Strategies for Interactive Training Sessions

By Mark Dorosz
VP of Compliance Learning, Interactive Services

Training with great content and a variety of delivery methods are very helpful, however, providing interactive activities is critical to maintaining culture and understanding. An interactive session will promote confidence, conversation, and recall. Let’s take a look at several strategies you can use to make your training interactive:

Quizzing

Quizzing is great for competitive staff members who respond best to “winning” environments. The competitive edge with quizzing encourages employees to think about their answers and choose appropriate responses through recall of information you have already presented. Rewards will push your staff to want to remember information.

Q & A Sessions

Don’t get caught up in feeding a ton of info and not letting the audience digest! Allow time in the training for staff to ask questions – either after the session or having mini Q & A’s between topics during the training. This allows for you to address confusion, eliminating future issues due to lack of communication.

Small Group Discussions

As we’ve explained before, employees respond differently to one another than to the facilitator at times. Have your staff break into small groups – pose questions or provide case studies for them to discuss. This time allows experienced employees to pass information to newer ones. Some employees also have a hard time speaking in big groups – this solution addresses that issue.

Role Playing

Putting employees in real life situations before they occur is a proactive measure that is very useful. You can draw scenarios from case studies, questions, or prior experience. Make sure to make them realistic and applicable to your company, industry, policies, and environment.

Debates

Similar to group discussions, pose a relevant yet controversial question concerning elements of compliance including: best practices, appropriate solution to issues, or regulations. Instead of breaking them into groups, allow employees to speak in their about their stance with one another. Debating encourages the give and take of ideas and allows you to learn more abut how your staff thinks.

Make Menus

This can be done 2 ways. Prior to training, send out a menu of topics and issues to cover. Allow employees to send in their choices and create an agenda purely based off what they picked (taking the most popular ones). You can also do it on the spot by allowing them to pick during the training and calling on employees, then addressing the topic on the spot moving onto another staff member once you’ve covered it.

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