This article is intended for those who already have a general understanding of "what can be done with the training feature" and are considering "how to actually operate using the training feature?"
When using the training feature for employee or staff education, we hope you'll take away some hints about what units would be best for creating courses.
If you're not yet familiar with the training feature, please check out our announcement article!
The key is to divide courses by "tasks that can be performed after completion"
In conclusion, we recommend creating training courses by dividing them into "units of work that trainees can perform after completing the course."
"Units of work that trainees can perform after completing the course" refers to units where a person can perform one task within their overall job responsibilities after taking that course.
This might sound abstract, so I'll explain with specific examples.
Case study from our Customer Support team
We also use training courses at our company to educate new hires and mid-career employees. Here's an example from our Customer Support team.
First, the main responsibilities of our Customer Support team include:
- Responding to customer inquiries
- Creating and updating online manuals
- Creating and updating FAQs
- Handling notifications for feature releases and system issues
We create and operate courses as shown in this image to help new employees learn these tasks.
For example, by taking the "Creating and Updating Online Manuals" course, trainees can become proficient in that specific task among their many responsibilities.
This allows us to implement operations where "they can't handle inquiry responses yet, but they can be entrusted with creating and updating online manuals first."
Also, even something as simple as "Responding to customer inquiries" can include many tasks that need to be learned, such as:
- How to respond to inquiries via email
- How to handle phone inquiries
- How to request investigations from the development team
- How to use systems for inquiry management
If all these tasks are combined into a single course, the number of manuals within that course will inevitably increase, raising the learning barrier for trainees or making it take longer to learn all aspects of inquiry handling, delaying practical application in the workplace.
In such cases, it's better to divide courses based on what can be delegated to one person.
In our case, we separate courses like "Basic inquiry handling process," "Email inquiry response method," and "Phone inquiry handling method," so that employees can first become proficient in handling email inquiries independently, then learn phone inquiry handling as the next step.
Case Study: Example of Course Division in Supermarkets
Let's apply these concepts to consider what kinds of courses would work well in other industries.
For this example, we'll look at supermarket store operations.
In supermarkets, general staff jobs include "customer service," "cash handling," "inventory management," "floor management," and "purchasing management."
Instead of simply creating a course called "Basic Floor Management Tasks," it's better to divide floor management tasks into multiple courses like these:
- "Learning How to Organize Displayed Products"
- "Learning How to Clean the Sales Floor"
- "Learning How to Perform Physical Inventory"
Also, if your business operates on shift systems where there are distinct sets of tasks based on time periods, you might create courses like:
- "Pre-Opening Preparations"
- "Tasks from Opening to 4 PM"
- "Tasks from 4 PM to Closing"
- "After-Hours Tasks"
This type of course organization is also recommended.
Dividing courses helps trainees feel their skill development
A common approach is to group courses by role, such as creating one comprehensive course covering "All basic customer support operations."
One advantage of combining everything into a single course is clarity—"completing just this one course means you've learned all the necessary tasks to work independently."
However, there are many disadvantages to this approach. For example, in customer support:
- It's difficult for trainers to track which tasks (manuals) each trainee has completed within the course.
- Trainees don't get the sense of achievement from mastering specific skills like "Creating and updating online manuals."
- When trainees want to review a specific task like "Creating and updating online manuals" later, they have to search through unrelated manuals.
By dividing courses into units based on tasks that trainees can perform after completion, you can eliminate these disadvantages.
Feeling a sense of skill development is especially important when learning job duties, as it makes the learning process more enjoyable and effective.
What are the benefits for trainers and trainees?
Finally, let's summarize the benefits of dividing courses by task for both trainers and trainees.
For Trainers
- You can distribute priority tasks separately (set different deadlines for each course).
- It's easier to see which tasks each trainee has learned.
- You can prioritize assigning practical work based on completed learning.
- You can determine which courses to assign next based on what has been mastered.
- When specific course content needs to be updated, it's easier to redistribute those courses.
For Trainees
- They can focus on learning tasks one by one, rather than trying to learn everything at once.
- It's clearer how they've changed (what they've become capable of doing) upon course completion, which is motivating.
- When they need to review only certain tasks that they haven't performed in a while, it's easier to find the relevant information.
How does that sound? As you can see, effectively using courses allows for more efficient employee training.
We also have an article about how to utilize trainer permissions in the training feature. Please check it out for reference.