How to improve training at work: A practical guide

Here’s a scenario you’ll recognise: your organisation invests thousands in training programs, everyone attends the sessions, the feedback forms come back positive, and then… nothing changes. Three months later, people are doing things exactly the same way they always have.

Sound familiar? You’re not alone. Australian organisations are spending more on training at work than ever before, yet many L&D managers are struggling to show genuine performance improvements. According to AHRI research, skills gaps are affecting productivity across 20% of the Australian workforce. Meanwhile, the Productivity Commission’s 2024 bulletin makes it clear that simply throwing more training at the problem doesn’t work.

The real question isn’t whether you should invest in training. It’s how to improve training so it actually sticks and delivers results. This guide will show you a practical, outcomes-focused approach that’s grounded in Australian workplace standards and proven design principles.

What good training actually looks like in Australian workplaces

Let’s get real about what we mean by “good training.” It’s not about slick presentations or expensive platforms. Good training at work creates genuine capability that serves your actual business goals.

Think about the best training you’ve ever received. Chances are, it wasn’t just information dumped on you in a conference room. Effective training programmes share a few key characteristics that separate them from the box-ticking exercises.

First, they align with specific role capabilities, not generic course catalogues. The AITD Capability Framework provides useful language here for mapping learning to the capabilities your organisation genuinely needs, rather than what sounds good on paper.

Second, they meet legal and safety obligations properly. This includes proper induction for new workers and task-specific training that complies with Safe Work Australia guidelines. These aren’t nice-to-haves that you can skip when budgets are tight. They’re foundational requirements that protect both workers and organisations from serious harm.

Finally, effective programmes are actually designed and evaluated using structured models. The Australian Public Service Commission’s Learning Quality Framework and Evaluation Handbook offer excellent benchmarks, even if you’re in the private sector.

Understanding what learning & development are in today’s workplace context is essential before you try to improve them.

Step 1: Diagnose the real need with a training needs analysis

Here’s the most common mistake: someone notices a problem, decides training will fix it, and immediately starts shopping for courses or booking facilitators. Then six months later, they’re wondering why the problem hasn’t improved.

Not every performance gap needs a training intervention. Sometimes people know exactly what to do but lack the tools, time, or authority to do it. Training won’t fix that. And even when training is the right answer, understanding exactly what skills and knowledge employees need, and why they need them, makes all the difference between success and wasted budget.

Map business goals to role capability and performance gaps

Start by connecting business objectives to specific role capabilities. What does excellent performance actually look like in each role? Where are the gaps showing up? This isn’t about sending out annual surveys that end up in someone’s bottom drawer. It’s about using capability frameworks and real on-the-job performance data to identify genuine needs.

The AITD Capability Framework offers a common language that helps translate business requirements into learning outcomes. It shifts the conversation from “we need a course on project management” to “we need people who can prioritise competing demands and deliver projects on time to achieve our growth targets.”

Look at your actual performance data. Where are projects consistently stalling? Which teams keep struggling with the same specific skills? What feedback are managers giving about capability gaps? This evidence-based approach ensures you invest in training that addresses real workplace challenges, not just what people think might be nice to learn.

Use Australian data to prioritise where to invest in training

Once you’ve identified potential skill gaps, use data that reflects the Australian context to prioritise your efforts. The National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) publishes regular insights into employers’ use of accredited and unaccredited training, which helps you understand where formal qualifications matter and where workplace-based learning works better.

The Australian Industry Group’s 2024 Skills and Workforce Survey provides valuable intelligence about where skills shortages are hitting hardest across different sectors. This kind of contextual data helps you make smarter decisions about where your training budget will actually deliver impact rather than just feel busy.

Understanding how learning & development connects to business outcomes helps you justify and prioritise training investments when budgets are tight.

Step 2: Design learning that is human-centred and job-relevant

You’ve diagnosed the real need. Great. Now comes the design phase, where many organisations either excel or completely stumble. Good design means creating training material that doesn’t just inform people but actually transforms how they work.

Follow recognised design standards

The APS Learning Quality Framework provides practical design standards that any organisation can apply, not just government departments. These standards emphasise clarity of learning outcomes, appropriate assessment methods, and quality assurance processes that ensure consistency across your programmes.

Working with experienced practitioners who understand these frameworks, whether they’re internal or external partners, helps ensure your training material meets professional standards. Nobody wants training that’s essentially glorified PowerPoint presentations with a quiz at the end.

Plan for the safety and compliance context

For many Australian workplaces, safety and compliance training isn’t optional. Safe Work Australia guidance clearly outlines requirements for both induction and task-specific training. The key is tailoring these programmes to your organisation’s actual risk profile rather than delivering generic content that puts everyone to sleep.

