Your Employees are Unique, Your Company is Unique, Your Training Should be Unique, too.

In the world of online training or e-learning, there are basically two types of courses.  There are training courses that rely on generic, off the shelf material and those that use custom content designed specifically for your company.   They are really very different and they serve very different purposes.

Let’s look at how each would work in a production or warehouse environment and the differences between the two.

Generic training courses are designed to be, well, generic and while they can provide some basic level of training they cannot provide new employees with the detailed knowledge to effectively do a specific job. Traditionally these courses are used for training on tasks like:

• Driving a lift truck
• Safe bending and lifting
• Hazardous materials shipping
• Lock Out Tag Out

These are all generic functions that are performed the same way in every plant or warehouse.  They are definitely important functions and training on them is critical to a safe operation.  Generic training courses are acceptable for providing the basics or enough to meet the minimum requirements from organizations like OSHA.   What generic courses cannot do is train your employees on job specific tasks or your own unique procedures.

In a production environment like a manufacturing plant or warehouse, there are basic procedures you want your employees to follow.  Whether they are learning to receive inbound loads, assemble a valve or pick outbound orders you have developed procedures over the years that you feel are effective and productive.  But your procedures or SOP’s are very different than any other plant or warehouse.  You use terms that are unique to your company, you have paperwork and documents you have created internally, often computers or RF devices have customized screens, and you use tools with names that may be unique to your plant.  You may not think of your operation as unique or custom but it really is and training an employee on the specifics of their new job is challenging and often confusing for the employee.

This is where custom content training can really help bring the new employee up to speed much faster and give them a better understanding of their new job.  Custom training using online or e-learning methods is designed to train on your exact procedures using your terminology, screens, documents, tools etc.   It will show them, in detail, how to do their new job exactly how you want them to do it, not a generic way or how a similar company does it.  Custom content courses are built by spending time in your operation, learning the job first then designing a course to show the employee exactly how to do it using pictures, video, screen captures, animation, text, etc.

New employees, particularly younger generation or “millennials”, are technically competent and have been learning through electronic methods most of their life.  Custom training hosted on the Internet is very comfortable to them and when used to show them visually how to do their new job, is a powerful tool that brings them to full productivity faster.

Contrary to what some believe, custom content training is also very flexible and easily updated.  When a procedure is changed, a new document introduced or software upgraded, that specific section of the course can be modified to reflect the change.  Because custom eLearning courses are designed in smaller segments that fit together seamlessly, any one segment can be changed without affecting the rest of the course.  Think about movies and how they are easily edited with parts added or removed without having to reshoot the entire movie. It’s kind of like that.

So to summarize, custom content training . . .

• Is designed specifically for your plant or warehouse.
• Uses your terms, documents, screens, tools, etc.
• Trains your employees exactly how you want them to be trained
• Shows them your SOP’s in your facility in detail.
• Reduces training time and gets them to full productivity faster.
• Will connect with your new employees because it is how they learn.
• Is flexible, adaptable and can be changed when your procedures change.

So think of customized training as a new tool to be used in your plant, warehouse or operation that will improve safety, productivity and quality while engaging your employees.

To learn more about custom content training and the benefits check out
The ultimate checklist for choosing a great LMS – Don’t ever settle for less! and our new video eLearning Overview.