Deadlines for Training

Oct 12, 2018

Hello everyone! I am hoping you can help me with a question I have on setting deadlines for training. We are ready to launch the first course we created  using Articulate and are trying to determine how many days we should give our employees to complete the course. On previous courses we had given 60 or 90 days, but it was suggested to us that we should think about cutting this back to 30 days. the logic behind this is that employees may forget if you give longer and may be more engaged in learning if they take the training sooner to when it is announced.  What do you recommend and/or find the most effective deadline to give employees? Thank you in advance for your help!

6 Replies
Richard Watson

Lacy,

Interesting questions and a few ramblings.

I suspect it would be tied to the type of course and whether or not it is a required course. For example, if it is a compliance-based course tied to some type of safety issue, employees might be required to complete within a matter of days.  

In the end, it depends upon:

  • Why the course was put online in the first place? What was the business driver?
  • How quickly will the content become obsolete?
  • How does it connect to the individual performance plans within your organization? 
  • Are you providing any follow up (back on the job) once people complete the course to see if they are applying what they learned? Updates coming from the employee's managers who completed the training?  Training is not the end but more the start of helping employees learn and grow in their jobs.

I'm also wondering if your question is more related to getting people to complete the course within a specific time period. If people are signing up and not completing the course, it might point more to the course itself and not the time period.

Anyway, just a few things to consider. 

 

Richard

 

 

 

Lacy Renner

Richard,

Thank you for your response! My inquiry was more specific to having people complete a course within a specific time period. Most of our employee training is mandatory, as this one will be, and our employees do well at completing their training within the 60 or 90 day windows they are given. We are looking to determine is it really necessary to give 60 or 90 days or is 30 sufficient? I was looking to see what best practice is and what other companies do related to deadlines for training.

Ulises Musseb

The timelines for training (at least in my organization) vary from training to training. What is the use/purpose of the training? What are they going to be doing with what they learn? How urgent is for them to learn what the training delivers?

If it's regulatory, compliance, or any other mandatory training, the deadlines should be based on what regulation mandates that employees should be trained by.

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