Today’s workforce is less hesitant about switching jobs than previously. In the US alone, people quit more often than in pre-pandemic times.
One way to keep employees is to offer reskilling training. Research from LinkedIn found that 94% of workers would stay at their jobs if companies invested in improving their staff’s skill set. Investing in employees’ development shows them you care about their careers.
Follow the next nine steps to learn how to create employee reskilling training in Adobe Learning Manager (formerly known as Adobe Captivate Prime). It lets you build engaging training activities that help workers improve their skills and experience the investment you are making in their growth. Don’t do this, and you incur significant onboarding, churn, and new-staff training costs.
1. Interview employees
Interviews help you uncover skills you didn’t know employees wanted to learn or improve. Through focus groups and 1:1 meetings, you can identify course ideas you never thought of. Training your team on skills they want to learn makes them more likely to stay at your company.
Surveys and emails asking employees what they want to learn can also uncover employees’ needs. However, interviewing employees is a better approach. It’s a live conversation where questions on both ends—either from you or the employee—can arise organically, helping you dig deep into core problems and causes.
Employees need to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts for interviews to be productive. Too much pressure and they might be afraid to share what they wish to learn. You can reduce their anxiety by telling them what you will discuss. Knowing this calms the employee: they will know you only want to talk because you want to help them and nothing more.
2. Write a script
A script helps you lay out and organize the information you want to add to every module. It tells the speaker precisely what to say and includes notes of what will happen. You and your team can read the script to know the number of speakers, the software, and the resources you will need to produce the course.
Reskilling courses that don’t use scripts can look and sound professional but are unlikely to help employees improve their skills. Since no document guides what they will discuss, they can forget to add examples, statistics, and metaphors crucial to supporting your argument.
To write a script, choose the number of speakers you will use for one of your videos and the topic it will cover. Then, use the following diagram to organize it.
In the Video column, describe what will appear on your course. For example; mention if your speaker should perform a specific action or if a chart should appear. You can also include the camera movements and visual effects you’d like to add to a scene.
The Audio column will include the exact words your speaker(s) will say during a scene. Make sure each sentence builds onto the others. Jumping between arguments or presenting unrelated supporting points confuses viewers. You will know your script is ready once every line is as clear and engaging as you can make it.
3. Create a storyboard
A storyboard is a format to illustrate how the speaker, background, and graphics look at unique moments of a training video. Creating one lets you know if the visuals you plan to add are enough to tell your story. If they are not, you can ask stakeholders what could improve.
Being able to adjust your story before animating saves you from investing time and money into last-minute edits. Rather than presenting a course no one likes, you move forward with the project idea only when it’s cohesive.
Download our storyboard template available in a US Letter and A4 format. It will help you jumpstart an organized storyboard every stakeholder can understand and comment on.
First, draw the events of each scene inside each square. Most teams will find that the first scene of their course is the introduction. It’s where your speaker familiarizes the viewer with his expertise and shares the syllabus. For this scene, sketch how your speaker, background, and complementary visuals like slides will look, and then do the same for the other squares.
Our template’s squares have three sets of lines below them. Fill them out based on your vision of the project and your script:
- Action: Describe a scene’s events. See if they are explicit enough to know precisely what you will animate.
- Dialogue: Write the script lines that correspond to the scene. Check if the events you plan to animate match what’s being said.
- FX: Describe the sound effects you want to see in each scene. This note reminds you or your teammates to source them.
Once you fill in every line and square, see if anything is unclear. Move on to the next step if everything looks good to go.
4. Animate your scenes
Animation is the most simple and effective way to create your course’s videos. You don’t have to invest in actors, voiceover artists, and sets. All you need is software and an idea to create a compelling course.
Besides cost, animations help employees keep the skills you teach them. Studies show people recall the lessons from whiteboard animations more often than those from in-person classes. So, you can confidently deliver a course, knowing your employees will actually learn from it.
Professional animation software doesn’t require professionals to run them. Vyond is intuitive, and templates give you a head start. It also comes with multiple animation styles, including whiteboard animation. Follow the next steps to ensure you can turn any storyboard into an animated video with Vyond.
First, create a free Vyond account. Click Create a Video in the top right corner and choose an animation style matching your brand. You will now see Vyond’s timeline and features.
Second, enter the character tab on the toolbar’s left side and then on Create a new character. Customize your character’s body type, facial features, and clothes until you find a combination you like. You can also design them based on your employees’ looks to make the video relatable. For example; if your employees are in their 20s, don’t make a character that looks in their 60s.
Third, enter the Prop library on the toolbar’s left side to decorate your scenes. Open the Background menu on the toolbar’s right side to change a scene’s location.
Finally, animate your scene. Select Characters to reveal the Action and Expression menus. Actions are movements the character does in their place, and expressions are the emotions their faces will convey as they move. Choose the ones that match your script and the tone of the scene.
