How to Create Training Materials That Actually Work

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Let’s be honest: a lot of corporate training materials are a total snooze-fest. We've all been there—sitting through a dense PowerPoint presentation or clicking through a tedious e-learning module, only to forget everything the moment we close the tab. The intention is usually good, but the execution falls flat.

So, why does so much of it miss the mark?

The issue usually isn't a lack of effort. It's that the approach is fundamentally flawed. Too often, creating training becomes a box-checking exercise—a scramble to cover a list of topics instead of solving a real, on-the-ground problem for employees. This disconnect is precisely why so many well-funded initiatives fail to move the needle on performance.

Shifting from "Information Dumps" to Performance Tools

The real problem is that most training is built on a shaky foundation of guesswork. A manager thinks their team needs a refresher on a new software feature, so a generic guide is whipped up. What this guide often misses are the specific hurdles, day-to-day frustrations, and genuine knowledge gaps that people are actually struggling with.

The goal isn't just to transfer information; it's to change behavior. If the training doesn't help someone do their job better, faster, or more confidently, it has failed.

This is the key. Great training isn’t a lecture; it's a practical tool designed to improve how someone works. Embracing this mindset requires a completely different way of thinking about the entire creation process, from the ground up. With the global corporate training market expected to hit USD 264.31 billion by 2032, getting this right is more critical than ever. You can read more about the growth of corporate training methodologies to understand the stakes.

To get there, we need a better framework. Let's move beyond the traditional content-first approach and focus on four pillars that ensure your training materials actually get used and remembered.

The Four Pillars of Effective Training

This table outlines the core principles that will guide you from identifying a real-world problem to delivering a solution that sticks.

Pillar	Common Mistake	Actionable Solution
Audience-Centric Discovery	Creating content based on assumptions about what learners need.	Conduct interviews and observe workflows to uncover actual pain points and goals before creating anything.
Engagement-Driven Design	Relying on static text and one-way "information dumps."	Use interactive formats, real-world scenarios, and visual guides that make learning active, not passive.
Purpose-Fit Tools & Delivery	Choosing a complex LMS or tool that creates friction for learners.	Select technology that makes content easily accessible right when and where it's needed, like in-app guides.
Impact-Focused Measurement	Tracking vanity metrics like completion rates or quiz scores.	Measure success by observing tangible improvements in on-the-job performance and business outcomes.

By building your strategy around these four pillars, you'll be well on your way to creating training that doesn't just inform, but transforms how your team works. You’ll stop making forgettable content and start delivering genuine, measurable results.

Uncover What Your Learners Actually Need

Creating training content without first understanding your audience is like trying to give directions to a place you've never been. You might get a few things right by guessing, but the person you're trying to help will almost certainly get lost. To create materials that genuinely stick, you have to stop assuming and start investigating.

The good news is, you don't need a massive budget or a team of researchers for this. You just need to be curious and talk to people. Your mission is to build a clear picture of their day-to-day reality—their challenges, their workflows, and the moments where they feel completely stuck.

Go Beyond Generic Surveys

Surveys can be a decent starting point, but they often just skim the surface. To get to the real insights—the "why" behind the problems—you need to dig a lot deeper with more personal, hands-on methods.

Think about it this way: a survey might tell you that 70% of the sales team finds the new CRM "difficult to use." That’s a data point, but it's not a solution. What does "difficult" actually mean? Is the interface clunky? Are they unsure which fields to fill out? Is it slowing them down?

To find out, you've got to observe and talk to them directly.

Informal Chats Over Formal Interviews: Forget stuffy, scheduled meetings. Grab a coffee with a few people from your target audience. Ask them open-ended questions like, "What’s the most frustrating part of your day?" or "If you could wave a magic wand and fix one process, what would it be?" You’ll get honest, unfiltered feedback you’d never see in a survey.

Shadow High-Performers and New Hires: Spend an hour just watching two types of employees work. First, shadow a top performer to see what excellence looks like in practice—what shortcuts do they use? How do they navigate tricky situations? Their habits are your training goals. Then, shadow a new hire to see where they get stuck, hesitate, or ask for help. Their confusion highlights the exact knowledge gaps your training needs to fill.

