You may have created the best set of training materials for your employees, but what good is it if they don’t remember what they’ve learned? How quickly do people forget their training, and how long until this leads to a mistake, accident, or worse?
An accident in an office due to forgotten training might not be so detrimental: a misplaced file, a deadline not met. But what about for people who don’t work in an office? What does an accident look like for a construction worker, repairman, nurse, or restaurant employee?
Most employers don’t even want to imagine consequences like these. But a recent survey by TalentCards of 600 deskless workers employed in these very industries revealed that 17% of employees remember less than half of their training immediately after completing it. Thirty days after completing training, the amount that remember less than half of what they learned jumps up to 32%.
The Forgetting Curve, and Why It Matters
The concept of the forgetting curve is actually quite old, even if employers have only recently started paying attention to it. In 1885 German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus published his study on memory, which revealed that without reinforcement, people forget more than 60% of newly learned information in as little as one day.
Source: The State of Deskless Workforce Training
Eighty-three percent of deskless workers surveyed by TalentCards reported that they remember at least 50% of their training immediately after completing it. But Ebbinghuas’s study showed that just 20 minutes after learning, subjects had already forgotten more than 40% of the content.
Sixty-nine percent of survey respondents report remembering 50% or more of their training 30 days after completing it. Whereas Ebbinghaus’s research concluded that people remember only 21% of their learning after 31 days have passed.
The Ebbinghaus forgetting curve. Source: The State of Deskless Workforce Training
These findings reveal a startling truth: not only do people forget new information very quickly, but we also vastly overestimate our own ability to remember.
Do Deskless Employees in Different Industries Forget at Different Rates?
We know that we’re more likely to forget information that we don’t need or use frequently. If the training that a deskless employee has received doesn’t have much to do with their day to day job, then it’s not surprising that it will be quickly forgotten. This leads to the following question: do deskless employees forget their training at different rates in different industries?
The TalentCards report suggests that this may indeed be the case. When asked how much of their training they remember 30 days after completing it, 26% of retail workers reported that they remember less than half. Twenty-nine percent of healthcare workers said the same, as well as 51% of education employees.
These differences in reported retention are significant because they can inform employers more specifically on how frequently their employees may need follow-up training, as well as reveal how relevant this training is for their staff.
Practical Ways to Help Deskless Employees Fight the Forgetting Curve
Because of the nature of these deskless workers’ jobs, the cost of forgetting is often substantially higher for their employers than it is for those who work in office settings. And unfortunately, the training designed for preventing these costly mistakes is often highly specific and dreadfully boring. How frequently does a cable need to be replaced? What materials can cause allergic reactions? What washing temperature destroys bacteria on fabric? Forgetting these small but critical details can have devastating consequences.
Data collected by injuryfacts.ncs.org shows that the three most dangerous industries based on the number of workplace deaths are construction, transportation and warehousing, and professional and business services. Also included in the top 15 are manufacturing, retail, and education and health services.
So how can employers use training as a means to fight the forgetting curve?
1. Make it easy for employees to find answers
Let’s start by abandoning the idea that every employee needs to remember every detail, all of the time. People forget things, but the solution to forgetting doesn’t have to be guessing. If the only place that your employees can find the answer they’re looking for is buried in a textbook, training manual, or forgotten email, then you’re flirting with the possibility of an accident.
One of the best ways to avoid mistakes in the workplace is to make it easy for employees to find the information they need to do their jobs correctly. And how do you do that?
By leveraging the power of mobile training.
Mobile training allows deskless workers to train anywhere, at any time, because it delivers all of the information they need, right to their smartphones. Not only can they train from any location, they can also refer back to the important information they need from anywhere.
That means that the next time an employee can’t remember a specific detail when they’re on the job, they don’t have to head back to the work truck to grab a training manual, or wait for a manager or supervisor to get back to them. They simply pull out their smartphones and find exactly what they’re looking for.
2. Make training a frequent habit — not a one-time event
The most effective method for combating Ebbinghaus’s forgetting curve is frequent review and follow-up training. Newly introduced training should be reviewed 24 hours after it was complete for the first time in order to raise the learner’s retention rate back to 100%.
That information should then be reviewed again one week later, and then at least once more a month later in order to convert it from a short-term memory into a long-term one. With each repetition the material becomes more and more familiar to the learner, which means that each subsequent review session takes less time than the one before.
And if you’re concerned about pushback from your people for making training more frequent, just remember that 80% of deskless workers stated that they prefer short, regular training sessions over long, one-time events.
This tip is related to the previous one, because mobile training is one of the most cost and time efficient ways of carrying out reinforcement training. Training your deskless workers doesn’t have to mean pulling them away from their jobs, or keeping them for overtime.
By using a mobile training platform, you can empower them to review on their own time, and at their own pace. In fact, 41% of deskless workers reported that they would find training more enjoyable if they could complete it at their own pace. This style of self-directed training allows each employee to engage with the material independently— they can take as much time as they need to review the concepts they’re struggling with, and move quickly through the ones they’ve already mastered.
3. Embrace the power of microlearning
No matter what industry you’re in, there never seems to be enough time in the day for everything. And unfortunately, training is usually the thing that takes a back seat when there’s not enough time. This reality is exactly the reason why employees forget their training: they don’t feel like they have enough time to devote to reviewing their materials.
As an employer, the best thing you can do to combat this lack of time is to embrace microlearning— training that is designed to be short and impactful, presenting important information in a way that is easy to understand and internalize. Let’s face it— people have short attention spans and are surrounded by distractions. That’s why you should aim for your follow-up training sessions to be between five and seven minutes in length.
But how can you cover anything valuable in such a short time?
First and foremost, cut out the fluff. Skip the intros, cut the backstories. When it comes to reviewing, these things don’t matter. When you’re building your training content for your people, make sure that every word they have to read is meaningful and brings value. That means you don’t even have to use full sentences. Numbered steps, bullets, and lists are far more powerful than paragraphs.
Second, make sure you’re making full use of visual and audio elements. Why write out a long explanation for something that can be quickly conveyed in a diagram or photo? This point again goes back to mobile training. One of the best things about using a smartphone to deliver content is that you can easily use sound and video recordings to communicate important information. And training presented in these formats is much more likely to be remembered than some text that was quickly skimmed.
Deskless Workforce Training: Building a Better, Safer Work Environment
Deskless workers are responsible for so many of the jobs we take for granted every day. But we shouldn’t take for granted the power of people’s memories and the sheer volume of information these deskless workers have to remember daily.
By making training shorter, more frequent, and more accessible, employers can help their people perform their jobs to the best of their abilities, reduce the likelihood of accidents, and ensure that their end consumers receive the highest quality services and products possible.
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