Motion Paths are movements that take a character or prop from one place to the other. To add one, click on a character or prop and pick one out of 79 courses of action these elements can take. Set the time they will take from point A to point B, and get ready to record your audio.
5. Record high-quality audio
High-quality audio raises the odds that employees listen to every lesson, suggestion, or direction your course includes. It’s crisp and doesn’t have static.
You don’t need to rent a studio to record high-quality audio. The correct audio setup and equipment can produce clear, distortion-free audio. Here is how to set up yours.
First, get an XLR microphone to record your voice. These microphones need an XLR cable and an audio interface to pick up sound, unlike USB microphones that plug directly into your computer. The added benefit of XLR microphones is that they last longer and sound better than their USB counterparts.
Next, pick the right room because the place where you record influences how you sound. Recording in an unfurnished room with glass adds echo and distortion to your audio: your voice will bounce across the glass and walls with nothing to absorb it. So, record in a room with decorations and no windows.
To finish, download Audacity. It’s free software to record audio with all the features you need to produce high-quality audio. Anything you produce can be easily exported and then dragged and dropped into Vyond.
6. Design an appealing thumbnail
An appealing thumbnail has carefully chosen images, text, and people that persuade employees to enroll in your course. If your thumbnail is uninteresting, employees can look past your course, even if its modules are helpful.
Netflix found people are more likely to click thumbnails expressing powerful emotions. This is because a strong emotion gives the reader a proper sense of what to expect during the show. While a smirk can transmit happiness, a teeth-full smile is better at communicating this emotion.
You can use Canva to create an attractive thumbnail. It’s accessible, intuitive, and has thousands of photos transmitting precise emotions.
While designing, open Netflix or your favorite streaming platform to take inspiration on how they arrange their thumbnails. These companies spend millions testing and reworking thumbnails. You can base where you place your characters, text, and visual assets on what these platforms do to make an intriguing thumbnail.
7. Upload your video to Adobe Learning Manager
Uploading your video is incredibly quick. The platform walks you through a step-by-step process that ensures you upload the video and customize its information exactly how you want.
The first step is downloading your Vyond-made video using the Download option in the top right corner of the animation interface. Choose a Full HD export to give employees the best watching experience possible.
Then, log into your Adobe Learning Manager account. The platform will greet you with a video introducing its features. Watch it, and then click Getting Started on the left side of the page. Press Create Content and fill in the details to upload your video.
Your videos are now part of your Content Library. You can add these videos to your courses and modules from the Create Courses section on the Getting Started page. While turning videos into a course, you can upload your reskilling training’s thumbnail.
8. Personalize each learner’s home page
Using Adobe Learning Manager, each employee’s LMS homepage can show courses related to the worker’s individual needs and interests. Presenting the most relevant training convinces employees that checking the LMS periodically is worth their time.
Research firm Brandon Hall says the best learning platforms analyze the skills an employee needs to succeed and recommend courses. This level of customization allows employees to take charge of their reskilling path. They can log into a platform, find courses an artificial intelligence knows they will like because of their interests, and do it on their own time.
Adobe Learning Manager ticks Brandon Hall’s requirement. Its AI predicts what employees might like based on data from HR systems, employees’ interests, and Adobe’s extensive resume database.
Tell your employees to fill in their details, and Adobe Learning Manager will automatically suggest courses. You can pair these recommendations with course suggestions from you, managers, or colleagues:
- Admin Control Training Recommendation Widget: Managers can recommend reskilling courses to specific employees.
- Peer Recommended Training Widget: Colleagues can recommend courses to one another.
By filling the gaps the AI leaves, you bring light to useful courses your team might not know about. These trainings can contain the skills they need to enjoy their workdays even more.
9. Analyze what could improve
It’s essential to track your course’s performance to find areas you could improve. By monitoring how modules perform, you can discover the ones doing worst, study them, and improve them. This will make your reskilling course valuable, increasing its impact on staff productivity and satisfaction.
Adobe Learning Manager’s analytics section is on the My Courses option on the left side of the page. It shows the percentage of the course workers complete and the number of people that enroll in the course vs. how many finish it, among other metrics.
Track metrics and test answers to performance problems. For example; you can incentivize course-takers to promote your course among peers if few employees are enrolling in your program. Iterate on solutions until the course becomes well known and appreciated by most employees.
How employees interact with your course determines its success. For example; investing in scriptwriters, voiceover artists, and animators can produce high-quality modules. But your project is unsuccessful if workers don’t finish its modules or don’t enroll in the course.
Use Vyond with Adobe Learning Manager to build a reskilling training
Reskilling employees is essential to keep and attract talent. It’s also a cost-effective alternative to filling roles with new people every month. According to a recent LinkedIn study, 79% of learning and development professionals consider it more affordable to reskill existing employees than to hire new ones.
Vyond’s asset and template library make it easy for companies to create their reskilling courses, even if it’s their first time. Upload your video to Adobe Learning Manager’s AI-powered LMS and see how employees stay and refer your company to others.
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