the campaign — and define the specific role each party will play in the process.

This includes:

• The learner(s)
• The trainer(s)
• The project managers/leaders
• The executive stakeholders

You might include additional info as to how these roles relate to one another, too. Defining dependencies between trainer and trainee, for example, will help streamline the experience for both parties.

Timeline and Scheduling

All employee training templates should provide a timeline for the initiative in question.

Depending on the circumstances, this timeline might define:

• Schedules for training phases
• Deadlines for performance milestones
• Dates for manager check-ins

Training Methods and Procedures

This is the “meat and potatoes” of the employee training template.

The first part of this section will define the training method(s) you’ll be using throughout the campaign.

A few examples here:

• Instructor-led training
• Mentoring and coaching
• Simulation and role-playing

You’ll then provide a detailed description of the learning curriculum, along with checklists and other materials to guide the project forward.

Finally, your employee training templates should include a section listing the various resources you’ll need throughout the campaign.

Some examples of resources you may need:

• Standard operating procedures and other instructional documentation
• Tools and technology to complete tasks and engage with instructional leaders
• External resources (from instructional content to third-party trainers)

Common Types of Training Plan Templates

While you can (and should) create templates for all types of training purposes, you’ll at least want to have the following templates at the ready.

Pre-Training Needs Assessments

Needs assessments are completed before you even begin planning a future training initiative.

In completing a pre-training needs assessment, you’ll:

• Identify gaps in employee skills, knowledge, and/or performance
• Define key performance indicators and other success metrics
• Define business case for training
• Define the best training format and method for the situation
• Set an agenda for the upcoming initiative

( Source / Pre-training checklists can also help prepare the learner for the upcoming session.)

Though you’ll get into more detail when creating the actual training plan, this will set the stage for your efforts moving forward.

Employee Development Plans

Development plans are created for each individual member of your team, and are used to track and facilitate professional growth over time.

Here, you’ll document:

• The employee’s immediate and long-term career goals
• The knowledge and skills they’ll need to attain these goals
• The specific training sessions that will help them learn these skills

Employee development plan templates also have projected timelines for completing training sessions and reaching other professional milestones.

Training Plans for Employee Onboarding

An effective employee onboarding process starts with a solid plan.

Onboarding templates will include information such as:

• The new hire’s responsibilities (with accompanying checklist)
• Who else is involved in the onboarding process, and how
• A timeline for completion of onboarding processes (for both employee and team leads)

( Source / Again, checklists come in handy here.)

Employee onboarding templates should also include additional resources (as attachments, links, etc.) the individual will need to complete the process as planned.

Leadership Training and Development Plans

Leadership training and development plans provide a comprehensive view of your team’s current leadership capabilities — and where you’ll be making improvements in the future.

Specifically, this template will help you:

• Develop your team’s definition of “leader” and “leadership”
• Identify trainings needed to develop your management and executive teams’ skills
• Trace leadership development to improved team performance — and improved business outcomes

Benefits of Creating Employee Training Plan Templates

To be sure, spending the time to create effective employee training plan templates will benefit your team in a number of ways.

For starters, having a plan in place for every training campaign you put together will improve the effectiveness of each campaign from the get-go. This, in turn, will lead to a number of long-term benefits, like:

• Improved employee and team performance
• Increased job satisfaction and talent retention
• Improved teamwork and stronger company culture

Proactively creating employee training templates before you actually need them will be beneficial to your efforts, as well.

• Consistency : Creating training plan templates allows you to take a consistent approach to specific types of employee training sessions. In turn, you can be sure that each training initiative you create uniformly follows best practices and standard procedures.
• Efficiency : With comprehensive training templates in place, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel with every initiative you put together. Just find the template that fits your needs, and hit the ground running.
• Agility : Employee training plan templates are built to be flexible and customizable. While again not requiring you to start from scratch, these templates will allow you to easily tailor your upcoming training initiatives based on your current needs and circumstances.

Best Practices for Creating Employee Training Plan Templates

There’s more to creating effective employee training plan templates than just doing a quick Google search and using another company’s documents.

(Truth be told, even the ones we’ve provided aren’t fully usable in their current condition.)

While these existing templates give you a good start, you’ll still need to tailor them to make them your own — and to ensure they have a positive impact on your team’s training efforts.

As you tweak these training templates to fit your needs, make sure you follow these best practices.

Create Templates for High-Priority Training Purposes

Over time, your goal is to have a template prepared for every possible type of employee training you put on.

But, if you’re just starting to create your template library, you’ll want to prioritize certain types of training templates based on your current situation.

Some factors to consider:

• The impact the training initiative will have on employee, team, and business performance
• How frequently the training takes place within your organization
• How standard (or varied) the training sessions need to be

Again, this all depends on where things currently stand for your company. If, for example, you’re bringing new hires on rapidly and routinely, you’d need to be confident that your onboarding plan is seamless and effective.

(Conversely, if you’re in the midst of a hiring freeze, you can put your onboarding template to the backburner while you focus on more relevant training initiatives.)

On top of streamlining your high-priority trainings, this approach will allow you to give proper attention to the templates that may not be a priority at the moment — but that are no less important to team productivity in the long run.

Get Input From All Stakeholders

Everyone that’s involved in the training in question should also be involved in the creation of the training template.

• Trainers/Facilitators
• Trainees/Learners (current and former)
• Performance Assessors
• Executive team members

Trainers, leaders, and other decision-makers will of course be in charge of developing the templates — whether from scratch or via tweaking a publicly-available document. Here, discussion will be needed to ensure all necessary sections and relevant information is presented clearly within the document.

Trainers, assessors, and even former trainees can help with organization, presentation, and language usage within your templates. In turn, your templates will become more digestible specifically for those who will be using and relying on them most.

In getting input from all involved stakeholders, you can be nearly certain that your training templates provide everything they need to know to get moving.

Communicate Context Within Your Training Plan Templates

Going along with the above, your employee training templates should allow for contextualization of all relevant info.

In other words, it needs to be crystal clear why the information presented in the document is relevant to the situation at hand.

As we’ve discussed, your training plans should always explain:

• What the training entails
• What your performance and business goals are
• Why training, specifically, is what’s needed to attain these goals

This will give your stakeholders a more holistic, “real-world” understanding of your upcoming training sessions.

(This, as opposed to approaching each initiative as if it exists in a vacuum — which would only hinder your efforts moving forward.)

Make Data-Driven Improvements to Your Training Plan Templates

Okay, so the whole reason you’re creating these templates is to use them repeatedly, making relatively minimal changes with each use.

But, you never want to think of these templates as being completely set in stone.

Rather, you should always be looking for ways to improve upon the training templates that are already working wonders for your organization.

(In some cases, improving your templates may be the necessary step toward improving your team’s training-related efforts altogether.)

At the center of these improvement efforts:

This may include:

• Training performance outcomes
• Stakeholder feedback
• Changes in trainee and business performance

You never want to make concrete changes to your employee training templates without concrete evidence and rationale to back them up. Building intentional data analysis into your template development processes ensures you always take this step — and ensures you never adjust your templates based on anything less than the facts.

Document Template Changes (and Lessons Learned)

Internal documentation is a key part of the process, in two ways.

For one, you want to keep a record of the actual changes you make to your training plan templates over time. This will help you track the evolution of these documents — which can in turn help you identify what works (and what doesn’t) when developing employee training plans.

(And, if you need to revert to a previous version of a template, this will make the process super simple.)

It’s also crucial to document the reasons for any changes you make to your templates over time. More than just improving your approach to template creation, this knowledge can potentially allow you to make improvements to your overall approach to employee training as a whole.

The fact is, all relevant knowledge and information your team possesses with regard to employee training can potentially be transformative for your organization.

…but only if you identify it, document it, and make it easily accessible to your teammates and stakeholders.

Which is where Helpjuice comes in.

With our knowledge base software, teams can document any and all organization knowledge with ease. What’s more, you can then use Helpjuice to make collaborative changes to your employee training templates in real-time — based specifically on your data and the insight you’ve gleaned from it all.

Ready to get started? Try Helpjuice completely free for 14 days now!

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How to Write a Martial Arts Business Plan With Examples

School Business Plan

Language School Business Plan

Music School Business Plan

Swim School Business Plan

Youth Mentoring Program Business Plan

Summer Camp Business Plan

Coaching Business Plan

After-School Program Business Plan

Tutoring Business Plan

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Did you find what you are looking for.

Thinking of starting a school or a coaching business? Or is it about vocational school?

Well, no matter what’s your business segment in the education and training sector—you need a solid business plan to turn it into a long-term success.

This library of education and training business plan samples here can inspire and guide you as you begin to plan your business. So, don’t worry; we got you covered on that part.

Let’s learn more about these sample training and education plans, starting with their benefits.

Benefits of using an industry-specific business plan example

Believe it or not, using an industry-specific business plan example is the best and probably the quickest way of writing a business plan.

Doubt it? Hold, this may change your perception; an extended list of the benefits of using an industry-specific business plan template.

• Inspiration : Reading a business-specific template can be incredibly helpful in getting content inspiration. Furthermore, it helps you gain insights into how to present your business idea, products, vision, and mission.
• Risk-free method : You are taking a reference from a real-life, let’s say, After-school program business plan—so you know this plan has worked in the past or uses a method subscribed by experts.
• Deep market understanding : Analyzing and reading such examples can provide clarity and develop a deeper market understanding of complex industry trends and issues you may not know but relate directly to the realities of your business landscape.
• Increased credibility : A business plan developed using an example follows a standard business plan format, wisely presents your business, and provides invaluable insights into your business. There’s no question it establishes you as a credible business owner, demonstrating your deep business and market understanding.
• Realistic financial projections : Financial forecasting being a critical aspect of your plan, this real-life example can help you better understand how they project their financials—ultimately helping you set realistic projections for your business.

These were the benefits; let’s briefly discuss choosing an education or training business plan template that best suits your business niche.

Choosing an Education or Training Business Plan

This category has business plan templates for various education or tutoring businesses. With many similar business types and templates, you may not find the most suitable one through manual scrolling.

Here are the steps to consider while choosing the most suitable business plan template.

Identify your business type

Are you going to be an online coaching platform? Or a traditional school? Or a general daycare center?

Asking yourself these questions will help you identify your business type, which will help in choosing a niche-specific business plan template.

Once you identify your business type, you can choose between templates for different business segments.

Search for the template

We have an in-built search feature, so you can easily search for a business-specific template using your business name as a key term(e.g., summer camp business plan). Once you have the search results, choose the most suitable one. Simple as that.

Review the example

Look closely at the content of the sample business plan you are considering. Analyze its sections and components to identify relevant as well as unnecessary areas.

Since all the Upmetrics templates are tailored to specific business needs, there won’t be many fundamental customizations. However, a hybrid business model targeting multiple customer segments may require adjustments.

No big deal—you can view and copy sections from other business plan examples or write using AI while customizing a template.

That’s how you find and select the most suitable business plan for educational services. Still haven’t found the perfect business plan example? Here’s the next step for you.

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How To Write a Business Plan for Corporate Training in 9 Steps: Checklist

By henry sheykin, resources on corporate training.

• Financial Model
• Business Plan
• Value Proposition
• One-Page Business Plan
• SWOT Analysis
• Business Model
• Marketing Plan

Are you considering starting a business in the lucrative field of corporate training? With the demand for professional development and upskilling at an all-time high, now is the perfect time to enter this thriving industry. According to the latest statistics, the corporate training market in the US is projected to reach a value of $30 billion by 2026 , growing at a CAGR of 8.5% . This presents a tremendous opportunity for aspiring entrepreneurs like you to carve out a niche and make a significant impact.

However, before diving headfirst into the world of corporate training, it's essential to have a well-crafted business plan in place. A comprehensive business plan will serve as your roadmap to success, guiding you through the process of starting and running your training venture. In this blog post, we will walk you through a 9-step checklist for writing a business plan specifically tailored to the corporate training industry.

To begin, you'll need to identify your target market and audience . Conducting in-depth market research and analysis is crucial to understanding the needs and preferences of potential clients. By gaining insights into their unique challenges and requirements, you can better position your training programs and offerings to meet their specific demands.

Once you have a clear understanding of your target market, it's time to determine the competitive landscape . Research and analyze your competitors to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and strategic positioning. This will allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition and define your unique value proposition . Highlighting what sets you apart from others in the industry will attract clients and give you a competitive edge.

Next, it's crucial to set clear business goals and objectives . These goals will serve as the foundation for your training business and guide your decision-making process. Whether your aim is to become the go-to provider in a specific industry or expand your offerings to new markets, having well-defined goals will help you stay focused and motivated.

A vital aspect of any business plan is developing a pricing strategy . Determine how you will structure your pricing, whether it's a fixed fee or a per-employee rate, considering factors such as the scope and duration of your training programs. Finding the right balance between affordability and profitability is crucial for long-term success.