Find Problems Hidden in Plain Sight

Your organization is already sitting on a treasure trove of data about what your learners need; you just have to know where to look. This information gives you objective proof of where the biggest training opportunities are.

For instance, your customer support team is a goldmine. Digging into their support tickets can reveal patterns of confusion that point directly to a training need.

If dozens of customers are asking how to export a report from your software each week, you don't have a customer problem—you have a training and design problem. The same principle applies internally.

What are the most common questions your IT or HR helpdesks receive? These recurring tickets are signals telling you precisely what to cover in your training. Instead of answering the same question 100 times, you can create one clear, interactive guide that solves the issue for everyone, for good.

Build an Accurate Learner Persona

Once you've gathered all this intel, distill it into a simple learner persona. This isn't some complex marketing document; it's a practical, one-page summary that keeps your training focused on a real person with a real problem.

Your persona should be a quick snapshot that includes:

Role and Core Responsibilities: What's their main job function?

Daily Goals: What does a successful day look like for them?

Biggest Pain Points: What specific tasks or processes slow them down or cause frustration?

Current Knowledge Level: Are they a total beginner or an expert looking for advanced tips?

Imagine creating a training module for "Sarah, the new sales rep who struggles with logging customer objections in the CRM." That's so much more powerful than designing for a vague "sales team." It forces you to build content that solves her specific problem, ensuring every minute of your training is relevant and valuable.

Design Content That People Want to Use

So, you’ve figured out exactly what your learners need. The next hurdle? Designing content they'll actually want to use.

Let's be clear: great training design isn't about flashy graphics or over-the-top animations. It’s about making the learning experience intuitive, relevant, and as frictionless as possible. Think of it as the difference between a dense, intimidating user manual and a series of clear, digestible guides that help someone solve a problem in minutes.

This shift toward accessible, on-demand learning is precisely why the corporate e-learning space has exploded. The global market size is projected to hit USD 334.96 billion by 2030, a number that screams one thing: companies need more effective and efficient training. This growth highlights a massive demand for materials that respect employees' time and intelligence. You can get more details on the rise of corporate e-learning on Grandviewresearch.com.

Mix and Match Your Formats for Maximum Impact

People learn differently. They also need different things at different times. A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach—like a single 60-minute video—is almost always doomed to fail. A much smarter strategy is blended learning, where you combine various formats to give learners control and reinforce knowledge from multiple angles.

Let's imagine you're training staff on new expense reporting software. Instead of one long PDF, you could create a blended experience:

A 3-minute overview video: This is your "why." It quickly explains the purpose of the new system and its key benefits, setting the stage without getting lost in the weeds.

An interactive software simulation: Here’s where the real learning kicks in. A tool like Guidejar can generate a click-by-click walkthrough, letting employees practice submitting a report in a safe, guided environment.

A one-page checklist: This becomes a handy job aid they can save to their desktop. It's perfect for jogging their memory on specific steps without forcing them to re-watch an entire video.

This multi-format approach respects their time and caters to different preferences, making the information far more likely to stick.

Turn Boring Topics into Relatable Stories

Even the driest material, like compliance policies or security protocols, can be made engaging. The secret is to wrap the information in a relatable story or scenario. After all, humans are wired to connect with narratives, not abstract rules.

Instead of a slide that bluntly states, "All employees must use a strong, unique password for each system," try telling a short story.

Imagine this: an account manager uses the same simple password for their email, CRM, and personal social media. One day, their social media is breached. Within hours, attackers use that same password to access the company CRM, exposing sensitive client data.

This scenario instantly makes the abstract rule feel concrete and urgent. It shifts the focus from "what you must do" to "here's what happens when you don't." You can even build quizzes and short challenges around these scenarios, asking learners what the character should do next. This transforms them from passive listeners into active problem-solvers.

Break It Down with Microlearning

Let's face it, attention spans are short, and everyone is busy. No one has an uninterrupted hour to dedicate to training. This is where microlearning shines—it’s all about breaking down big topics into small, bite-sized chunks that are easy to digest.

