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While the trainer was presenting, the sessions were incredible and workers were engaged–energized even! As everyone left the classroom, the consensus was that it was the best training event ever.

But not even a week later, spot checks reveal that all of that training was practically forgotten and not really being used at all.

Unfortunately, your experience is typical. Studies indicate that within the first hour, half of your training investment will disappear into thin air. In another week, your employees barely remember 10% of what was taught in that training session.

To make matters worse, you are practically paying for it twice over. Research indicates that employees burn up thousands of hours of productivity looking for the exact kind of information that their corporate training programs were supposed to teach them. And you have little to no control over where they’re getting that information–just whatever YouTube and Google can serve up quickly.

How can you keep your training investment working for you?

Upskilling and reskilling your talented workforce is too important to your company’s future and your worker’s success and job satisfaction for you to let so much of it just drift away. Here are four important recommendations to ensure that you get (and keep!) the most out of your training efforts:

Don’t let up

Training isn’t over just because the class is done. That was merely the beginning. Now that the foundation has been laid, you have an opportunity to reinforce it and boost long-term retention and application.

So, in the weeks following the formal training event, find ways to incorporate reminders of the training throughout the workday. For example, consider integrating the training into digital reports or other job aids so workers are encouraged to actually use the training. Ultimately, the goal is to continually remind them about what they learned in small, job-relevant doses well after the in-class work is complete.

Train everywhere

The real magic will happen when the training materials are easily available anytime and anywhere. This is particularly true if the training is truly relevant to the job. That way, there will always be a cause for bringing up specific skills, information, and tasks in the day-to-day moments on the job.

Your employees need crucial bits of information to do their jobs well. Don’t count on their memory of the training. And don’t leave it to Google to help them figure it out. Instead, make sure they can easily and quickly connect to the key parts of the training whenever and wherever they need it.

The key is to make your training as crucial–and available–as that portable computer they all have in their pockets. In fact, put the training on a mobile app that they all can download. Then, you’ll not only be sure that they remember and use what they’ve been taught, but you have some assurance that the information they’re using is accurate.

Integrate training

Ideally, the training you’re giving workers isn’t isolated from the work they are actually doing. If it’s relevant to their work, integrate it into their job. That allows contextual cues and repetitive procedures to do the work of reinforcing the learning and increasing the likelihood that new information will be both retained and used. Otherwise, you are assured that 90% of what they pick up in the classroom will be lost within a week.

This most likely takes the form of a mobile app that workers can interact with via talk, touch, and text to get answers and information about their everyday tasks, in the moment of working on those tasks.

Inspect what you expect

If managers never require workers to use the information that they have learned, then workers will have no incentive to use it. And if managers never need to require it, then you may need to re-evaluate what you are training workers to do as well as the methods you use to train them.

But, if you are concerned with information retention, then it’s safe to assume that the new information, skill, or process is part of reports and other mission-critical information that managers need to evaluate performance and run the business. Then, your after-class training program needs to give managers a way to clearly see how the workforce is putting the training to use.

The real goal isn’t just to see this information, but to actually use and act on it. Ideally, managers should be put in a position to identify and correct workers who are not using the training as well as to reward and recognize those who are.

Taking your upskilling and reskilling programs out of the classroom and putting them on the job will ensure that your training investment is safe and sound. And it will go a long way to ensure that training actually starts contributing to the bottom line.

To learn how DaVinix can help you keep your training investment after class, visit davinix.com/why-davinix.