Now that you have a solid understanding of your target market, competition, goals, and pricing, it's time to create a marketing and sales plan . How will you promote your training programs to attract clients? What channels and strategies will you use to generate leads and convert them into customers? A well-thought-out marketing and sales plan will ensure that you reach the right audience and maximize your business's growth potential.

Assessing your resource and funding requirements is another critical step in crafting your business plan. Determine the human and financial resources necessary to operate your training venture efficiently. Consider aspects such as the size of your instructional design team, technology infrastructure, and training materials. Having a comprehensive understanding of your resource needs will help you allocate your budget effectively.

Lastly, outline a comprehensive operational plan . Address aspects such as logistics, staffing, quality control, and ongoing support for your clients. Ensure that you have a robust framework in place to deliver your training programs seamlessly and exceed your clients' expectations.

By following this 9-step checklist for writing a business plan, you'll be well-prepared to embark on your journey into the world of corporate training. Remember, a well-crafted business plan will not only attract investors and lenders but also provide a solid foundation for the long-term success of your training business. So, roll up your sleeves and get started on creating your roadmap to prosperity in the booming corporate training industry!

Identify Target Market And Audience

Before diving into the creation of a business plan for corporate training, it is crucial to identify your target market and audience. This step sets the foundation for your entire business strategy, allowing you to tailor your training programs to meet the specific needs of your customers.

Start by considering the industries or sectors that your training services would best serve. Are you targeting technology companies, healthcare organizations, or perhaps retail businesses? Understand the key challenges and requirements faced by these sectors, as this will help you align your training offerings with their needs.

Next, narrow down your audience within the target market. Determine the specific job roles, levels of experience, and functions that your training will cater to. This level of granularity will enable you to develop highly focused and relevant training programs that resonate with your audience.

• Conduct market research: Use surveys, interviews, and other research methods to gain insights into the training needs and preferences of your target audience.
• Identify pain points: Pinpoint the challenges or gaps in skills and knowledge that your target market is facing, and position your training as the solution.
• Consider geographic factors: Determine whether your target market is concentrated in a specific region or spans across multiple locations, as this may affect your delivery methods and logistics.
• Focus on the ideal customer: Define your ideal customer profile by considering factors such as company size, budget, and willingness to invest in employee development.

Conduct Market Research and Analysis

In order to successfully launch a corporate training business, it is crucial to conduct thorough market research and analysis. This step will help you gain a deep understanding of your target market, identify potential competitors, and uncover new opportunities for growth. Here are some important considerations to keep in mind during this process:

• Identify your target market: Start by defining the specific industries or sectors you plan to target with your corporate training services. Consider factors such as market size, growth rate, and the demand for training in those sectors.
• Segment your audience: Once you have identified your target market, segment your audience based on factors such as job roles, seniority levels, and specific training needs. This will help you tailor your programs to meet their unique requirements.
• Analyze industry trends: Stay up to date with the latest developments in the corporate training industry. Analyze industry reports, news articles, and market research to understand the current trends, challenges, and opportunities.
• Identify potential competitors: Research and analyze the landscape of existing corporate training providers in your target market. Identify their strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling points to help you differentiate your business.
• Assess market demand and competition: Evaluate the demand for corporate training in your target market and assess the level of competition. Consider factors such as pricing, program offerings, and reputation to identify gaps and niche opportunities.
• Consider conducting surveys or interviews with potential clients to gather insights on their training needs and preferences.
• Explore partnerships with industry associations or organizations to gain access to a wider network and potential clients.
• Stay informed about emerging technologies and trends in training delivery methods, such as virtual reality or gamification, to stay ahead of the competition.

By conducting thorough market research and analysis, you will be equipped with valuable insights that will help you make informed decisions and develop a successful business strategy for your corporate training venture.

Determine Competitive Landscape

When starting a corporate training business, it is essential to have a clear understanding of the competitive landscape in which you will be operating. Conducting a thorough analysis of your competitors will enable you to identify their strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning. This information will help you differentiate your training services and create a unique value proposition.

To determine the competitive landscape, start by researching the key players in the corporate training industry. Look for companies that offer similar training programs and target the same audience as your business. Consider factors such as their size, reputation, areas of expertise, client base, and pricing strategies.

• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors to identify any gaps in the market that you can exploit.
• Examine their marketing and sales strategies to gain insights into how they reach and attract clients.
• Analyze their service offerings and delivery methods to understand the range of options available to your potential clients.
• Identify any unique features or value-added services that your competitors offer.

By studying and analyzing your competitors, you can position your business in a way that sets you apart. Use the insights gained to refine your training programs, pricing strategies, and marketing efforts. Understanding the competitive landscape will also help you anticipate market trends and stay ahead of the competition.

• Regularly monitor your competitors to stay updated on any changes in their offerings or market positioning.
• Consider conducting a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) for each of your major competitors.
• Network with industry professionals and attend conferences and trade shows to gain insider knowledge about the competitive landscape.

Define Your Unique Value Proposition

Defining your unique value proposition is crucial in distinguishing your corporate training business from competitors and attracting potential clients. Your value proposition should clearly communicate the benefits your training program offers and why it is the best choice for your target audience. To define your unique value proposition effectively, follow these important steps:

• Identify the specific needs and pain points of your target market: Conduct thorough market research to understand the challenges and gaps in the industry. This will help you tailor your training program to address those specific needs.
• Highlight your expertise and experience: Emphasize the qualifications of your subject matter experts and instructional designers. Highlight their relevant experience and certifications to demonstrate credibility and expertise in the field.
• Focus on customization and tailored solutions: Emphasize your ability to customize training programs to meet the unique requirements of each client. Showcase your flexibility in designing programs that align with the company's goals, culture, and specific skills or knowledge gaps.
• Showcase success stories and testimonials: Share success stories and testimonials from previous clients who have benefited from your training programs. This will help build trust and show the tangible impacts of your training on businesses.
• Highlight innovative and interactive teaching methods: If your training program incorporates innovative approaches or uses interactive learning tools, make sure to highlight them as unique selling points. This will differentiate your training program from traditional methods employed by competitors.
• Emphasize ongoing support and evaluation: Demonstrate your commitment to providing ongoing support and evaluation to measure the impact and return on investment (ROI) of your training programs. This will assure potential clients that you are dedicated to continuously improving their workforce's skills and knowledge.

Tips for defining your unique value proposition:

• Research your competitors to understand their value propositions and find ways to differentiate yourself.
• Test your unique value proposition with potential clients or industry experts to gather feedback and refine your messaging.
• Continuously evaluate and update your value proposition to stay relevant in a dynamic corporate training market.

Set Clear Business Goals And Objectives

Setting clear business goals and objectives is crucial for the success of your corporate training venture. These goals serve as a roadmap, guiding your decisions, strategies, and actions. Here are some important considerations to keep in mind when setting your business goals and objectives:

• Align with company vision: Ensure that your goals are in line with your company's overall vision and mission. This alignment will help you stay focused and make strategic choices that support your long-term objectives.
• Be specific and measurable: Clearly define your goals and objectives, making them specific and measurable. This allows you to track your progress and determine whether you are achieving the desired outcomes.
• Set realistic targets: While it's important to aim high, it's equally important to set realistic targets that are attainable. Setting overly ambitious goals may lead to disappointment and frustration, while setting easily achievable goals may lack the necessary motivation.
• Consider both short-term and long-term objectives: Include both short-term and long-term objectives in your goal-setting process. Short-term goals provide immediate focus and milestones, while long-term objectives give you a broader perspective and direction for future growth.
• Make them time-bound: Assign deadlines to your goals and objectives to create a sense of urgency and accountability. This ensures that you stay on track and proactively work towards achieving your desired outcomes.
• Involve key stakeholders, such as your team, clients, and partners, in the goal-setting process. Their input can provide valuable insights and increase buy-in.
• Regularly review and reassess your goals and objectives to stay adaptable and responsive to changes in the market and industry trends.
• Break down larger goals into smaller, manageable tasks to make them more achievable and increase motivation.

By setting clear business goals and objectives, you provide a clear direction for your corporate training venture. These goals help you stay focused, measure progress, and make informed decisions along the way. With a well-defined roadmap, you increase your chances of success and maximize the impact of your training programs.

Develop A Pricing Strategy

When developing a pricing strategy for your corporate training business, it is essential to strike a balance between maximizing your profitability and ensuring that your prices are competitive within the market. Here are some important considerations to keep in mind:

• Research competitor pricing: Begin by researching the prices of other corporate training providers in your area or industry. This will give you a sense of the market rates and help you position your pricing accordingly.
• Consider your costs: Take into account all the costs involved in delivering your training programs, including the salaries of subject matter experts, instructional designers, marketing expenses, and overhead costs. Understanding your costs will help you determine the minimum price point needed to cover expenses and make a profit.
• Segment your services: Consider offering different tiers or packages of training services at varying price points. This allows you to cater to different client budgets and needs, providing flexibility while widening your customer base.
• Value-based pricing: Determine the unique value proposition of your training programs and set your prices accordingly. If your programs offer exceptional quality or specific expertise, you can justify charging a premium price.
• Bundling and discounts: Explore the possibility of bundling multiple training programs together or offering discounts for bulk purchases. This can incentivize clients to invest in more extensive training programs while also increasing your overall revenue.
• Testing and iterating: It's important to periodically review and adjust your pricing strategy based on customer feedback, market conditions, and the performance of your training programs. Experiment with different pricing models and evaluate their impact on both revenue and customer satisfaction.

Tips for Developing a Pricing Strategy:

• Research and understand the pricing landscape in your industry to ensure your prices are competitive.
• Don't solely focus on undercutting competitors – consider the value you provide and price accordingly.
• Segment your services to offer options at different price points.
• Consider bundling and discounts as incentives for clients to invest in more extensive training programs.
• Regularly evaluate, test, and iterate your pricing strategy to optimize profitability and customer satisfaction.

Create A Marketing And Sales Plan

Once you have identified your target market and audience, conducted market research, defined your unique value proposition, and set clear business goals and objectives, it's time to create a comprehensive marketing and sales plan. This plan will serve as a roadmap for effectively promoting and selling your corporate training services.

1. Define your marketing strategies: Start by outlining the strategies you will utilize to reach your target market. This may include online advertising, content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, and networking. Determine which channels will best reach your audience and allocate resources accordingly.

2. Develop your branding and messaging: Create a strong, professional brand identity for your corporate training services. Ensure that your messaging is clear, concise, and highlights the unique benefits you offer. Use this branding consistently across all marketing materials and platforms.

3. Identify key sales channels: Determine the most effective channels for selling your corporate training services. This may include direct sales, partnerships with industry associations or other training providers, and attending conferences or trade shows. Develop strategies for each channel and allocate resources accordingly.

4. Build a strong online presence: In today's digital age, having a strong online presence is crucial. Develop a professional website that showcases your services, expertise, and client testimonials. Utilize search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to rank higher in search engine results and attract more potential clients.

5. Create compelling marketing materials: Design and develop high-quality marketing materials that effectively communicate your corporate training services and their benefits. This may include brochures, case studies, white papers, and client success stories. Ensure that these materials are visually appealing and easy to understand.

6. Implement lead generation strategies: Develop strategies to generate leads and nurture them into paying customers. This may include offering free resources, hosting webinars or workshops, and utilizing email marketing campaigns. Implement a system to track and follow up with leads effectively.

• Consider offering a free trial or demo of your corporate training program to attract potential clients.
• Utilize social proof by highlighting testimonials or case studies from satisfied clients.
• Regularly analyze and evaluate the performance of your marketing and sales strategies to identify areas for improvement.

By creating a well-defined marketing and sales plan, you can effectively promote your corporate training services, attract potential clients, and drive sales. Continuously refine and adapt your plan as you gain more insights into your target market and their needs.

Assess Resource And Funding Requirements

Assessing resource and funding requirements is a crucial step in developing a business plan for corporate training. It involves evaluating the resources, both human and financial, that will be needed to deliver the training programs effectively. It also entails determining the funding sources and estimating the costs associated with training development, delivery, and ongoing support.

1. Identify human resources: Determine the expertise and skills required to design and deliver the training programs. Assess whether you have the necessary team members with the right qualifications. If not, consider if you need to hire or collaborate with external experts and instructional designers.

2. Evaluate financial resources: Determine the financial investments required for various aspects of your business, such as hiring additional staff, purchasing equipment or software, developing customized training materials, and delivering the training programs. Consider the initial costs as well as ongoing expenses.

• Research and compare the costs associated with outsourcing certain tasks versus doing them in-house. This can help you make informed decisions about resource allocation.
• Explore potential funding sources, such as grants, loans, or partnerships with organizations that prioritize employee training and development.
• Consider creating a detailed budget that includes projected revenues and expenses for at least the first year of operation. This will help you assess the financial feasibility of your business plan.

3. Assess technology and infrastructure: Evaluate the technological infrastructure required to deliver the training programs, such as virtual platforms, learning management systems, and communication tools. Assess whether your existing infrastructure is sufficient or if you need to invest in upgrading or acquiring new technology.

