The Power of Storylined Training: How to Make Learning Engaging and Memorable

Trainings are “Boring” – is a phrase that most of us have heard often in our lives. Even if we go back to our own school days, learning was fun only when the learning experience was unconventional & entertaining. Remember the science teacher who put 2 solutions together to make something slimy or sparkly? Or the Math teacher who used building blocks to teach addition or subtraction in Kindergarten? Or the English teacher who elegantly corrected us with immaculate words, even during our silly moments?

After all these years, those learning experiences have stayed with us because they engaged us in ways traditional teaching methods couldn’t. They didn’t just teach us, they immersed us. Something that we often fail to replicate at our workplaces. When our leaders engage us in experiential learning - through hands-on projects or cross functional projects or market simulations, it creates a deeper and a lasting impact.

The Missing Piece - Learning Experience

This differentiates what we learn, how much we learn, what do we retain of it and how much do we actually use it when the time comes. Just as we focus on Customer Experience or the Employee Experience, the Learning Experience deserves the same attention. A 2022 KPMG report found that 86% of high performing organizations effectively use learning to improve productivity versus 55% of low performing organizations.

Workplace learning is effective only when it’s relatable to the employee’s own work life. It should mirror the employee’s life – their environment, interactions and day to day scenarios. Any learning program that does not star the learner will often not have the desired impact. Rather than the learning experience becoming a journey, the learning program will feel like a session and that too a boring one. Not all training participants are able to relate to the training content with their own work lives. Relatable story driven training helps learners see themselves in the content, increasing retention & application.

The Role of Story-lined Training

Story-lined training programs that address the business needs and are grounded in frameworks like the ADDIE principles transform the learning experience. They re-iterate learning points throughout the learning journey with engaging quizzes, assessments at the right story pauses, making knowledge retention and application achievable. This method shifts training from being an information dump to a guided journey, addressing both business priorities and individual learning needs.

However, many organizations face challenges – budget constraints, limited resources or lack of access to advanced SaaS platforms – that hinder the creation of such customized learning experiences. Learning and development teams often struggle to cross the relatability threshold, leaving training less impactful than intended.

The Way Forward

To address these challenges, organizations have two clear options – upskill internal teams to design relatable, engaging story-lined training content (time consuming & costly path) or partner with training technology firms that specialize in creating interactive & engaging learning modules tailored to business needs.

At HiVoco Content-Tech Studios , we understand the power of story-driven training. Leveraging our AI-enabled, patent-published training solutions, we create interactive and relatable learning experiences tailored to your organization’s goals. If you'd like to explore how story-lined training can transform your workforce’s productivity and learning experience, reach out to us. Let’s make training engaging, memorable, and impactful—together.

Author: Rachita Srivastava, SHRM-SCP