Each piece of micro-content should focus on answering one specific question or teaching one specific skill.

Dense Procedure: "How to set up a new marketing campaign in our project management tool." (This could easily take 20 minutes to explain.)

Microlearning Breakdown:

Video 1: How to create a new project (2 minutes).
Video 2: How to add tasks and assign them (3 minutes).
Checklist: 5 essential details to include in every task description.
Video 3: How to set deadlines and dependencies (2 minutes).

This approach makes the entire process far less intimidating. A learner can find the exact answer they need in minutes without scrubbing through a long, tedious video. If you want to dive deeper into this format, check out our guide on creating effective video guides. By keeping each module focused and short, you empower employees to learn on their own terms, right when they need the information most.

Choose the Right Tools for Building and Delivery

Even the most brilliant training content is dead on arrival if it's trapped behind clunky, frustrating technology. The tools you choose to build and deliver your materials are the bridge between your expertise and your learners. Get it right, and you create a seamless experience; get it wrong, and you've built a digital roadblock.

You don't need a massive software budget to succeed, but you absolutely need a strategy. The whole game is about matching the tool to the task. Sometimes, a quick screen recording and a PDF are all you need. Other times, you need a more structured system to handle complex content and track who’s done what.

This decision hits your bottom line directly. With the corporate training market expected to grow by USD 43.86 billion between 2025 and 2029, much of that is driven by companies shifting to more efficient e-learning. Making smart tool choices is how you capture that value.

Know When to Keep It Simple

Not every training gap needs a full-blown system to fix it. For quick, informal knowledge sharing, simple tools are often your best bet because they’re fast, flexible, and everyone already knows how to use them.

Imagine a startup documenting a new internal workflow. They don't need a complex platform with user logins and reporting; they just need clarity and speed. Their toolkit might look something like this:

Screen Recorders: Perfect for those "let me show you how" videos that get a point across in under five minutes.

Document Editors: Tools like Google Docs or Notion are fantastic for creating simple checklists, job aids, and written guides.

Cloud Storage: A shared drive makes everything accessible to the team instantly, no fuss.

The key here is agility. When the problem is small and specific, the solution should be too.

When to Bring in a Specialized Platform

As your training needs get more sophisticated, you’ll outgrow the simple stuff. This is when you start looking at platforms built specifically for creating and managing learning experiences.

A Learning Management System (LMS) is the classic choice for formal, structured programs. Think of it as the central library for your courses. An LMS is the right call for things like mandatory compliance training or detailed onboarding programs where you must track completions, run quizzes, and pull reports. It gives you control and oversight.

But for helping people learn software while they're using it, a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) or an interactive guide creator like Guidejar is a much smarter play. These tools create contextual, in-app walkthroughs that guide users through tasks in real-time. Instead of watching a video and then trying to remember the steps, the learner does the task as they learn.

The best tools meet learners exactly where they are. If someone is stuck inside a piece of software, the most effective training is the help that appears right there on their screen—not something they have to go find in a separate portal.

Training Tool Comparison: What to Use and When

It’s easy to get lost in the sea of options. This simple table breaks down the most common tool types to help you decide which one fits your specific situation.

Tool Type	Best For	Typical Cost	Example
Simple Screen Recorder	Quick "how-to" videos for one-off tasks and informal knowledge sharing.	Free to Low	Loom, OBS Studio
Interactive Guide Creator	In-app software tutorials, process documentation, and customer onboarding.	Low to Mid	Guidejar, Scribe
Learning Management System (LMS)	Formal, structured courses, compliance training, and tracking user progress.	Mid to High	TalentLMS, LearnDash
Digital Adoption Platform (DAP)	Real-time, contextual guidance embedded directly inside software applications.	High	Whatfix, WalkMe

Ultimately, you might use a mix of these. The goal isn't to find one tool that does everything, but to build a flexible toolkit that can handle any training challenge you face.

A Simple Framework for Evaluating Tools

Feeling overwhelmed? Cut through the noise by judging every potential tool against these three core criteria.