4. Consider scalability: Anticipate future growth and scalability of your business. Assess whether your current resources and funding model can support expansion and additional training programs. Plan for contingencies and have a strategy in place for acquiring additional resources and funding if needed.

By thoroughly assessing your resource and funding requirements, you will be able to develop a realistic and actionable business plan that ensures the smooth execution of your corporate training programs. Having a clear understanding of the resources needed will also help you make informed decisions, manage your finances effectively, and secure the necessary funding to support your training initiatives.

Outline A Comprehensive Operational Plan

An operational plan is a crucial part of your business plan for corporate training. This plan outlines how your training program will be implemented and managed on a day-to-day basis. It covers various aspects, including logistical considerations, resource allocation, and quality assurance. Here are some important elements to include when outlining a comprehensive operational plan:

• Trainee Management: Clearly define how trainees will be enrolled, registered, and managed throughout the training program. This includes processes for tracking trainee progress, providing support and guidance, and addressing any issues or concerns that may arise.
• Instructor Selection and Training: Outline the criteria for selecting instructors with the necessary subject matter expertise and instructional design skills. Also, include details on how instructors will be trained, whether through internal programs or external professional development opportunities.
• Curriculum Development: Describe the process for designing and developing the curriculum. This should include collaboration between subject matter experts, instructional designers, and the client's HR and operations teams. Outline the steps involved in creating engaging and relevant learning materials and resources.
• Delivery Methods: Explain how the training will be delivered, whether through on-site sessions, virtual classrooms, or a combination of both. Detail the technology and tools you will use to facilitate seamless delivery and engagement with trainees.
• Scheduling and Logistics: Provide a clear overview of how the training sessions will be scheduled and organized. Consider factors such as timing, location, and availability of necessary equipment or facilities.
• Quality Assurance: Define processes for monitoring and evaluating the quality and effectiveness of the training program. This may include regular feedback and assessment sessions, as well as ongoing improvements and updates to the curriculum and delivery methods.
• Resource Allocation: Identify the resources required to effectively deliver the training program. This could include personnel, technology, materials, and any other necessary resources. Create a plan for acquiring and managing these resources efficiently.
• Risk Management: Assess potential risks and develop strategies to mitigate or address them. This could involve contingency plans for technical issues, instructor availability, or unexpected changes in the training requirements.
• Partnerships and Collaborations: Consider any partnerships or collaborations that may enhance the delivery of your training program. This could include partnering with industry experts, technology providers, or other training organizations to improve the quality and reach of your offerings.

Tips for outlining a comprehensive operational plan:

• Ensure alignment: Align the operational plan with your overall business goals and objectives to ensure consistency and effectiveness.
• Be flexible: Anticipate potential challenges and build in flexibility to adapt and pivot as needed.
• Involve stakeholders: Engage key stakeholders, such as clients, HR teams, and subject matter experts, in the process of outlining the operational plan to gain valuable insights and buy-in.
• Continuously evaluate and improve: Regularly assess the operational plan and make necessary adjustments based on feedback, performance data, and changing market dynamics.

In conclusion, writing a business plan for corporate training requires careful consideration of various factors such as identifying the target market, conducting market research, understanding the competitive landscape, and defining the unique value proposition. It is also essential to set clear business goals, develop a pricing strategy, create a marketing and sales plan, and assess resource and funding requirements. Lastly, outlining a comprehensive operational plan ensures a successful implementation of the training program. By following these nine steps, businesses can effectively plan and execute their corporate training initiatives, resulting in improved skills and knowledge among employees and a positive impact on the company's overall performance.

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The 11-Step Guide to Developing a Great Training Program (Plus 9 Practical Examples)

Developing a high-quality employee training program is beneficial for both employees and organizations alike. Employees thrive when they have the knowledge and skills to do their jobs well, and to develop new skills to support them in different roles. 

Training also increases engagement and employee loyalty because people feel more invested in and prepared for their role. As a result, organizations benefit from increased employee retention, better performance, and higher productivity.

Despite these clear benefits, it can be challenging for organizations to make the switch from highly manual and unstructured training programs (or no training at all) to streamlined, robust learning and development programs. In this comprehensive guide to developing a training program, we'll explore the following:

• What an employee training program is and the signs of an effective program
• Our eleven-step overview of the entire process
• Nine common types of training programs that can benefit your organization

As you read through this guide, you can start identifying how your own training program will take shape, the resources you need, and the actionable steps you can take today.

What is a training program?

Employee training programs provide new hires and employees with general training exercises and access to learning resources. Employee training can develop employees' direct job-related tasks such as handling specific software, technical skills, or soft skills that cross-apply to different roles within an organization. 

Training programs comprise multiple courses or a single class, and they can be part of larger employee development programs. The core purpose of an employee training program is to ensure each employee has the skills and knowledge necessary to adequately perform work tasks and responsibilities. Some common types of employee training programs include onboarding training, leadership training, and compliance training.

9 Tips to Help You Create Great Training Courses

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What makes an effective training program?

Training programs must be carefully designed and managed to ensure effective learning and retention. Some critical aspects that can transform training programs into effective learning opportunities include:

• Starting from a known baseline : Assessing employees at the beginning of each training program or course can ensure that learning material is properly curated to meet learners' needs.
• Personalization : Every employee learns differently. Personalization software and capabilities can match learners' with the materials, exercises, and ongoing learning opportunities that fit their content needs, learning styles, and goals.
• Self-directed learning : Traditional training programs such as all-day seminars, intermittent lectures, and passive access to material is not sufficient. Instead, effective training programs allow participants to learn at their own pace, with online access to learning materials and individual dashboards for tracking performance and completion.
• Integration with role responsibilities : Many employees will be eager to take advantage of training programs, especially if they want to learn new skills or grow their careers. However, not all employees will have the time or drive to learn. Even employees who want to learn may not have time when faced with a lot of other responsibilities. Instead, make ongoing training and development part of each employee's job responsibilities and ensure there is plenty of work time allocated for fulfilling that responsibility.
• Rewards and incentives : Tie ongoing development and training to positive outcomes. This can include access to internal promotions and job opportunities, and compensation. Virtual trophies, recognition, and certificates can also motivate employees to participate.

When you're crafting a training program or series of learning courses for your organization, go the extra mile to ensure the program is personalized, rewarding, and easy to access. Developing your training program will be an iterative project: you can present learning resources, monitor performance, and make revisions over time to continually optimize learning for employees.

Related: 23 Employee Training Templates and Checklists for Better Training Programs

How to create a great training plan in 11 steps

According to Zippia's research , "Companies with comprehensive training programs have a 24% higher profit margin." Start by developing a training program that meaningfully aligns with your organization's knowledge and skills needs, as well as your employees' goals and learning styles. Follow this eleven-step process to create a new employee training program from start to finish.

1. Conduct a training needs analysis

Just like effective employee training starts with baseline assessments, a strong employee training plan starts with an assessment of what your organization needs. This stage can be as simple or complex as you think is necessary, but it should involve these six essential steps of creating and conducting a training needs analysis : 

• Align the business need with the training initiative
• Understand the roles and core competencies in your business
• Identify skills and performance gaps
• Prioritise training and compare your options
• Design learning experiences based on training recommendations
• Measure the success of the training needs analysis on overall performance

Looking to conduct your own training needs analysis? Download our training needs analysis template to identify the core competencies for each role in your organization and the highest-priority training areas.

2. Develop goals for your training program

Now that you have a deeper understanding of your organization's current level of knowledge and skills, as well as the gap between the current level and desired level of skill, you can create key objectives and goals for the training program. This can include specific goals such as:

• Ensuring employees in each role has a sufficient understanding of safety regulations and compliance requirements.
• Providing salespeople with the right tactical knowledge, soft skills, and product information to make more sales.
• Certifying all cybersecurity team employees with a necessary degree of credentials.

You can create these goals either by identifying gaps in knowledge that should be addressed or by considering what training goals best align with specific business goals.

3. Develop success metrics for your training program

This stage is all about building the motivational infrastructure and measurement criteria for your learning program. Different types of success metrics you'll need to develop include:

• Success criteria : At what level of competency will you consider each employee's training to be sufficient, and how will you identify that point?
• Milestones : Larger goals should be broken down into more granular milestones. For example, a complete training course would be broken down into the completion of courses, which in turn are broken down into the completion of modules.
• Feedback : Quantifiable results are not the only feedback that should guide development. Plan for ways to elicit employee feedback, so you can revise future training to include more engaging, relevant, or rewarding content.

4. Confirm the type of training program

There are numerous different vehicles and mechanisms you can use for your training programs. These include:

• In-person training : In-person training involves face-to-face instruction. This may be at off-site seminars, in-person mentoring, on-the-job training, instructor-led learning, and coaching.
• Virtual training : Online courses, recorded lectures, videoconference seminars, and AI simulations are forms of eLearning.
• Blended learning : A hybrid approach involves both in-person and virtual training. You can have equivalent options in either category to meet the accessibility needs and preferences of different employees. Alternatively, some aspects may only be available in person, while others are only virtual. Some learning platforms like 360Learning combine the best of both virtual and in-person learning by simultaneously showing learners taking the same course at the same time.

Robust training programs use a wide array of different types of learning activities in in-person and virtual categories. This ensures learners can move more fluidly through the training program. However, if you are just developing your training program, creating the fundamental materials and then adding more over time may be the best approach.

As you complete this stage, be sure to communicate with other teams, so your program reflects their needs. Many businesses will see the best results with a virtual or blended learning program. Online resources are more accessible for most users. They can also be accessed repeatedly, and training administrators can more easily analyse the results of the training activities.

5. Choose the technology you'll use

Consider the technology that will house your learning and development programs. A learning management system (LMS) is a complete software or cloud-based environment for developing, implementing, and assessing training programs.

For example, your organization could use an LMS that has all the training resources, and access will be granted to each individual employee based on their professional role and learning needs. Their progress throughout the training program can then be monitored and analysed. Most LMSs will have the following functionalities:

• L&D teams and learners can create, revise, curate, and update content (including learning materials, activities, and assessments).
• Users can progress through individualized courses, take assessments, and revisit materials as needed.
• Managers can analyse employee performance and growth to gauge readiness for new opportunities or the need for additional performance improvement interventions.

6. Develop an outline for your training program

Once you have identified the type of learning environment and training methods you will use to achieve priority learning goals, it's time to develop the training program itself, starting with an outline.

Begin by creating a general overview of each topic you want covered; include the fundamentals, actionable concepts, and advanced concepts you want to be covered throughout the program. Each discrete lesson or module should have a goal, or the information or skills users should have by the end of the lesson. 

Along the way, involve stakeholders in related departments or leadership positions to ensure the training program addresses core needs and has buy-in.

7. Design and develop your training program with the help of subject-matter experts

From there, you can pull from a library of learning resources available to you or create your own modules and lessons as necessary. Be sure to work with your subject-matter experts to develop relevant and engaging course material. Learning courses that are created by your experts make the content more nuanced and specific to your company than third-party courses would be.

Leveraging the collaboration between your experts and the L&D team allows you to create and fulfill learning needs together. As a result, employees are more invested in the learning process. They help create quality content that L&D doesn't have to buy or source through expert interviews.

Engaging your in-house experts can help you create a robust learning library tailored to your organization's needs. Even better, some learning platforms can help subject-matter experts create this library quickly and efficiently with the use of Generative AI tools, like 360Learning’s question creator .

8. Implement the training program

You might implement the training program as a pilot program for a test group of employees or release it to all relevant users. During the implementation stage, your program may not be complete or as finished as you'd prefer, and that's okay. This stage is to ensure the program functions, both by having all the technical aspects in place for users and providing educational value to learners.

During this stage, make sure that you or your L&D team is readily available to provide support, answer questions, and make any adjustments necessary for the training program.

9. Evaluate the program

Assess the first run of the training program from multiple angles. These can include:

• Completion and participation rates
• Demonstration of knowledge and skills through assessments
• An uptick in related performance metrics outside of training
• Feedback from managers and employee participants

This information can help you determine what areas of the training program need further revision. As your organization grows, you may need more product information courses or unique courses for different roles. Each module will also need updates over time.

As technology progresses, you might even have a range of assessments extending beyond conventional methods, such as AI-powered training recommendations and content creation. By taking an iterative approach to your program, it will continue to become stronger and stronger over time.

10. Measure the success of your program

Of course, a good training program doesn't just measure itself. There should be standardised processes for evaluating the courses and each learner. For employees, success might be measured in terms of either isolated assessments or improved work performance.

Choosing the right methods to measure success can help you confirm the value of the program with leadership teams and other stakeholders. The data can be invaluable for justifying increased budgets or growing your organization's L&D team.

You should also go back to the second step—creating goals—and resolve those goals. Did you achieve them? Are related business objectives satisfied by the new training?

Your LMS should have measurement capabilities to help you monitor completion, engagement, and other key L&D metrics. Here's what the dashboards look like in the 360Learning platform to give you an example of the metrics you can monitor to measure the success of your training program.

