How to setup a basic training team

Introduction: Struggling to create a training team for your organization? Maybe any of its kind. It's good to start with a team of four to five for any kind of products or services. But the base should be strong enough to sustain in long run.

Template creation: The first step to create any training material is template creation. It starts with a basic to advance level template creation. It depends on how you are planning the structure. My suggestion is to start with microsoft suite and move to other tools depending on your budget, time and resources. Again do not forget to follow the KISS (Keep it short and simple) method.

Content creators: Identify the key resources to write the content. Content creators also act as SME's (Subject Matter Expert) in small and medium sized organization. It is not necessary initially to think from grammer and other aspects, just write down the way the thoughts are cropping up. Keep adding numbers, graphs, images and other essential materials to enhance your content. Content does not always mean words and sentences. But the content and the other aspects within the content should fall into the specific topic and not deviating from it. In some places there is word restrictions, but I feel to start a team one should not look into those aspects.

Review process: Review process is mainly from the overall point of view starting from design, style, in depth topic knowledge, adhering to the checklist etc. But the review process should have specific timeline and the team must adhere to it. It also depends on the number of pages, availability of reviewer etc. The members should dedicate considerable amount of time initially to review the content.

Feedback is a must: Training development is always a two way path. One has to go and come back to the starting point. The feedback is for both the creators and reviewers. In my view, there should be brainstorming sessions for these kind of teams. It improves the quality of the creations and helps to understand the need of further improvement.

Sorting and storing of materials: Once the materials are finalized, the sorting and storing happens. In many cases, people store them in cloud platforms for easy access. But as this is a generic topic, one can start storing them in their local directory and a periodical backup is required to keep it safe. There are various ways to sort and store like category, topic wise, alphabetically storing or storing from the simple to complex type. It all depends on the team and the requirement of the organization.

Periodical check & validation: Once everything is in place. Assign someone to do a periodical assessment and validation of the content. This is not a rework or double work, this process is to check if any process has become obsolete, any addition or deletion is required etc.

Conclusion: To conclude, I have outlined the basic framework to start a team. You can add more insight according to your requirement.