Training materials

What training materials are

Training materials are the written package used to teach a job to somebody who does not yet do it. They come in two versions of the same content: a learner's version the new person keeps and works through, and a trainer's version telling whoever is running the session what to say, what to demonstrate, and where people usually go wrong. The test of them is simple. Can a competent person who is not your expert run the training from the page.

They are not procedures. An SOP is a reference for somebody who already knows the job and needs the steps in the right order. Training material assumes no knowledge, explains why a step exists, and includes practice. They are also not user guides, which teach a product to a customer rather than a role to an employee.

When you need one

You need this when hiring has gone from rare to regular and every new person is trained differently, so you end up with staff who do the same job three incompatible ways. You need it when one person does all the training, which means every hire costs you a week of your best employee. And you need it before that person takes a long holiday, changes role or leaves, because the training disappears with them and nobody notices until the day it is needed.

You do not need this if you hire one person every two or three years. In that case write the process down as an SOP, spend a morning going through it, and keep the cost. And if the gap is not knowledge but the fact that nobody is told anything, the honest answer is internal communications rather than a training course.

Why training material fails, and what goes in it instead

Almost all bad training material fails the same way: it was written by the expert, for the expert. The person who knows the job cannot remember not knowing it. They begin three steps in, skip what has become automatic, use the internal name for everything, and finish with no practice, because to them the doing is obvious. The material reads perfectly to the four people who did not need it.

• The sequence. What is taught in what order, split into sessions of a length a person can absorb, with the first session being something the learner can do on day one.
• The learner's version. Written at the level of someone who has never seen your business, in the words customers and staff really use, with the internal names introduced as translations rather than assumed.
• The trainer's version. The same pages with the additions: what to say, what to show, the questions learners ask, and the three places where people reliably get lost.
• The practice. Real tasks with real material — a genuine quote to price, a genuine complaint to answer — because nobody learns a job by reading about it.
• The check. A short list of what the learner must be able to do unaided before they are signed off, written as actions rather than as feelings of confidence.

What you get

The learner workbook. An editable document and a PDF, structured by session, with space to write in and the practice tasks included. This is the copy a new hire keeps at their desk for the first month.

The trainer's guide. The same structure with the delivery notes, timings, what to prepare beforehand, and the answers to the questions learners ask. Written for a capable colleague, not for you.

The sign-off checklist. One page listing what the new person must have demonstrated, with a column for the date and the name of whoever watched them do it.

A worked example

An illustration. A veterinary clinic in Saskatoon runs a front desk of five people. New receptionists shadow whoever is on shift for three days and are then left alone with the phone, where they have to book appointments, decide what is urgent, and tell an upset owner that the earliest slot is Thursday. The senior receptionist trains everybody and is three weeks from maternity leave.

Two recorded sessions with her produce the raw material, including the triage judgements she makes without thinking. The learner workbook runs to 24 pages across four sessions: the booking system, the money and the insurance forms, triage on the phone, and the difficult calls. Practice is six real recorded calls, transcribed with the names removed, which the learner triages and then compares against what the clinic actually did. The trainer's guide flags that everyone gets the same two things wrong, both to do with when a vomiting dog is an emergency, and tells the trainer to spend the extra twenty minutes there. The sign-off list has nine items. The next two receptionists are trained by the practice manager, who has never trained anybody.

How it runs

1. A half-hour call. What the role is, how it is taught now, and what new people still get wrong after a month. No charge.
2. A fixed price in writing. Number of sessions and roles covered, agreed before anything starts.
3. Recorded sessions with the expert. Two to three hours, in chunks, while they do the work rather than describe it. Plus whatever notes, checklists and half-finished documents already exist.
4. The draft. Within ten to fifteen working days, depending on how many sessions the role needs.
5. A dry run. A real new or newish person is trained from the draft by somebody who is not the expert. What confused them gets rewritten; that is the point of the exercise.
6. Delivery. Workbook, trainer's guide and checklist, with an hour handing the package to whoever will run it from now on.

Three to five weeks from first call to a package in use, for one role.

What it costs

Training material is not one of the published bands on the pricing page, so it is quoted as a fixed price in CAD after the half-hour call. What moves the price is the number of roles, how many sessions each needs, whether usable notes already exist, and how much of the expert's time can be booked for recording. One role with a cooperative expert is the straightforward version.

What happens next

Trained staff need something to consult afterwards, which is a written procedure rather than a workbook. Where a step is easier watched than read, the same session becomes a training video script built on the wording the dry run proved. And if the training covers publishing or the website, CMS training is the narrower and cheaper version of the same idea. This package is complete on its own, and nothing further is assumed.