11. Update the program over time

Based on all the metrics, feedback, and success data of your training program, methodically begin to make updates. You can establish these processes to ensure the training program continues to grow and optimise employee performance.

• Internal audits : Information about business processes, products, and organization-specific how-tos should be audited every quarter or annual period to ensure it has up-to-date information.
• Identify gaps : Your training program won't be comprehensive at the start. In fact, your LMS may initially only have courses for a specific team or just for new-hire training. Over time, the use cases for training will expand. You'll also be able to identify smaller and more granular areas where in-depth training makes a significant difference.

Other updates for your program might include migrating to a more robust LMS, building a centralized intranet for internal and third-party learning opportunities, and more.

Nine practical examples of training programs

There are dozens of different employee training programs. Your organization might benefit from role-specific training programs, courses that teach users about legacy software and internal work processes, new hire training, or even resources on how to navigate employee benefits packages and portals. Each one will have different learning objectives, resources, and users, so they will need to be individually curated and organised . 

As you start your new training programs, consider starting with one of these nine common employee training programs. 

1. Onboarding

Onboarding training programs welcome new hires to your company. There are different phases of onboarding, such as preboarding (which covers orientation, HR topics, and company introductions), general induction and meeting team members, department- or role-specific training, and others. Onboarding training should accomplish two goals: preparing participants for new roles and continuing to "recruit" the new hire so they continue to be engaged past the 90-day mark in their new role. 

Effective onboarding training gives new hires the skills they need to contribute effectively, while also teaching them more about the company and company culture.

2. Induction

Induction is a specific subset of general onboarding training, and it's important enough to deserve its own category and attention. If your business has a lot of roles where only one person holds that type of position, then creating a library that holds the knowledge of everyone tangential to the role is essential. 

Good induction training programs allow employees to quickly perform key tasks independently to minimise the window before hiring and transitioning fully into the role.

Related: Induction to Work Checklist

3. Management training

Management training comprises technical and soft skills that will allow new hires, internally promoted employees, or current managers to have the resources they need to thrive. Management training programs can include courses from general third-party management experts, industry-specific courses, or even company-specific material.

4. Leadership training

Leadership training is similar to management training, but it has a different focus, and virtually all employees can benefit from taking part in the training. This type of program prioritises soft skills such as communication, decision-making, conflict resolution, and delegation.

Employee leadership training can help employees develop their own professional skills and make themselves more eligible for internal promotion opportunities. The organization can also use leadership training programs to see which candidates are best qualified for new leadership roles.

5. Compliance training

Industry-specific compliance training is essential for keeping your organization in good standing. Compliance training can cover industry regulations, employee rights laws, safety regulations and requirements, and more. Not only do employees often need to be certified in core compliance areas, but organizations themselves must often provide this training to remain compliant with general or industry-specific requirements.

Compliance courses will often incorporate mandated material from different third-party sources. Having an LMS that can host or deliver curated content from a variety of third-party educational authorities makes it easier for employees to stay on top of mandatory training and for organizations to verify that training is complete.

Related: Compliance Training Checklist

6. Technical skills training

Technical skills training focuses on the "hard" skills that employees will utilize as they perform their job responsibilities, ranging from how to operate different types of machinery to how to perform tasks on company software.

Your organization may need training programs for entry-level technical skills , role-specific skills, and certification programs for professional skills. Some emerging areas of technical skills development include data analysis, AI management and engineering, and people sciences.

7. Customer training

Customer training resources are conceptually very different from other training you develop. Depending on the nature of the products and services you provide, it may be advantageous to provide your customers and product end-users access to training programs. Salesforce, for example, provides free training through its Trailhead program.

If you sell advanced software, complex tools, or even general goods that become more useful for tutorials (such as hair clippers or cleaning products), developing customer training material could widen your market reach, increase customer loyalty, and decrease the risk of frustration or poor user experiences. 

Related: 3 Real-Life Customer Education Examples and What They Can Teach Us

8. Product/software training

Product and software training could be for two different audiences: end-users and customers that need more information to guide their experience, and salespeople or customer success representatives that need an in-depth understanding of every product. For the latter, you can provide employees with in-depth learning programs focused on the following:

• The target market for each product
• Popular use cases
• Features and accessory goods
• Pricing and promotions
• Frequently experienced frustration points or frequently asked questions

9. Sales enablement training

Salespeople need in-depth training sessions to perform at high levels. Not only do entry-level salespeople need the training to learn sales tactics for both cold and hot leads, but salespeople of all experience levels benefit from learning about newly emerging sales trends and practising their skills through simulations. Sales enablement training can cover product details, sales processes, key account management tactics, and modules for using tools in your organization's tech stack.

Standardize your training programs

The best employee training programs start with the right learning platform. Set your team—and your program—up for success by automating many of the processes described above, eliminating admin and time wasting. Automation allows L&D teams to focus on the most critical parts of a great training program: providing training that helps boost employee performance. 360Learning makes it easy to assess training needs, create personalized learning paths, and track employee performance, course completion, and ROI. It also lets your employees collaborate and create courses, so they can learn from one another and upskill from within.

Interested to see 360Learning in action? Book a personalized demo to get started.

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Free Training Plans Templates for Business Use

By Kate Eby | May 31, 2018

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A training plan holds you accountable for your actions by providing documentation to track and monitor progress toward a goal. To save you time, we’ve provided the top free, downloadable training plan templates for business use .

You'll also find details on what a training plan is , the benefits of using one , and tips on how to write one .

Free Training Plan Templates

In this section, you’ll find training plan templates available in Microsoft Excel and Word formats, as well as PDF. Download all of the following templates for free, and customize them to meet your organizational needs.

Staff Training Plan Template

‌   Download Excel Template

Try Smartsheet Template   ‌

A team or department manager can use this template to document their entire staff’s progress at once. You’ll find multiple charts to track knowledge areas, award competency scores, and list formal trainings and meetings (as well as who has attended them or completed the necessary tasks). This template enables you to monitor both hard and soft skills so that you can get a composite view of each employee’s progress.

Monthly Training Plan Template

Try Smartsheet Template  

This template provides a useful schedule to help you plan your training over the course of a month. List details such as department, training contact, topic, and location, and then complete the prebuilt schedule with training dates and times. To track your progress, use the provided columns to mark milestones. Use this template as a high-level monthly planning tool to ensure you’ve organized training sessions and met your goals.

Weekly Training Plan Template

Download Weekly Training Plan Template

Excel | Word | PDF

This simple training plan template is designed to track team or department progress on training activities over the course of a week. List the employee, activity, and desired outcome, and use the weekly calendar either to plan training sessions or to mark whether or not the employee completed the training work. Finally, leave remarks on each employee’s performance and sign off for approval at the end of the week. This template is especially relevant for a manager or a lead who needs to oversee multiple team members’ development over a short period of time.

Daily Training Plan Template

Download Daily Training Plan Template

Use this template to plan and track daily training tasks for a single team member. At the top of the template, list employee and training contact info, the department, and the goals or desired outcomes. In the chart below, list time, task, and duration of training, and sign each row as the employee completes an activity. Create a separate daily training plan for each team member to track their progress individually.

Annual Training Plan Template

‌   Download Word Template

This comprehensive annual training plan template is available as Word and PDF files. Create a narrative-style training plan with separate sections for background information, critical needs, goals, performance metrics, estimated budget, milestone schedule, and revisions. This template is best for teams that need to formally document their training efforts. For those who need a quick visual overview of progress, check out the simple annual calendar templates in this article .

Employee Training Plan Template

Download Employee Training Plan Template

Excel | Word | PDF  | Smartsheet

Use this Excel template to create a training plan for an individual employee. List employee information, including ID number, position, department, and reviewer credentials, and then create a list of activities for Week 1, and for 30, 60, and 90 days out. The template includes columns for you to note whether the activity is active or on hold, the point of contact for each growth area, status, and observations — all of which will help you measure employee progress and keep them accountable.

New Employee Training Plan Template

‌ Download New Hire Training Plan Template - Excel

This template is designed as an onboarding plan you can use to ensure new hires complete all the necessary training, paperwork, and activities as they acclimate to their new role. The template includes sections for activities completed through management, HR, IT, and peers, and it lists sample activities that a new employee might need to accomplish. Track the new hire’s orientation and integration from the first day through the first year with this easy-to-use template.

Project Plan Template

‌ Download Project Plan Template - Excel

Sometimes, training can occur on the job. One way to ensure that you stay on track — in time, on budget, and within resources — is to create a project plan that outlines all the tasks, activities, and milestones you need to accomplish en route to your objectives or deliverables. Download this project plan template in Excel to list all tasks, assign team members and due dates, and note progress with the built-in Gantt chart , all the way through to project completion.

What Is a Training Plan?

A training plan is a document that details the strategy and specific steps needed to accomplish a goal or an objective. You can create a training plan for nearly any undertaking, such as a business or creative project, team development, staff or new hire training, or a personal endeavor (such as a running a marathon ). Regardless of the objective, training plans hold you accountable for intentions, actions, tasks, or activities that must be completed en route to a larger goal.

Many different business roles can make use of a training plan, including trainers and instructors, managers, staff, employees, IT, support representatives, or the entire organization. Colleges and universities also frequently use training plans to track their progress toward a goal.

What Is a Training Action Plan?

A training action plan is a document that you create prior to the training plan, and lists only the actions necessary to achieve a particular goal. As opposed to a training plan, a training action plan does not include strategy or scheduling information. To learn more about action plans and to download action plan templates, read this article .

Benefits of a Training Plan

Building a training plan can help ensure the success of the project, onboarding , skill building, or other objectives you aim to achieve. By providing a road map to success, a training plan ensures that you accomplish tasks and meet milestones along the way to your overarching goal. In addition, a strong training plan can offer the following underlying benefits:

• Aid you in preparing objective, needs, strategy, and curriculum to be addressed when training participants
• Improve trainer and training participants’ experience by providing a clear plan of action
• Ensure that each training session is well planned, helpful, and inspiring
• Gain much needed expertise and experience, which can help you achieve your goal

Ultimately, these benefits can make it easier to accomplish your goals. Training plans play a vital part in making your organization more profitable, beating the competition, and creating a thriving work culture.

How Do You Design a Training Program?

Before you write your training plan, you’ll need to do some strategic thinking and create a program structure that reflects both the needs and abilities of your workforce and your goals. Designing a training program will vary based on the industry and type of undertaking, but some general tips can apply to any workforce training:

• Identify Training Needs: In order to design an adequate training program, you need to know your needs. Perform a training needs assessment in which you identify your goals, the tasks required to reach them, and the training activities that will support them.
• Set Learning Objectives: Once you have identified your needs, define what you want your workforce to achieve from an educational perspective. What do you want your employees to learn? How will you tangibly test knowledge growth?
• Create Training Materials: In most cases, providing your trainees with materials of some sort (be it physical or online documentation, or quizzes, games, etc.) will greatly enhance their learning and retention. Get creative and find useful ways to increase the “stickiness” of your training curriculum.
• Implement the Training Plan: Next, you have to execute the plan you’ve designed. Make sure to document progress, and note any problems or inconsistencies that arise. Use a training plan template (included above) to document and support implementation.
• Repeat Steps as Necessary: The goal of any training plan is to increase knowledge and skills, and you can’t rush the learning process. Take your time and ensure that everyone is getting the deep learning and practice that they need to be successful.
• Evaluate Training: This is a key element to the long-term success of your training plan. Elicit feedback from participants and managers, and refine your design for future use.

How Do You Write a Training Plan?

Just as the design of your training plan will vary based on your organization and specific goals, so will the documentation of your training plan. The templates included in this article offer a range of structures and styles, but you can customize all of them to fit your needs.

If you want to create your own document, here is a basic list of what to include in your written training plan:

• Objectives: List your goals, and make sure they are measurable and specific.
• Duration: Ideally, your training plan should be flexible, offer an approximate, realistic duration of the plan to give participants an idea of what to expect, and aid managers in evaluating performance. Some training plans include multiple future dates at which to measure performance (for example, 30, 60, and 90 days).  
• Venue/Facility: If you are hosting a workshop, include details about the venue and facility, such as directions and special instructions.
• Dates/Times: If there are specific meeting times that staff needs to attend, make sure to list them on the plan.
• Activities and Learning Strategies: Depending on how comprehensive your training plan is, consider including a section where you detail the activities and knowledge areas in which you hope to see improvement. However, not all training plans require this level of detail.
• Milestones: Include room to mark key milestones, as well as space for dates and a signature if applicable. You might also want to include a section to rank accomplishments or competencies along the way.
• Approval Signature: Include a space for the manager or lead contact to sign off once the training program is completed.

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How to Create a Business Plan for a Training Center

by Ruth Mayhew

Published on 21 Nov 2018

The key to convincing investors, such as banks, to invest in your business, is to construct a business plan that demonstrates you have business acumen and that you know the industry. Constructing a solid business plan isn't difficult, but it does require deep expertise about the type of business or industry and knowledge of how businesses start, operate and grow. To launch a training center, create a business plan that proves you are qualified, experienced and have a passion for the training industry.