Usability (for creators): How fast can you actually create and update content? If a tool requires specialized skills or weeks of training just to learn, it’s a productivity killer. Look for intuitive interfaces that let you focus on the content, not the software.

Learner Experience: Is it easy and genuinely pleasant for your audience to use? Does it require a separate login? Can they access it on mobile? Any friction you create for the learner is a death sentence for your training.

Integration and Accessibility: Can the tool plug into your existing workflows? The more seamless the access, the more likely your materials will actually get used. For greater inclusivity, see if you can integrate Text-to-Speech (TTS) solutions to provide audio-based alternatives for your learners.

Launch and Continuously Improve Your Training

You’ve done the hard work of creating fantastic training materials. That’s a massive win, but it’s only half the battle. How you launch and then refine those materials is what really determines their long-term value.

A great rollout builds momentum from day one. After that, a smart feedback process ensures your content stays sharp and relevant, preventing it from becoming just another outdated file nobody uses. Think of your launch not as a finish line, but as the start of a conversation with your learners. The real goal is to get the materials into their hands and then listen—to what they say directly and what their performance tells you.

Plan Your Rollout Like a Product Launch

You wouldn't ship a new product feature without telling anyone, would you? Your training deserves the same treatment. A little internal marketing can make a world of difference in getting people excited and onboard.

Your communication plan doesn’t have to be complicated. Just a few well-timed messages can do the trick.

Announce it early: Give people a heads-up about what's coming and, more importantly, why it matters to them. Frame it around a clear benefit. For instance, "Next week, we're launching a new set of guides to help you close deals faster in the new CRM."

Make it easy to find: Don't make people hunt for it. Send direct links, post them in your team's Slack or Teams channels, and make sure managers know exactly where to point their people. The fewer clicks it takes, the better.

The single biggest killer of great training content is obscurity. If your team can't find it in their moment of need, it may as well not exist.

Before you go live for everyone, run a small pilot program. Give a handful of trusted team members early access and ask for their honest, unfiltered feedback. Did they get stuck? Was anything confusing? This is your golden opportunity to catch awkward phrasing or broken links before they frustrate your entire audience.

Measure What Actually Matters

Once your training is out in the wild, the real work begins. It’s time to figure out if it’s actually making a difference. So many teams fall into the trap of tracking vanity metrics like completion rates. It's nice to know people finished the module, but that tells you nothing about whether they actually learned something useful.

Instead, focus on measuring tangible changes in performance. You want to draw a straight line from the training to on-the-job improvements.

Before-and-after snapshots: Look at business metrics that should be impacted. After a software training, do support tickets on that topic decrease? After a sales training, does the average deal size increase?

Direct observation: This is where managers are your best friends. Ask them if they've noticed a change in how their team performs a task. Are people more confident? More efficient?

Skill application: Ditch the multiple-choice quiz. Create a simple, scenario-based challenge that asks learners to apply what they learned to a realistic problem.

This approach shifts the focus from "Did they click through it?" to "Can they do the job better now?"—which is the only metric that truly counts. Successfully launching and continually enhancing your training programs requires some serious coordination and oversight. For those managing the project itself, solid planning is key to hitting these goals, and you can find some great advice on mastering creative team project management.

Create a Simple Feedback Loop

The best way to know if your training is hitting the mark is to ask. But don't send a 50-question survey a month after the fact. Build a simple, immediate feedback loop to capture insights while the experience is still fresh in their minds.

Short, targeted surveys: At the end of a module, ask just two or three simple questions. "On a scale of 1-5, how confident do you feel applying this?" and "What was the single most confusing part of this guide?" That's it.

Informal check-ins: A week after someone completes the training, just have a quick, informal chat. Ask if they’ve had a chance to use what they learned and how it went.

Finally, put a simple maintenance schedule on the calendar. Every quarter, take a look at your most-used materials. Check for outdated screenshots, broken links, or opportunities to make things clearer. Training isn't a "set it and forget it" project; it's a living resource that should evolve right alongside your team.

