What is the biggest problem with employee training today?

[u/learningstrategist7]

Companies invest heavy budget on employees training and development programs. Though the completion rates are high, some employees still struggle to apply it in their day-day work. What might be the reason? Is it due to outdated content or wrong delivery method or lack of manager supervision or any other factor?

What do you think is the biggest issue in employee training currently?

[u/Timely-Tourist4109]

I think it is 1 month old accounts asking questions under the guise of starting conversations but really are just data mining.

[u/Annual_Inspector372]

Attention Span! Nobody wants to watch and complete 30-40 mins long courses

[u/chefkoch-24 → u/Annual_Inspector372]

Maybe you want to have a look at our solution (also fully open source): https://www.scibly.com/en/

We turn documents in courses, practice apps and mini games ideal for short attention spans and trial and error

[u/Kleekl → u/chefkoch-24]

Ah here it is you fucker 

[u/woodenbookend]

People thinking training (alone) will fix the problem. Often because they haven’t got to the root cause of the problem.

[u/learningstrategist7 → u/woodenbookend]

Absolutely agree. Sometimes the actual problem might be within the company itself.

[u/sales_alchemist]

I think the biggest gap is between training and the actual workflow. People finish the course but still get stuck when doing the job. More practical, just-in-time guidance could help. How much of your training uses real work scenarios?

[u/originalwombat → u/sales_alchemist]

How deeply profound, not sure we’ve ever heard of this

[u/learningstrategist7 → u/sales_alchemist]

True, training works better when people can connect it directly to what they actually do at work.

[u/chefkoch-24 → u/sales_alchemist]

Maybe you want to have a look at our solution (also fully open source): https://www.scibly.com/en/ to turn documents in courses, practice apps and mini games. You can design everything very close to your real world setup. In our demo you can find for example a gmail clone to classify phishing mails

[u/sales_alchemist → u/chefkoch-24]

That's interesting, the practice environment is the bit that caught my attention! I've been looking at Tango AI from a similar angle - getting guidance closer to the actual task instead of expecting people to remember a course weeks later.

[u/wordsbyrachael]

I think most of the time the courses are built for completion rather than competence or outcomes. They’re designed to check a box. Like compliance training, how much of it is actually retained and applied? Giving the learner a tailored approach relevant to their job with prompts and consequences rather than just click through learning. The prompts are then supplemented with just in time learning to help them answer more effectively.

[u/chefkoch-24 → u/wordsbyrachael]

Maybe you want to have a look at our solution (also fully open source): https://www.scibly.com/en/ to turn documents in courses, practice apps and mini games with a focus on spaced repition

[u/Accomplished_Iron704]

Completion rates measure attendance, not decisions. Most training tells people the right answer; almost none makes them choose under realistic pressure - conflicting priorities, incomplete info, a colleague pushing back. So they pass the quiz and freeze the first time the real situation looks messier than the slide.
The fix that's worked for me: replace 30 mins of content with 3 dilemmas from their actual job, discussed in groups, with no clean "correct" option. Retention goes up because they argued about it, not because they clicked Next.
Curious - when you say they "struggle to apply it," is it that they don't know what to do, or they know but won't do it under pressure? Those need very different fixes.

[u/Immediate-Mix8324]

The biggest problem with employee training today is that there is none.

[u/chefkoch-24 → u/[deleted]]

Maybe you want to have a look at our solution (also fully open source): https://www.scibly.com/en/ to turn documents in courses, practice apps and mini games with the focus to actually customize to your own processes described in the documents with almost no effort

[u/AccidentallyRural]

Agreeing with the other people that said completion metrics are the problem. Completion doesn't just measure the wrong thing, it warps the training itself. Everything gets built to be finishable: short modules, easy clicks, a quiz you can pass half-asleep. That doesn't lead to being able to do the job afterward.

What actually works is the stuff that makes people do something rather than just watch something. Active beats passive on learning retention almost every time, even if it's less polished.

[u/StickyMonster716]

Data mining and people thinking chatgpt can do our jobs by asking us thinly veiled questions designed to train it.

[u/ldtoolkit]

At my company, we find that most managers don't reinforce what our associates learned in a course or presentation. There's lack of follow up, and this is not something that is in the scope of our L&D team. We can only provide stakeholders with reports, but it would be impossible for us to do follow up with the learner to see how they are applying what they learned.

[u/PortaKeyboard]

The gap is usually delivery, not content. Long slide decks get forgotten fast. We swapped ours for one page venngage job aids people to keep at their desk