Training-Specific Qualifications

Creating a business plan for a training center requires that you have expertise or experience in operating one. Perhaps you have been the operations manager for a successful training center and you're ready to take the leap into starting your own center. Otherwise, you will need a team of colleagues whose collective experiences compel investors to want to share in your future success. According to Training Industry magazine, several critical steps to starting a training business include acquiring the credentials necessary to prove that your industry knowledge and credibility is sound. Training credentials can range from certifications or licenses in specific areas, such as IT security networks, to advanced degrees in adult education. If you don't personally have these credentials, you must have a team that does. That said, if you have training credentials, your business plan will carry more weight because you are spearheading an endeavor based on your industry-specific knowledge, which can be far more credible than simply hiring people with this expertise.

Food For Thought and Paper

Before you put pen to paper to create a business plan, your self-assessment will determine whether you actually are prepared to operate and own a training center. Questions such as, "If I cannot get investors' commitments, am I prepared to fund this endeavor from business loans or my personal savings?" and "What are the specific types of services that my training center will provide, and is there an opportunity for this training center in my area?" and "If the market is currently flooded with other training centers, what niche can I create, based on my own expertise and differentiation of services?"

Business Plan Components

Constructing a business plan isn't something you complete in an afternoon or even a day. Your research and analysis alone will take time to compile, and while you might be well-connected to the training community, if this is your first foray into the training industry or owning a business, you might need expert guidance in one or both areas. According to Forbes, basic components of a business plan include analyses of the future company, the industry and the competition. In addition, your business plan should include an analysis of your potential customers and the type of marketing your research shows will be most effective. Traditional business concepts, such as who is managing this effort, how you plan to operate the business and how you're going to fund it, are critical points to address in your business plan. When you complete the draft business plan for your training center, write an executive summary that answers this question: "Why do you believe your training center is different from all the others?"

Focus on the Specificity

You will find a plethora of business plan templates on the internet. Ensure that yours specifically says why your training center business concept will succeed when others have not, to maintain your investors' interest. For example, projections about your future training center should focus on what's presently available and accessible, therefore, your analysis should address physical space necessary. Is there even room in your geographic area to support another training center? Determine whether you are offering on-site training, remote training broadcast from one location or a hybrid model that combines classroom training and computer-based training, or CBT. That will determine the physical space you need to launch another training center in the area.

Describe your market, such as how many training centers are currently in existence, how many participants – according to job-specific areas – are in the market. For example, if your training center is dedicated to serving allied health care professionals such as nuclear-medicine technologists, dietitians or respiratory therapists, how many training centers are in the market? The rate at which they are producing graduates and if there are prospective students who do not have access to training is critical data that are particularly useful to your business plan. Your research could include the acceptance and graduation rates of existing training centers in the area versus the numbers of applicants or prospective students. Perhaps the demand is greater than what the existing training centers can accommodate. That is just the first part of the equation because the second and equally important factor is this: If the demand is great, do you have the ability to source and recruit qualified instructors to provide the training your center offers?

Let's Talk Money

A business plan is sorely lacking without a detailed analysis and discussion about funding. Entrepreneur Magazine says that a business plan should project costs for three-to-five years and include start-up costs, operating expenses and projections so that investors can see where their money will be spent, and what their return on investment will be. Your business plan should include projections in a balance-sheet-like format, which also demonstrates that you understand basic business concepts. If finance isn't in your wheelhouse, collaborate with an expert to present the financial picture for your training center.

The Proof Is in the Details 

Like other business reports, your business plan should include an appendix. The appendix includes documents that support every section of your plan, and, if appropriate, include your market research data. For example, if you have identified key personnel for your training center such as a training director, an operations director or a financial management professional, include their resumes and credentials in your business plan. In addition, state whether your business requires petitioning for jurisdictional business-or-land-use permits.

The final step is your executive summary, which you should write only after you have completed the final business plan. Many investors will take the time to read just a one-to-two-page executive summary, so it must include enough information to compel them to read the entire business plan or to make a decision based on a well-thought-out and well-written business concept. Your executive summary should answer the question, "Why do you believe your training center is different from all the others?"

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8.4 Designing a Training Program

Learning objectives.

• Be able to design a training program framework.
• Understand the uses and applications of a career development program.

The next step in the training process is to create a training framework that will help guide you as you set up a training program. Information on how to use the framework is included in this section.

Training Program Framework Development

When developing your training plan, there are a number of considerations. Training is something that should be planned and developed in advance.

Figure 8.6 Training Program Development Model

The considerations for developing a training program are as follows:

• Needs assessment and learning objectives. This part of the framework development asks you to consider what kind of training is needed in your organization. Once you have determined the training needed, you can set learning objectives to measure at the end of the training.
• Consideration of learning styles. Making sure to teach to a variety of learning styles is important to development of training programs.
• Delivery mode. What is the best way to get your message across? Is web-based training more appropriate, or should mentoring be used? Can vestibule training be used for a portion of the training while job shadowing be used for some of the training, too? Most training programs will include a variety of delivery methods.
• Budget. How much money do you have to spend on this training?
• Delivery style. Will the training be self-paced or instructor led? What kinds of discussions and interactivity can be developed in conjunction with this training?
• Audience. Who will be part of this training? Do you have a mix of roles, such as accounting people and marketing people? What are the job responsibilities of these individuals, and how can you make the training relevant to their individual jobs?
• Content. What needs to be taught? How will you sequence the information?
• Timelines. How long will it take to develop the training? Is there a deadline for training to be completed?
• Communication. How will employees know the training is available to them?
• Measuring effectiveness of training. How will you know if your training worked? What ways will you use to measure this?

Human Resource Recall

Can you think of a time where you received training, but the facilitator did not connect with the audience? Does that ever happen in any of your classes (of course not this one, though)?

Needs Assessment

The first step in developing a training program is to determine what the organization needs in terms of training. There are three levels of training needs assessment: organizational assessment , occupational (task) assessment , and individual assessment :

• Organizational assessment. In this type of needs assessment, we can determine the skills, knowledge, and abilities a company needs to meet its strategic objectives. This type of assessment considers things such as changing demographics and technological trends. Overall, this type of assessment looks at how the organization as a whole can handle its weaknesses while promoting strengths.
• Occupational (task) assessment. This type of assessment looks at the specific tasks, skills knowledge, and abilities required to do jobs within the organization.
• Individual assessment. An individual assessment looks at the performance of an individual employee and determines what training should be accomplished for that individual.

We can apply each of these to our training plan. First, to perform an organizational assessment, we can look at future trends and our overall company’s strategic plan to determine training needs. We can also see how jobs and industries are changing, and knowing this, we can better determine the occupational and individual assessments.

Researching training needs can be done through a variety of ways. One option is to use an online tool such as SurveyMonkey to poll employees on what types of training they would like to see offered.

As you review performance evaluations turned in by your managers, you may see a pattern developing showing that employees are not meeting expectations. As a result, this may provide data as to where your training is lacking.

There are also types of training that will likely be required for a job, such as technical training, safety training, quality training, and professional training. Each of these should be viewed as separate training programs, requiring an individual framework for each type of training. For example, an employee orientation framework will look entirely different from an in-house technical training framework.

Training must be tied to job expectations. Any and all training developed should transfer directly to the skills of that particular employee. Reviewing the HR strategic plan and various job analyses may help you see what kind of training should be developed for specific job titles in your organization.

After you have determined what type of training should occur, learning objectives for the training should be set. A learning objective is what you want the learner to be able to do, explain, or demonstrate at the end of the training period. Good learning objectives are performance based and clear, and the end result of the learning objective can be observable or measured in some way. Examples of learning objectives might include the following:

• Be able to explain the company policy on sexual harassment and give examples of sexual harassment.
• Be able to show the proper way to take a customer’s order.
• Perform a variety of customer needs analyses using company software.
• Understand and utilize the new expense-tracking software.
• Explain the safety procedure in handling chemicals.
• Be able to explain the types of communication styles and strategies to effectively deal with each style.
• Demonstrate ethics when handling customer complaints.
• Be able to effectively delegate to employees.

Once we have set our learning objectives, we can utilize information on learning styles to then determine the best delivery mode for our training.

Learning Styles

Understanding learning styles is an important component to any training program. For our purposes, we will utilize a widely accepted learning style model. Recent research has shown that classifying people into learning styles may not be the best way to determine a style, and most people have a different style depending on the information being taught. In a study by Pashler et al., the authors look at aptitude and personality as key traits when learning, as opposed to classifying people into categories of learning styles. Bearing this in mind, we will address a common approach to learning styles next.

An effective trainer tries to develop training to meet the three different learning styles 1 :

• Visual learner. A visual learner usually has a clear “picture” of an experience. A visual learner often says things such as “I can see what you are saying” or “This looks good.” A visual learner is best reached using graphics, pictures, and figures.
• Auditory learner. An auditory learner learns by sound. An auditory learner might say, “If I hear you right” or “What do you hear about this situation?” The auditory learner will learn by listening to a lecture or to someone explaining how to do something.
• Kinesthetic learner. A kinesthetic learner learns by developing feelings toward an experience. These types of learners tend to learn by doing rather than listening or seeing someone else do it. This type of learner will often say things such as “This feels right.”

Most individuals use more than one type of learning style, depending on what kinds of information they are processing. For example, in class you might be a visual learner, but when learning how to change a tire, you might be a kinesthetic learner.

Delivery Mode

Depending on the type of training that needs to be delivered, you will likely choose a different mode to deliver the training. An orientation might lend itself best to vestibule training, while sexual harassment training may be better for web-based training. When choosing a delivery mode, it is important to consider the audience and budget constrictions. For example, Oakwood Worldwide, a provider of temporary housing, recently won the Top 125 Training Award for its training and development programs 2 . It offers in-class and online classes for all associates and constantly add to its course catalog. This is a major recruitment as well as retention tool for its employees. In fact, the company credits this program for retaining 25 percent of its workforce for ten years or more. Table 8.1 “Types of Training and Delivery” looks at each of the types of training and suggests appropriate options for delivery modes.

Table 8.1 Types of Training and Delivery

How much money do you think the training will cost? The type of training performed will depend greatly on the budget. If you decide that web-based training is the right delivery mode, but you don’t have the budget to pay the user fee for the platform, this wouldn’t be the best option. Besides the actual cost of training, another cost consideration is people’s time. If employees are in training for two hours, what is the cost to the organization while they are not able to perform their job? A spreadsheet should be developed that lists the actual cost for materials, snacks, and other direct costs, but also the indirect costs, such as people’s time.

Delivery Style

Taking into consideration the delivery method, what is the best style to deliver this training? It’s also important to keep in mind that most people don’t learn through “death by PowerPoint”; they learn in a variety of ways, such as auditory, kinesthetic, or visual. Considering this, what kinds of ice breakers, breakout discussions, and activities can you incorporate to make the training as interactive as possible? Role plays and other games can make the training fun for employees. Many trainers implement online videos, podcasts, and other interactive media in their training sessions. This ensures different learning styles are met and also makes the training more interesting.

Considering your audience is an important aspect to training. How long have they been with the organization, or are they new employees? What departments do they work in? Knowing the answers to these questions can help you develop a relevant delivery style that makes for better training. For example, if you know that all the people attending the training are from the accounting department, examples you provide in the training can be focused on this type of job. If you have a mixed group, examples and discussions can touch on a variety of disciplines.

Content Development

The content you want to deliver is perhaps one of the most important parts in training and one of the most time-consuming to develop. Development of learning objectives or those things you want your learners to know after the training makes for a more focused training. Think of learning objectives as goals—what should someone know after completing this training? Here are some sample learning objectives:

• Be able to define and explain the handling of hazardous materials in the workplace.
• Be able to utilize the team decision process model.
• Understand the definition of sexual harassment and be able to recognize sexual harassment in the workplace.
• Understand and be able to explain the company policies and structure.

After you have developed the objectives and goals, you can begin to develop the content of the training. Consideration of the learning methods you will use, such as discussion and role playing, will be outlined in your content area.

Development of content usually requires a development of learning objectives and then a brief outline of the major topics you wish to cover. With that outline, you can “fill in” the major topics with information. Based on this information, you can develop modules or PowerPoint slides, activities, discussion questions, and other learning techniques.

For some types of training, time lines may be required to ensure the training has been done. This is often the case for safety training; usually the training should be done before the employee starts. In other words, in what time frame should an employee complete the training?

Another consideration regarding time lines is how much time you think you need to give the training. Perhaps one hour will be enough, but sometimes, training may take a day or even a week. After you have developed your training content, you will likely have a good idea as to how long it will take to deliver it. Consider the fact that most people do not have a lot of time for training and keep the training time realistic and concise.

From a long-term approach, it may not be cost effective to offer an orientation each time someone new is hired. One consideration might be to offer orientation training once per month so that all employees hired within that month are trained at the same time.