Answering Your Most Common Questions About Training Materials

You've got the framework down, but let's be honest—the real questions pop up when you're deep in the trenches of creating this stuff. These are the practical hurdles and "what-if" scenarios that can stall progress. I've been there, so here are some straightforward answers to help you push through with confidence.

How Long Should a Training Module Be?

There's no magic number here. The right answer is always: as long as it needs to be to teach one thing well. Forget about the clock and focus on the learning objective.

If you’re teaching a single, specific skill—like how to export a report from your CRM—a 3-5 minute microlearning video is your best friend. It’s quick, direct, and solves an immediate problem without any fluff. People are far more likely to watch a short video to get an answer than they are to commit to a long, drawn-out session.

But what if you're tackling something more complex, like your company's entire quarterly planning process? Don't even think about creating a 45-minute monster video. Instead, break it down. Structure the topic as a series of shorter, 10-15 minute modules. Each one should cover a distinct part of the process, making the whole thing feel less intimidating and much easier to revisit later.

The real enemy is cognitive overload. Keep each piece of content focused on one core idea. You're not just respecting your learner's time; you're dramatically improving their chances of actually remembering what you taught them.

What’s the Best Format for Training Materials?

The best format is whatever fits the content and the learner's situation. A one-size-fits-all approach is a recipe for failure because different tasks demand different teaching methods. The most effective strategy is almost always a blended one, where you mix and match formats for a richer experience.

Here’s my go-to breakdown of what to use and when:

Video: Unbeatable for showing, not just telling. When you need to demonstrate how something is done, like navigating a new piece of software or assembling a product, a short video is crystal clear.

Interactive Walkthroughs: The gold standard for hands-on software training. Tools like Guidejar let users learn by doing in a safe, guided environment. This builds muscle memory far more effectively than passively watching a video.

Checklists & PDFs: Perfect for job aids and quick reference guides. When someone just needs to remember the five steps for closing out a project, a simple, printable checklist is infinitely more useful than a video.

Scenario-Based E-Learning: Excellent for developing decision-making and soft skills. Put learners in realistic situations and have them make choices. This is where they can practice critical thinking without real-world consequences.

How Do I Make Mandatory Compliance Training Less Boring?

Ah, the classic challenge. The trick is to stop focusing on the dry list of rules and start focusing on the real-world stories and consequences behind them. Nobody gets excited about policies, but they do engage with problems and human experiences.

Instead of a slide that lists your company's data privacy policy, create a short, relatable scenario. Tell a story about an employee who accidentally shares sensitive client information in a public Slack channel and the fallout that follows. This makes the "why" behind the rule immediate and memorable.

You can also make it interactive. Use simple quizzes or branching scenarios where learners have to decide the best course of action. This simple shift transforms them from passive listeners into active participants who are solving a problem.

How Can I Measure if My Training Is Actually Working?

It's time to move beyond vanity metrics. Knowing that 100% of the team clicked through a module doesn't tell you if they learned a thing or changed their behavior. To measure real impact, you have to look for evidence of change on the job.

Here are a few ways to get real answers:

Track Key Business Metrics: Look for a direct line between the training and a business outcome. Did support tickets related to a specific software feature drop after you launched a new guide? Did sales of a new product jump after the product training? That's your proof.

Observe On-the-Job Application: This is where you need to partner with managers. Ask them to informally observe their team members. Are they actually using the new techniques you taught? Are they navigating the software more efficiently? This qualitative feedback is priceless.

Use Pre- and Post-Training Assessments: This is a classic for a reason. Before the training, give learners a short quiz or a problem to solve. Afterward, give them a similar one. A significant improvement in scores shows a clear knowledge lift.

Combining this kind of hard data with softer, qualitative feedback will give you the full picture of whether your training is truly hitting the mark.

Creating training that people actually want to use is tough, but it doesn't have to be overly complicated. With tools designed to make knowledge sharing simple and interactive, you can turn any process into an easy-to-follow guide in just minutes.

Guidejar helps you build interactive walkthroughs and step-by-step guides that reduce support questions, speed up onboarding, and make sure your team’s knowledge is always accessible. Stop explaining the same thing over and over—let your guides do the work for you. Start creating your first interactive guide for free.