Employee Training: Why It’s All About Not Forgetting

Every year, we spend 60 billion dollars on employee training. And every year, we throw 42 billion dollars away. That’s 70%. Why is that? Because employees forget 70% of what they learn within 24 hours of their training experience. The fact is that an employee’s learning curve has an equally powerful foe: the “forgetting curve.” On graph paper, it looks just like a learning curve. Except it tells a story with a forgettable ending. Two days after training, employees have forgotten 85% of what they’ve learned. After three days, it’s 90%. After one week, retention is closer to zero*. This creates a second issue. Learning materials are meant to be motivating. If employees are forgetting the information in them, they’re probably not getting the motivation they need to take those extra steps toward growth. Blame it on the brain, says Katie McCaslin, Vice President of Learning Solutions at RealPage. Overcoming the “forgetting curve” According to Katie, “Forgetting is an intentional thing that our brains do. They’re trying to keep relevant information at the top while pushing and purging out the stuff they don’t think is relevant. Unfortunately, the brain doesn’t always know which stuff is relevant. That includes all the training information we want our employees to absorb so they can improve their performance and develop their talents.” So, what can companies do if they want to advance staff through in-house employee learning programs? Plenty, it turns out. McCaslin points to two innovative techniques—learning boosters and social gamification—that companies can employ to overcome the forgetting curve and build motivation, while simplifying the way they incorporate learning management into their teams. “Learning boosters are interactive activities, like trivia or did you know facts about the material that employees have just learned, says Katie. “If you inject...