Development of a dependable schedule for training might be ideal, as in the following example:

• Orientation is offered on the first Thursday of every month.
• The second and third Tuesday will consist of vestibule training on management skills and communication.
• Twice yearly, in August and March, safety and sexual harassment training will be given to meet the legal company requirements.

Developing a dependable training schedule allows for better communication to your staff, results in fewer communication issues surrounding training, and allows all employees to plan ahead to attend training.

Communication

Once you have developed your training, your next consideration is how you will communicate the available training to employees. In a situation such as an orientation, you will need to communicate to managers, staff, and anyone involved in the training the timing and confirm that it fits within their schedule. If it is an informal training, such as a brown bag lunch on 401(k) plans, this might involve determining the days and times that most people are in the office and might be able to participate. Because employees use Mondays and Fridays, respectively, to catch up and finish up work for the week, these days tend to be the worst for training.

Consider utilizing your company’s intranet, e-mail, and even old-fashioned posters to communicate the training. Many companies have Listservs that can relay the message to only certain groups, if need be.

What can happen if training is not communicated to employees appropriately?

Measuring Effectiveness

After we have completed the training, we want to make sure our training objectives were met. One model to measure effectiveness of training is the Kirkpatrick model (Kirkpatrick, 2006), developed in the 1950s. His model has four levels:

• Reaction: How did the participants react to the training program?
• Learning: To what extent did participants improve knowledge and skills?
• Behavior: Did behavior change as a result of the training?
• Results: What benefits to the organization resulted from the training?

Each of Kirkpatrick’s levels can be assessed using a variety of methods. We will discuss those next.

Figure 8.7 Kirkpatrick’s Four Levels of Training Evaluation

Review the performance of the employees who received the training, and if possible review the performance of those who did not receive the training. For example, in your orientation training, if one of the learning objectives was to be able to request time off using the company intranet, and several employees who attended the training come back and ask for clarification on how to perform this task, it may mean the training didn’t work as well as you might have thought. In this case, it is important to go back and review the learning objectives and content of your training to ensure it can be more effective in the future.

Many trainers also ask people to take informal, anonymous surveys after the training to gauge the training. These types of surveys can be developed quickly and easily through websites such as SurveyMonkey. Another option is to require a quiz at the end of the training to see how well the employees understand what you were trying to teach them. The quiz should be developed based on the learning objective you set for the training. For example, if a learning objective was to be able to follow OSHA standards, then a quiz might be developed specifically related to those standards. There are a number of online tools, some free, to develop quizzes and send them to people attending your training. For example, Wondershare QuizCreator offers a free trial and enables the manager to track who took the quiz and how well they did. Once developed by the trainer, the quiz can be e-mailed to each participant and the manager can see how each trainee did on the final quiz. After you see how participants do on the quiz, you can modify the training for next time to highlight areas where participants needed improvement.

It can be easy to forget about this step in the training process because usually we are so involved with the next task: we forget to ask questions about how something went and then take steps to improve it.

One way to improve effectiveness of a training program is to offer rewards when employees meet training goals. For example, if budget allows, a person might receive a pay increase or other reward for each level of training completed.

Once the training framework has been developed, the training content can be developed. The training plan serves as a starting point for training development.

Career Development Programs and Succession Planning

Another important aspect to training is career development programs. A career development program is a process developed to help people manage their career, learn new things, and take steps to improve personally and professionally. Think of it as a training program of sorts, but for individuals. Sometimes career development programs are called professional development plans.

Figure 8.9 Sample Career Development Plan Developed by an Employee and Commented on by Her Manager

As you can see, the employee developed goals and made suggestions on the types of training that could help her meet her goals. Based on this data, the manager suggested in-house training and external training for her to reach her goals within the organization.

Career development programs are necessary in today’s organizations for a variety of reasons. First, with a maturing baby-boom population, newer employees must be trained to take those jobs once baby boomers retire. Second, if an employee knows a particular path to career development is in place, this can increase motivation. A career development plan usually includes a list of short- and long-term goals that employees have pertaining to their current and future jobs and a planned sequence of formal and informal training and experiences needed to help them reach the goals. As this chapter has discussed, the organization can and should be instrumental in defining what types of training, both in-house and external, can be used to help develop employees.

To help develop this type of program, managers can consider a few components (Heller, 2005):

• Talk to employees. Although this may seem obvious, it doesn’t always happen. Talking with employees about their goals and what they hope to achieve can be a good first step in developing a formal career development program.
• Create specific requirements for career development. Allow employees to see that if they do A, B, and C, they will be eligible for promotion. For example, to become a supervisor, maybe three years of experience, management training, and communication training are required. Perhaps an employee might be required to prove themselves in certain areas, such as “maintain and exceed sales quota for eight quarters” to be a sales manager. In other words, in career development there should be a clear process for the employees to develop themselves within the organization.
• Use cross-training and job rotation. Cross-training is a method by which employees can gain management experience, even if for short periods of time. For example, when a manager is out of the office, putting an employee “in charge” can help the employee learn skills and abilities needed to perform that function appropriately. Through the use of job rotation , which involves a systematic movement of employees from job to job within an organization, employees can gain a variety of experiences to prepare them for upward movement in the organization.
• Utilize mentors. Mentorship can be a great way for employees to understand what it takes to develop one’s career to the next level. A formal mentorship program in place with willing mentees can add value to your career development program.

Figure 8.10 Career Development Sample Process to Become an Accounts Payable Manager

There are many tools on the web, including templates to help employees develop their own career development plans. Many organizations, in fact, ask employees to develop their own plans and use those as a starting point for understanding long-term career goals. Then hopefully the organization can provide them with the opportunities to meet these career goals. In the late 1980s, many employees felt that career opportunities at their current organizations dwindled after seeing the downsizing that occurred. It gave employees the feeling that companies were not going to help develop them, unless they took the initiative to do so themselves. Unfortunately, this attitude means that workers will not wait for career opportunities within the company, unless a clear plan and guide is put into place by the company (Capelli, 2010). Here is an example of a process that can be used to put a career development program in place (Adolfo, 2010):

• Meet individually with employees to identify their long-term career interests (this may be done by human resources or the direct manager).
• Identify resources within the organization that can help employees achieve their goals. Create new opportunities for training if you see a gap in needs versus what is currently offered.
• Prepare a plan for each employee, or ask them to prepare the plan.
• Meet with the employee to discuss the plan.
• During performance evaluations, revisit the plan and make changes as necessary.

Identifying and developing a planning process not only helps the employee but also can assist the managers in supporting employees in gaining new skills, adding value, and motivating employees.

Figure 8.11 Career Development Planning Process

Key Takeaways

• There are a number of key considerations in developing a training program. Training should not be handled casually but instead developed specifically to meet the needs of the organization. This can be done by a needs assessment consisting of three levels: organizational , occupational , and individual assessments .
• The first consideration is the delivery mode; depending on the type of training and other factors, some modes might be better than others.
• Budget is a consideration in developing training. The cost of materials, but also the cost of time, should be considered.
• The delivery style must take into account people’s individual learning styles. The amount of lecture, discussion, role plays, and activities are considered part of delivery style.
• The audience for the training is an important aspect when developing training. This can allow the training to be better developed to meet the needs and the skills of a particular group of people.
• The content obviously is an important consideration. Learning objectives and goals for the training should be developed before content is developed.
• After content is developed, understanding the time constraints is an important aspect. Will the training take one hour or a day to deliver? What is the time line consideration in terms of when people should take the training?
• Letting people know when and where the training will take place is part of communication.
• The final aspect of developing a training framework is to consider how it will be measured. At the end, how will you know if the trainees learned what they needed to learn?
• A career development process can help retain good employees. It involves creating a specific program in which employee goals are identified and new training and opportunities are identified and created to help the employee in the career development process.
• Develop a rough draft of a training framework using Figure 8.8 for a job you find on Monster.com.
• Write three learning objectives you think would be necessary when developing orientation training for a receptionist in an advertising firm.
• Why is a career development plan important to develop personally, even if your company doesn’t have a formal plan in place? List at least three reasons and describe.

1 “What’s YOUR Learning Style?” adapted from Instructor Magazine , University of South Dakota, August 1989, accessed July 28, 2010, http://people.usd.edu/~bwjames/tut/learning-style/ .

2 “Oakwood Worldwide Honored by Training Magazine for Fifth Consecutive Year Training also Presents Oakwood with Best Practice Award,” press release, February 25, 2011, Marketwire , accessed February 26, 2011, http://www.live-pr.com/en/oakwood-worldwide-honored-by-training-magazine-r1048761409.htm .

Adolfo, J. T., “The Career Development Plan: A Quick Guide for Managers and Supervisors,” n.d., National Career Development Association, accessed July 29, 2010, http://associationdatabase.com/aws/NCDA/pt/sd/news_article/6420/_PARENT/layout_details/false .

Capelli, P., “A Balanced Plan for Career Development,” n.d., Microsoft, accessed July 29, 2010, http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/a-balanced-plan-for-career-development-HA001126815.aspx .

Heller, M., “Six Tips for Effective Employee Development Programs,” CIO Magazine , June 15, 2005, accessed July 28, 2010, http://www.cio.com/article/29169/Six_Tips_for_Effective_Career_Development_Programs .

Kirkpatrick, D., Evaluating Training Programs , 3rd ed. (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006).

Pashler, H., Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer, and Robert Bjork, “Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9, no. 3 (2008): 109–19, accessed February 26, 2011, http://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/pspi/PSPI_9_3.pdf .

WonderShare QuizCreator, accessed July 29, 2010, http://www.sameshow.com/quiz-creator.html#172 .

Human Resource Management Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Thinkific Plus

Training structure: examples and downloadable template, share this article.

Think of a training structure as the blueprint for your B2B training business. It’s like an architect drawing up plans for a home – it outlines what materials are needed, where to place them, and how it all comes together.

This article will explore comprehensive training structure examples and templates for B2B training businesses to help you create the perfect program to generate revenue and scale operations. 

We’ll look at how to create an effective learning plan, design the curriculum, select the best delivery methods, and present it in a way that resonates with your audience. 

Skip ahead: 

Understanding the Basics of Training Structure

Sequential training structure, modular training structure, layered training structure, blended training structure, spiral training structure, training structure templates, best practices for implementing training structure, optimizing online training structure, additional training structure examples and templates, frequently asked questions, significance of a well-structured training program.

Creating a comprehensive training structure for your B2B training business can be daunting. However, understanding the importance of such an undertaking is necessary to ensure success. 

A well-structured training program can help you scale and increase revenue in ways that few other strategies can provide. At its core, a  well-structured training program allows you to plan better and manage resources to maximize profits while delivering quality services. 

This helps you create a bigger return on the time, energy, and money invested in your business.

Overview of Training Structure Examples and Templates

When designing your online course, there are many training structure examples and templates to consider. The proper training structure can significantly impact your B2B training business’s success. 

You have many training options to choose from for your online course, such as self-paced, blended, modular or spiral instruction. Each approach has advantages and disadvantages depending on the type of content being taught and the objectives that need to be met. 

Additionally, templates provide an easy way to create a consistent style throughout your course materials without needing extra effort from you or your team. 

Before diving into examples or templates for your business’s training structure, understanding the basics of this concept is essential.

Defining Training Structure and its Core Elements

A training structure is an organizational framework for your online courses that helps ensure each product functions as intended to reach its goals. Core elements of a training structure include: 

• Defining the learning objectives and outcomes of each particular course or lesson. 
• Establishing the topics and content presented in each lesson. 
• Crafting assessments and quizzes to measure student comprehension. 
• Setting up any additional resources, such as video content, audio recordings, or printable worksheets needed for the course. 
• Integrating feedback mechanisms so students can ask questions or provide comments throughout their journey. 
• Collecting data such as learner engagement and completion rates to determine the effectiveness of your program. 

Incorporating these features in a well-defined training structure can help maximize return on investment while building a loyal customer base through educational content.

Key Considerations for B2B Training Programs

There are several factors to consider when structuring your B2B training programs, some of which are necessary to differentiate them from B2C training programs and courses , including:

• Utilizing a scalable platform that can accommodate larger audiences. 
• Automating processes to streamline the delivery of content.
• Incorporating interactive elements such as quizzes, polls, and case studies.
• Offering personalized coaching or mentorship opportunities. 
• Establishing marketing tactics to attract potential clients. 
• Crafting customer success stories to demonstrate the ROI of training programs. 
• Creating dynamic pricing models based on student needs. 
• Providing tailored material based on industry or company size.

Now that we know the basics let’s examine different training structure examples and templates you can use to create your next educational product.

Explanation and Benefits

This incremental process is an effective way to organize your business’s training program. It involves creating a series of courses that build on each other and provide a logical progression for learners. Doing so creates a clear path or “ sequence ” from novice trainees to advanced experts while helping them make the most of their learning journey. 

The benefits of using this kind of structure include: 

• Encourages learner engagement : When customers can see progress and understand how far they have come, it boosts motivation and keeps them engaged in their learning journey. 
• Easier onboarding process : Setting steps makes it easier for new trainees to understand what to do and how far they have left. 
• More effective training : Structured courses make learning more efficient, as learners can focus on specific topics or skills without feeling overwhelmed by too much information. 
• Improved customer satisfaction : Customers’ satisfaction levels increase as they become more knowledgeable about your product or service.