Compliance training has a terrible reputation for being dull. But it doesn’t have to be. When designed well, safety training uses real workplace scenarios and practical applications that help workers understand not just what to do, but why it genuinely matters to their wellbeing and their colleagues’.

Structure for practice and transfer

Here’s a truth bomb: knowledge alone doesn’t change workplace behaviour. Your training design needs to incorporate structured practice opportunities that mirror the real challenges people face in their jobs. The Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) emphasises practical training and assessment that reflects actual workplace tasks, not abstract theory.

This means moving beyond passive learning, like watching videos or reading manuals. Active application through simulations, role plays, case studies based on your organisation’s actual challenges, and guided practice all help bridge the gap between training sessions and on-the-job performance.

If you’re exploring corporate training options, make sure the design approach prioritises practical application over theoretical knowledge transfer.

Step 3: Deliver in the flow of work

You can have the best training material in the world, but it’s useless if it’s inaccessible, poorly timed, or completely disconnected from people’s daily work. How you deliver training matters just as much as what you deliver.

Select blended methods for the problem at hand

Different performance challenges need different delivery approaches. Technical skills might benefit from hands-on workshops where people can practice with real equipment. Conceptual frameworks could work well as online courses that people complete at their own pace. Leadership capabilities often develop through coaching and peer learning rather than traditional training sessions.

Government guidance on staff development emphasises ongoing development approaches that support both performance and retention. This suggests mixing methods strategically: workshops for collaborative skill-building, microlearning for just-in-time support when someone needs help right now, coaching for individual development, and simulations for practising complex decisions in a safe environment.

The rise of hybrid work has made flexibility essential rather than optional. Providing multiple pathways to develop the same capability ensures equitable access across different work arrangements and learning preferences.

Set clear expectations and entitlements

Legal obligations around training often get overlooked, which creates unnecessary friction and resentment. Under Fair Work guidelines, compulsory training must be paid time. This isn’t negotiable, yet many organisations still expect employees to complete mandatory training outside work hours or during their lunch breaks.

Being transparent about time expectations, workload adjustments, and how training fits with performance expectations removes barriers to engagement. When employees understand that job training is a valued part of their role rather than an additional burden dumped on them, participation and application improve dramatically.

Research on employee training consistently shows that investing in development improves retention. But only when that investment is genuine and supported by adequate time and resources, not just lip service.

Step 4: Reinforce and embed on the job

Here’s where most training programmes completely fail. The gap between attending training sessions and actually changing workplace behaviour is enormous. Completing a course doesn’t automatically translate to different workplace practices. That requires deliberate reinforcement that most organisations skip.

Build manager capability to support transfer

Managers are the critical link between formal training and workplace application. Yet they’re often completely unprepared to support their team members in applying new skills and knowledge. Safe Work Australia recommends ongoing supervision, toolbox talks, and regular feedback as part of training follow-through.

Give managers simple tools they can actually use: observation checklists, conversation prompts, and regular touchpoint schedules. These don’t need to be complex fifty-page documents. But they do need to be consistent and easy to implement in busy work environments.

The NSW Government’s sample training plan offers a useful structural model you can adapt to your context.

Create environmental support for new practices

Sometimes the workplace environment itself actively works against training transfer. Imagine someone learns a new system in training, returns to their desk full of enthusiasm, and finds the old process is still the default. Or they learn collaboration techniques, but work in a hyper-competitive culture where sharing information is seen as a weakness. The training won’t stick.

Look honestly at what barriers exist in your work environment. Do your systems, processes, policies, or cultural norms make it difficult or impossible to apply what’s been learnt? Addressing these barriers, even incrementally, dramatically improves training effectiveness.

Step 5: Measure impact and iterate

Evaluation shouldn’t be something you tack on at the end if you remember. The most effective organisations design evaluation into their programmes from the start, clearly defining what success looks like before anyone attends a single training session.

Define success up front

The APSC Learning Evaluation Handbook provides an excellent framework for selecting appropriate measures across reaction, learning, behaviour, and results. Not every programme needs to measure at every level. But you should be crystal clear about which levels matter for each intervention before you start.

For technical skills training, behaviour change and task performance might be most important. For leadership development, you might focus on team outcomes and organisational climate. For compliance training, you’ll need to demonstrate both learning and application to meet regulatory requirements.

Building evaluation criteria into the initial design ensures you’re collecting the right data from the start rather than scrambling to retrofit measurement six months later when someone asks for ROI proof.

Connect training to productivity and ROI narratives

In an environment where every investment faces scrutiny and budgets are tight, connecting training outcomes to business results builds credibility and secures ongoing support. The Productivity Commission’s bulletins provide current context about workforce capability and productivity relationships that you can reference.

