Developing, delivering, and following up on a training program

After the training/program has ended, don’t forget the following:

Distribute materials
Learning assessment
Certificates
Mentoring session
Results
Maintain

Distribute any promised materials to the group. Because things happen and unfold faster in the online world, including shorter training durations, it is critical to remember to share materials with participants. You could hand them a hard copy of a publication or a leaflet in person, but you can’t do so in digital format. Just because you posted it online or included a link in the chat doesn’t mean that people looked it up and saved it. Instead, make sure to distribute all of the materials via email after the training, along with brief instructions on how to use them.

Conduct a learning assessment. Although it is preferable to conduct an evaluation during the program, it is sometimes more convenient to do so immediately after completion. However, you might run into the risk of not having all participants fill it out, and if they’re doing it anonymously, you might get in trouble if some participants don’t fill it out at all. We encourage you to consider interactive methods (such as Menti) or more formal online tools (such as Google forms) to conduct a survey that will provide more data for analysis. In any case, we strongly advise you to consider and emphasize the digital components. After a certain period of time (say, a few months), you should consider conducting another evaluation that will allow you to measure long-term results and changes in their behavior (matching it with the needs assessment can also show you how successful you were at achieving goals that you set out).

Thank participants and distribute certificates: It is critical to thank participants for their participation and encourage them to try to apply what they have learned during the training. In this email, you can also explain any follow-up activities or share other exciting opportunities with them.

Think of providing additional mentoring sessions/follow-up activities. Although follow-up activities are not necessarily planned, we strongly suggest that you consider providing additional opportunities for participants to mingle, share their experiences, or even have one-on-one sessions with you. Naturally, during in-person events, they would approach you with additional questions or seek advice, and mingle during lunch or dinner, but due to the format of the events, this may not be the case in the digital world. In this regard, we recommend that you provide them with additional space where they can turn to you for additional information and advice.

Share the results and lessons learned: Digital formats make it far easier to share the results and lessons learned. Consider using a newsletter or another format to share memories, inspirational stories, successful follow-up activities, blogs written by participants, or anything else that came out of your project.

Maintain contact with the participants and encourage them to make a difference in their communities. After all, the goal of HRE is to inspire positive change on a personal and community level. This allows participants to share their experiences and continue to support one another.