Step-by-Step Implementation Guide

• Identify the core topics of your course and the desired learning outcomes for each.
• Organize these topics into a logical sequence that builds on previous knowledge and facilitates mastery of skills as learners progress through the course content. 
• Create individual modules based on these topics, ensuring they are concise yet comprehensive in their subject coverage. 
• Develop activities within each module to reinforce key concepts and provide opportunities for learners to practice newly acquired skills interactively.  
• Include quizzes or assessments throughout the course to assess learner progress toward mastery of all objectives. 
• Add a final assessment to the course that requires learners to demonstrate mastery of all topics and objectives. 
• Provide support materials, such as worksheets or reference documents, for learners who need additional guidance throughout their learning journey.

Case Study: Corporate Finance Institute (CFI)

Corporate Finance Institute (CFI) has successfully utilized Thinkific’s online training resources to boost revenue and reach over 7 million students across 170 countries. Co-founded by Tim Vipond, CFI offers comprehensive financial analyst programs for individuals and renowned institutions like Deloitte, HSBC, and Amazon.

Transitioning from in-person classes to online courses with Thinkific Plus, CFI initially launched with a bundle of 10 courses. This allowed them to gather feedback and expand their offerings continuously. 

Now providing over 140+ courses through the Thinkific Plus platform, CFI continues to experience strong yearly growth in both student enrollments and revenue generation while reinvesting earnings back into course improvements and expansion efforts.

A modular training structure organizes and delivers training that allows you to mix and match different elements. It’s helpful for businesses looking to create custom learning experiences that meet their customers’ needs. 

The advantages of this approach include: 

• Flexibility : You can tailor your courses according to customer preferences. 
• Streamlined delivery : It makes managing complex teaching scenarios with multiple instructors, locations, and topics easier. 
• Cost savings . Since each module can be reused in different contexts, companies save time and money by not having to develop entirely new courses each time. 
• Increased engagement : Learners can explore topics in more depth since modules are organized into smaller, digestible chunks.
• Define your goals : Identify the objectives of your training program and how you want to measure success. 
• Organize content : Divide information into logical modules or topics that can be accessed in any order. 
• Determine delivery method : Decide if you will deliver the training through an online platform, a webinar series, or other forms of instruction, such as text-based emails or videos. 
• Create structure : Design a framework for each module, including an introduction, main body with learning activities, and conclusion. 
• Develop content assets : Create relevant materials such as slides, quizzes, tutorials, and other assets to supplement the learning experience. 
• Monitor progress : Track student engagement with metrics such as completion rates and feedback ratings. 
• Evaluate outcomes : Analyze data to understand your program’s effectiveness and identify improvement areas.

Case Study: Blisspot

Blisspot , an online well-being solution, offers resources to support mental, physical, and emotional health for individuals and companies. Referred to as the “Netflix of well-being,” Blisspot provides users with easy access to expert resources like courses, podcasts, meditations, and goal-setting tools. The platform primarily targets small to midsize companies lacking in-house wellness programs or dedicated HR departments.

Initially experimenting with live events and workshops, Blisspot realized that online learning through Thinkific Plus would allow them to reach more people effectively. This seamless integration has enabled the company to offer personalized features such as tailored content recommendations based on user interests and goals. With a monthly membership fee of only $17 dollars per individual user or group subscriptions for employees offered by businesses participating in the program, accessibility is increased for all.

Thinkific Plus has helped Blisspot deliver enriching content while providing exceptional customer support that aligns with their mission of improving personal well-being and team performance across various industries.

A layered training structure is a way to organize online learning into multiple levels or stages. This approach allows learners to progress from basic concepts and knowledge to more advanced skills and understanding at their own pace. 

The pluses of using this learning strategy include the following: 

• Greater comprehension for the learner as they pass through each layer 
• Increased engagement in the learning process due to its progressive nature 
• Ability to tailor content based on learners’ needs and abilities 
• Clear evaluation points along the way so trainers can monitor the success
• Establish the purpose of your training structure : What do you want to achieve (e.g., customer education, revenue generation)? 
• Outline goals and objectives for each layer of the training structure : Consider what you would like to teach customers or how much revenue needs to be generated from each program tier. 
• Create a timeline for implementation : Once you have set your goals and objectives, decide how long it will take to deliver them in line with customer requirements and expectations. 
• Design content that meets the needs of learners at different levels : Structure content so that those new to the subject can easily understand basic concepts. In contrast, more experienced learners can deepen their skills. 
• Develop a system for tracking and measuring progress : Set up metrics for monitoring learner engagement, completion rate, satisfaction levels etc. 
• Establish an assessment process : Create assessments that measure how well learners have understood your training content and how successful they are in achieving goals set out in the program. 
• Assign resources to promote and support your training structure : Make sure you have adequate staff or technology resources available to ensure customers receive quality service throughout their learning journey. 
• Evaluate performance regularly : Review learner data and adjust the program as needed.

Case Study: BankersHub

BankersHub® , co-founded by Erin O’Donnell and Michael Beird, is a leading financial services training company dedicated to supporting and educating financial institutions worldwide. They offer the latest industry best practices, research insights, economic trends, and consumer views through their online education platform. Utilizing Thinkific Plus has allowed BankersHub® to stay ahead of the curve in financial services training while increasing both revenue and client engagement on their platform.

Recognizing the need for accessible online education following the 2008-2009 Global Financial Crisis, BankersHub® used Thinkific Plus to set up their training academy – BankersCollegeTM. This provided an easy-to-use platform for seamless B2B selling with built-in administrative and communication features that improved customer experience without requiring additional headcount. 

Since launching courses on Thinkific Plus, they have experienced steady growth in course enrollments and an 8% increase in revenue last year – attributed mainly to customers’ satisfaction with a more formal learning process.

This format combines in-person and online learning activities to create an engaging learning experience. It is advantageous for B2B training businesses as it provides the following: 

• Flexibility : Learners can access content anytime, anywhere. 
• Cost savings : Reduced travel costs for instructors and participants. 
• Increased engagement : A diverse range of delivery methods engages participants more effectively. 
• Improved reach : More people can join sessions remotely or via video conferencing technology.

Step-by-Step Implementation

• Develop a blended training plan that incorporates both online and in-person components. 
• Decide which topics your customers will learn best from an in-person session and which can be taught effectively online. 
• Outline the objectives of each program component to ensure they are aligned with customer education goals. 
• Create content for each aspect of the blended learning structure, including videos, webinars, and physical materials like workbooks or handouts, if applicable. 
• Select appropriate content delivery platforms, such as Learning Management Systems (LMS) or virtual classrooms, for synchronous online sessions. 
• Assign instructors or facilitators for each program component and provide training as needed. 
• Launch your blended training structure and measure its success over time to ensure it meets customer education needs and generates revenue.

Case Study: Wallbreakers

Wallbreakers, an AI-powered platform co-founded by Andrea Guendelman, Leah La Salla, and Isaac Saldana, aims to bridge the skill gap between recent computer science graduates and top employers’ expectations for software development engineers. The company focuses on recruiting and retaining diverse talent from underrepresented backgrounds in the tech industry.

To manage a growing number of candidates and specialized training programs, Wallbreakers utilized Thinkific Plus to launch its online certification courses. This move enabled them to better monitor student progress while providing valuable certifications that make candidates more marketable to partner organizations like Amazon and Visa. 

By using Thinkific Plus features such as weekly reminder emails, group analysts, multimedia capabilities, and analytics support, Wallbreakers has successfully enhanced both candidate success rates and customer experiences in their program. Consequently, they have witnessed rapid growth through word-of-mouth marketing on social media platforms like LinkedIn.

This strategy presents information in a manner that is both progressive and cyclical. It begins with the most basic concepts, then introduces more complex ideas and builds on them as they are repeated throughout the course. 

With this approach, learners can continually review materials to solidify their understanding without getting overwhelmed by long lists of topics or competing ideas. The advantages for learners include: 

• A greater level of comprehension due to multiple repetitions 
• More straightforward navigation through content as similar subjects are grouped
• Opportunity to quickly master foundational concepts before progressing further 
• A more engaging learning experience as lessons are reinforced through repetition 
• More accessible course updates, allowing content to be cycled out and replaced with new material 
• Greater flexibility in creating different levels of courses or modules based on learners’ existing knowledge or needs 
• Faster delivery times due to fewer topics needing to be covered at once
• Define the key objectives of your educational course 
• Break down your content into modules 
• Designate a pre-requisite for each section 
• Create an assessment to gauge the trainee’s understanding and progress 
• Establish a spiral approach by linking topics from different modules together 
• Implement feedback loops throughout the training program to ensure proper comprehension and retention of materials 
• Monitor learner performance to adjust learning paths as needed 
• Integrate revenue-generating strategies such as upsells or referrals throughout the training program 
• Provide additional resources for self-paced learning or in-depth study 
• Track outcomes to measure and analyze the success of your training program

Case Study: Epoch Education

Epoch Education, a national leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training, offers over 50+ courses to educators, students, and corporations across the USA. Founded by Dr. Nancy Dome, their RIR Protocol™ – recognize it, interrupt it and repair it – forms the foundation of their training courses. Prior to Covid-19, Epoch Education facilitated in-person trainings throughout the US but quickly shifted to online education via Thinkific Plus in March 2020.

Thinkific Plus has enabled Epoch Education to deliver personalized and engaging DEI training content securely while improving learning experiences and increasing revenue. By expanding its focus beyond education towards small businesses and corporations – as well as utilizing multimedia lessons on Thinkific Plus platform for wider reach – they have successfully engaged clients from various sectors across the country with audiences up to 3500 people at once.

Course Outline Template

Overview and Purpose: A course outline template organizes the main topics, objectives, and learning outcomes of a training program to ensure a coherent structure throughout the course.

Key Sections and Subsections: Introduction, Training Objectives, Training Content & Schedule, Training Methodolody, Conclusion.

Sample Format: 

Title & Description

• Course Name: ABC Training Program
• Introduction: A comprehensive training program on XYZ skills.

Training Objectives

• Module 1: Topic A (Introduction to XYZ)
• Subtopic 1: Background and history of XYZ
• Subtopic 2: Importance of mastering XYZ skills in today’s market
• Module 2 etc.

We at Thinkific have put together a comprehensive template for you to use and customize. Download it here to fast-track your session planning.

Lesson Plan Template

Overview and Purpose: A lesson plan template provides instructors with a detailed guide for each session or module of the training program, including specific activities and resources required for effective learning.

Key Elements and Components: Objective(s), Timeframe, Materials/Resources Needed, Teaching Methods and Techniques (e.g., lecture presentation, discussion, group work), Activities and Tasks for Learners.

Sample Format:

Objective(s)

• By the end of this session, participants will be able to identify key components of the XYZ process.

Time Allotted: 90 minutes 

Materials/Resources Required:

• PowerPoint slides for presentation 
• Handout with key concepts and examples 

Instructional Technique(s):

• Lecture Presentation [30 min]

Activity/Task Description:

• Participants will listen and take notes during the lecture.

Training Session Agenda Template

Overview and Purpose: Overview and Purpose: This template helps trainers create an organized schedule for each session of their training program by allocating time to different topics while ensuring smooth progress throughout the event.

Key Sections and Time Allocation: Welcome/Introduction; Lecture Sessions; Breaks; Workshops or Discussions; Q&A and Closing Remarks.

08:30 – Welcome / Introduction [15 min]

09:00 – Presentation topic (Module 1) [45 min]

10:00 – Coffee break [15 min]

10:15 – Workshop activity (Group discussion on Module 1) [60 min]

Assessment and Evaluation Template

Overview and Purpose: The assessment template ensures that learners are evaluated effectively based on their understanding of course material through various assessment methods like quizzes, tests or practical assignments.

Key Criteria and Assessment Methods: Critera could include Multiple-choice Questions, Open-ended Questions, Practical Assignments/Tasks, Self-Reflections.

Assessment Title – Final Exam for ABC Training Program

Section I – Multiple-choice questions (20 points)

Question #1 –

Which one is a component of the XYZ process?

• a) Component A, b) Component B, c) Component C

Training Material Design Template

Overview and Purpose: This template guides trainers in creating visually appealing and engaging training materials that effectively communicate key concepts to learners while maintaining a consistent design throughout the course.

Key Sections and Visual Elements: Visual Elements can include Cover Page; Table of Contents; Headers and Footers with section names; Subheadings; Images & Graphics (charts/graphs/icons); Consistent Fonts & Colors.