Deloitte Access Economics’ research in Ready, Set, Upskill demonstrates rising L&D investment across Australian organisations, but also highlights increasing expectations around demonstrable ROI. This doesn’t mean every training programme needs an elaborate cost-benefit analysis with spreadsheets that take weeks to prepare. But it does mean being able to articulate clear connections between capability development and business outcomes.

Practical tools and templates to speed you up

Good news: you don’t need to build everything from scratch. Several Australian government and industry bodies provide excellent resources to support training improvement.

Business.gov.au offers staff development guidance and templates suitable for both SMEs and larger employers. These include training needs analysis tools, training plan templates, and evaluation frameworks that you can download and adapt.

The Australian Institute of Training & Development and AHRI both maintain resource libraries to help you benchmark L&D practice and stay current with emerging approaches. Whilst some resources require membership, many are freely available and provide valuable professional development for those leading training initiatives.

Common pitfalls to avoid

Even well-intentioned efforts to improve training at work can stumble badly. Watch out for these frequent mistakes that undermine even the best-designed programmes.

Running one-off events without follow-up reinforcement or manager enablement is perhaps the most common failure mode. Training isn’t an event that happens once and magically changes everything. It’s a process that requires ongoing support.

Focusing on content delivery rather than performance outcomes leads to programmes that feel complete but change nothing. Remember that the goal isn’t to cover all the training material in your slides. It’s to build capability that improves how work actually gets done.

Using misaligned metrics creates false confidence that everything’s working when it isn’t. High satisfaction scores from training sessions don’t necessarily indicate that learning happened. Self-reported confidence doesn’t always translate to competent performance when it matters.

Ignoring legal obligations around induction and paid training time creates real risk and genuine resentment that undermines your entire L&D strategy.

Finally, trying to improve training at work without involving managers and supervisors means missing the people who most influence whether new skills and knowledge actually get applied. Managers make or break training transfer.

Where specialist partners add value

At some point, many organisations recognise that building world-class training capability internally requires time, expertise, and resources they simply don’t have. Particularly when you’re facing complex performance challenges or need to scale quickly. This is where partnerships with specialist providers become genuinely valuable.

MCI Solutions works with Australian organisations to design human-centred, performance-aligned learning that meets local standards and delivers measurable outcomes. Rather than off-the-shelf courses that sort of fit your needs if you squint, the focus is on understanding your specific performance challenges and designing Instructional Design solutions that address them directly.

Whether you need help with a comprehensive corporate training program development, targeted interventions to close specific skill gaps, or evaluation frameworks that demonstrate ROI to sceptical stakeholders, bringing in experienced partners can accelerate results whilst building internal capability for the long term.

Ready to move from training that ticks boxes to training that genuinely transforms performance? Enquire about Instructional Design services that put your business outcomes first.

Frequently asked questions

What is the most effective way to improve training at work?

The most effective approach starts with a thorough needs analysis to identify genuine performance gaps rather than assumed training needs. Follow this with a human-centred design that focuses on practical application, not just information delivery. Combine blended delivery methods, manager-led reinforcement in the workplace, and structured evaluation to ensure training translates to sustained workplace capability rather than just short-term knowledge transfer that fades within weeks.

How do we measure training effectiveness in Australia?

Use the APSC Learning Evaluation Handbook framework, which examines reaction, learning, behaviour change, and business results across four levels. Focus on the levels most relevant to your programme. Technical training might emphasise behaviour and performance improvements, whilst leadership development might focus on team outcomes and engagement metrics. Define success criteria before training begins to ensure you collect appropriate data from the start.

What should be included in a workplace training plan?

An effective training plan includes clear learning objectives tied directly to business goals, specific skill gaps being addressed with evidence, delivery methods and a realistic timeline, resource requirements and budget allocation, manager support strategies and tools, and evaluation measures at appropriate levels. It should also specify legal obligations being met, particularly around safety induction and task-specific training, and clarify that compulsory training is paid time under Fair Work guidelines.

Do employees need to be paid for mandatory training?

Yes, absolutely. Under Fair Work Ombudsman guidelines, employees must be paid for compulsory training at their normal rate. This includes induction, safety training, and any other training the employer requires employees to complete. This applies regardless of whether training occurs at the workplace, online, or at an external venue. Treating mandatory training as unpaid time contravenes workplace laws and creates significant legal risk.

How can instructional design improve employee training outcomes?

Professional instructional design applies evidence-based learning principles to create training that’s genuinely engaging, relevant, and effective rather than just information dumps. It structures content for optimal retention, incorporates practice opportunities that mirror real job challenges, addresses different learning preferences and accessibility needs, and builds evaluation in from the start. Good instructional design transforms information-heavy content into performance-changing experiences that deliver measurable business outcomes you can actually demonstrate to leadership.