Cover page template example:

• [Title] ABC Training Program Workbook [/Title]
• [Logo] Your Company Logo [/Logo]

Table of Contents template example:

• Table of Contents
• Introduction …………………………………………………. Page i 
• Module/topic name …………………………………………… Page ii
•  Subheading(s) ……………………………………………….. Page iii

Headers/Footers with section names template example:

• Header: ABC Training Program Workbook
• Footer: Module # – Topic Name | Page #

Images & Graphics template example:

• [Image] Diagram illustrating the XYZ process [/Image]

Consistent Fonts & Colors template example:

• Font Family: Arial or Calibri, Font Sizes: Titles (24pt), Subheadings (18pt), Body text (12-14pt); Colors: Company Branding colors for title/subheadings and black/grey for body text.

Once you’ve selected your training structure examples and templates for your online B2B learning products, you will add value to your offering when you apply the following strategies.

Customizing Training Structure for Specific Needs

By tailoring content to the needs and goals of a company, you will be able to provide an individualized approach that is more likely to engage customers, help them reach their objectives, and generate revenue for your business. 

Ensuring Seamless Transitions and Flow

Ensuring your modules have a smooth and orderly progression is key to optimizing the learning journey of each user. Best practices for achieving this include mapping out an organized curriculum, breaking it down into logical steps, providing clear objectives at the start of each session, and creating natural pathways that lead users from one topic to another. 

Incorporating Engaging Activities and Interactions

Incorporating dynamic and interactive elements such as quizzes, puzzles and activities can help customers to absorb and retain information in a more effective way. This will provide them with the tools needed to make the most out of their training experience.

Assessing and Adjusting Training Structure Effectiveness

It is essential to continually monitor, assess and refine your training structure in order to ensure that it remains effective. This can include regularly assessing customer feedback, evaluating the performance of employees trained using these measures and making necessary adjustments to stay up-to-date with industry trends.

Online training requires a different approach than in-person training, as the medium is drastically different and requires optimization to be effective. Here’s a look at several virtual learning strategies.

Adapting Training Structure for Virtual Learning

To adapt your educational course to the virtual environment, focus on creating an engaging environment through interactive activities such as polls and surveys, provide more self-guided resources like eBooks or podcasts and utilize customized tracking tools for progress assessment. 

Leveraging Technology and Interactive Tools

Technology has revolutionized the way we learn, offering us an abundance of virtual tools to create a more engaging and effective online learning environment. Here are some popular types of technology you can use for bringing your training online with courses: 

• A Learning Management System like Thinkific to build your courses 
• Video conferencing platforms such as Zoom or Skype 
• Virtual whiteboards for collaboration with course participants 
• Online quizzes with automated grading capabilities 
• An online community for your learners 
• Digital library resources that provide access to ebooks and other reading materials 
• Interactive teaching software that offers multimedia lessons and activities 
• Mobile applications that enable learners to access courses on their phones

Enhancing Learner Engagement and Interaction

When you move your training program online, you gain the ability to engage customers in a more interactive and progressive way. Some of the most inventive and popular methods include:

• Incorporating multimedia such as video, audio, and animation
• Utilizing chat boxes to allow for real-time communication and discussion
• Introducing gamification elements to motivate users
• Allowing customers to collaborate with peers via virtual classrooms, discussion rooms, or project groups

All of these tactics help keep participants engaged and can lead to greater knowledge retention.

Let’s examine a few more training approaches you can use as you develop your educational product.

Gamified Training Structure

Gamified training structure is a method of teaching and learning that uses game-like elements, such as points, badges, leaderboards, and rewards to motivate learners. It can be used to encourage engagement with content and reward progress toward the desired outcome or goal.

Role-Play Training Structure

This form of comprehensive training program encourages participants to simulate scenarios and practice in real-world situations. It focuses on replicating challenges and building skills for dealing with them, allowing employees to gain experience without the risk of failure.

Problem-Based Learning Structure

Instead of simply giving learners information, challenge-based learning immerses them in a problem and allows them to develop skills as they work toward a solution. 

Peer-Learning Structure

This learning approach encourages individuals to learn from each other by sharing their knowledge and experiences. It fosters collaboration between participants, creating an environment of mutual learning and growth.

Simulation-Based Training Structure

Programs built around this training method use virtual environments to simulate real-world scenarios. This process helps learners build skills and experience in safe, risk-free settings by allowing them to practice without consequence.

This article has explored various training structure examples and templates, such as sequential, modular, layered, blended, and spiral approaches. We’ve also discussed strategies for enhancing learner engagement through technology integration and virtual learning adaptation.

It’s essential to tailor your chosen training structure to suit the unique needs of your clients while ensuring a smooth flow between course modules. Regularly assessing your program’s effectiveness allows you to stay current with industry trends and maximize return on investment. 

By implementing these best practices within your online courses or training programs, you can cultivate engaging educational experiences that drive revenue growth for both your business and its clients. 

Download the Training Structure Template

Harness the power of well-structured training. This free template guides you in outlining a cohesive, engaging structure for your training programs or courses. Save time, enhance learning effectiveness, and ensure your training delivery is top-notch. Secure your copy today and elevate your training framework.

Q. Why is it important to have a structured training program for B2B businesses?

It is important to have a structured training program for B2B businesses because with a structured program, businesses can create online educational products that are tailored to their customers’ needs while also generating income from these products. In addition, having a well-defined program helps ensure quality assurance of the product, thereby increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Q. Can I modify the provided training structure examples and templates to align with my business requirements?

Yes, you can absolutely modify the provided training structure examples and templates to align with your business requirements. In fact, it is highly recommended that you tailor these structures to fit the unique needs of your clients and industry. Customizing your chosen training approach helps ensure a more engaging and relevant learning experience for your customers.

Q. How do I determine which training structure is most suitable for my B2B training programs?

To determine which training structure is most suitable for your B2B training program you should consider your program’s goals, budget, and customer needs. Evaluate what type of content you need to create, how long it will take for customers to complete the training program, and if any additional resources or support is needed. Additionally, think about how you can track progress and measure success in order to optimize your B2B training structure.

Daniela Ochoa is the go-to Content Marketing Specialist here at Thinkific Plus! With years of experience in marketing and communications, she is passionate about helping businesses grow through strategic storytelling, innovative digital campaigns, and online learning at scale.On this blog, she shares her expertise in content marketing, lead generation, and more.

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2024 federal budget's key takeaways: Housing and carbon rebates, students and sin taxes

Budget sees nearly $53b in new spending over the next 5 years.

What's in the new federal budget?

Social sharing.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland today tabled a 400-page-plus budget her government is pitching as a balm for anxious millennials and Generation Z.

The budget proposes $52.9 billion in new spending over five years, including $8.5 billion in new spending for housing. To offset some of that new spending, Ottawa is pitching policy changes to bring in new revenue.

Here are some of the notable funding initiatives and legislative commitments in budget 2024.

Ottawa unloading unused offices to meet housing targets

One of the biggest pillars of the budget is its housing commitments. Before releasing the budget, the government laid out what it's calling Canada's Housing Plan — a pledge to "unlock" nearly 3.9 million homes by 2031.

The government says two million of those would be net new homes and it believes it can contribute to more than half of them. 

It plans to do that by:

• Converting underused federal offices into homes. The budget promises $1.1 billion over ten years to transform 50 per cent of the federal office portfolio into housing.
• Building homes on Canada Post properties. The government says the 1,700-plus Canada Post offices across the country can be used to build new homes while maintaining postal services. The federal government says it's assessing six Canada Post properties in Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia for development potential "as a start."
• Rethinking National Defence properties. The government is promising to look at redeveloping properties and buildings on National Defence lands for military and civilian use.
• Building apartments. Ottawa is pledging a $15 billion top-up to the Apartment Construction Loan Program, which says it will build 30,000 new homes across Canada.

Taxing vacant land?

As part of its push on housing, the federal government also says it's looking at vacant land that could be used to build homes.

It's not yet committing to new measures but the budget says the government will consider introducing a new tax on residentially zoned vacant land. 

• Freeland's new federal budget hikes taxes on the rich to cover billions in new spending
• Are you renting with no plans to buy? Here's what the federal budget has for you

The government said it plans to launch consultations on the measure later this year.

Help for students 

There's also something in the budget for students hunting for housing.

The government says it will update the formula used by the Canada Student Financial Assistance Program to calculate housing costs when determining financial need, to better reflect the cost of housing in the current climate.

The government estimates this could deliver more aid for rent to approximately 79,000 students each year, at an estimated cost of $154.6 million over five years.

• Updated Federal budget's funding boost for defence spread out over multiple years
• Liberals pledge $9B in new money for Indigenous communities in 2024 budget

The government is also promising to extend increased student grants and interest-free loans, at an estimated total cost of $1.1 billion this year.

Increase in taxes on capital gains

To help cover some of its multi-billion dollar commitments, the government is proposing a tax hike on capital gains — the profit individuals make when assets like stocks and second properties are sold.

The government is proposing an increase in the taxable portion of capital gains, up from the current 50 per cent to two thirds for annual capital gains over $250,000. 

New investment to lead 'housing revolution in Canada,' Freeland says

Freeland said the change would impact the wealthiest 0.1 per cent.

There's still some protection for small businesses. There's been a lifetime capital gains exemption which allows Canadians to exempt up to $1,016,836 in capital gains tax-free on the sale of small business shares and farming and fishing property. This June the tax-free limit will be increased to $1.25 million and will continue to be indexed to inflation thereafter, according to the budget.

The federal government estimates this could bring in more than $19 billion over five years, although some analysts are not convinced.

Disability benefit amounts to $200 per month 

Parliament last year passed the Canada Disability Benefit Act, which promised to send a direct benefit to low-income, working-age people with disabilities. 

Budget 2024 proposes funding of $6.1 billion over six years, beginning this fiscal year, and $1.4 billion per year ongoing, for a new Canada Disability Benefit.

Advocates had been hoping for something along the lines of $1,000 per month per person . They'll be disappointed.

According to the budget document, the maximum benefit will amount to $2,400 per year for low income individuals with disabilities between the ages of 18 and 64 — about $200 a month.

• Federal government plans to lease public lands for construction through new housing strategy
• Alberta premier says she's prepared to take Ottawa to court over housing deals

The government said it plans for the Canada Disability Benefit Act to come into force in June 2024 and for payments to start in July 2025.

Carbon rebate for small businesses coming 

The federal government has heard an earful from small business advocates who accuse it of reneging on a promise to return a portion of carbon pricing revenues to small businesses to mitigate the tax's economic costs.

• What's behind the carbon tax, and does it work?
• Federal government scales back carbon tax rebates for small businesses

The budget proposes to return fuel charge proceeds from 2019-20 through 2023-24 to an estimated 600,000 businesses with 499 or fewer employees through a new refundable tax credit.

The government said this would deliver $2.5 billion directly to Canada's small- and medium-sized businesses.

Darts and vape pods will cost more 

Pitching it as a measure to cut the number of people smoking and vaping, the Liberals are promising to raise revenues on tobacco and smoking products.

• Just Asking  wants to know:   What questions do you have about quitting smoking or vaping? Do you think sin taxes will encourage smoking cessation?  Fill out the details on  this form  and send us your questions ahead of our show on April 20.

Starting Wednesday, the total tobacco excise duty will be $5.49 per carton. The government estimates this could increase federal revenue by $1.36 billion over five years starting in 2024-25.

The budget also proposes to increase the vaping excise duty rates by 12 per cent effective July 1. That means an increase of 12 to 24 cents per pod, depending on where you live. 

• 'Stay the hell away from our kids': Health minister vows to restrict nicotine pouches — but how?

Ottawa hopes this increase in sin taxes will bring in $310 million over five years, starting in 2024-25.

More money for CBC 

Heritage Minister Pascale St-Onge has mused about redefining the role of the public broadcaster before the next federal election . But before that happens, CBC/Radio-Canada is getting a top-up this year. 

The budget promises $42 million more in 2024-25 for CBC/Radio-Canada for "news and entertainment programming." CBC/Radio-Canada received about $1.3 billion in total federal funding last year.

The government says it's doing this to ensure that Canadians across the country, including rural, remote, Indigenous and minority language communities, have access to independent journalism and entertainment.

Last year, the CBC announced a financial shortfall, cut 141 employees and eliminated 205 vacant positions. In a statement issued Tuesday, CBC spokesperson Leon Mar said the new funding means the corporation can balance its budget "without significant additional reductions this year."

Boost for Canada's spy agency 

As the government takes heat over how it has handled the threat of foreign election interference, it's promising more money to bolster its spy service.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is in line to receive $655.7 million over eight years, starting this fiscal year, to enhance its intelligence capabilities and its presence in Toronto.

• CSIS chief defends his spies' work after PM casts doubt on reliability of agency's reports
• Trudeau says it's his job to question CSIS intelligence, call out 'contradictions'

The budget also promises to guarantee up to $5 billion in loans for Indigenous communities to participate in natural resource development and energy projects in their territories.

These loans would be provided by financial institutions or other lenders and guaranteed by the federal government, meaning Indigenous borrowers who opt in could benefit from lower interest rates, the budget says. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catharine Tunney is a reporter with CBC's Parliament Hill bureau, where she covers national security and the RCMP. She worked previously for CBC in Nova Scotia. You can reach her at [email protected]

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