Everything You Need to Know to Create Custom Online Training Courses for the Construction Industry

This guide answers the following questions:

1. Why is custom training necessary for the construction industry?
2. How do we identify the right e-learning topics?
3. Which learning delivery method is best? Video, interactive experience, job aids?
4. How is training developed to address the many skillsets and levels of experience within my company?
5. How do we align internal company metrics to custom learning development?
6. What is our company’s role if we outsource learning development to Media-Vox?
7. How can we get started working with you?

Why Custom E-Learning Is Essential for the Construction Industry

You may notice your employees struggle with performing routine job site tasks correctly, or you may notice a decline in meeting your annual KPI metrics. Many factors can contribute to on-the-job challenges like these. Staffing shortages, new job tasks, or a lack of appropriate training materials increase the need for tailored learning solutions that help your team meet unique job site challenges. 

Purchasing general, cookie-cutter e-learning programs for your construction company often leads to a disengaged team, more behavior issues, and less productivity across the board. 

If you notice any of the following among your staff, it may be time to consider creating custom online training courses for the construction industry:

• The team is not interested in the current training offerings
• The completion rate for existing courses is low 
• Increased turnover as compared to other years
• New employees have a hard time adjusting to their new jobs
• Employees struggle with essential tasks like scheduling and change orders due to a lack of relevant training

If your company lacks a streamlined onboarding process and the necessary staff to implement a robust training program, these issues only grow and add to your job site challenges. In this case, it’s essential to assess the gaps in your training process and create custom solutions to help your construction teams meet expectations. 

Custom e-learning solutions help construction teams engage with real-life scenarios they’ll face on daily job sites. A custom approach, such as the e-learning solutions Media-Vox provides, establishes a solid foundation to help teams complete the training needed to perform daily job functions safely and efficiently. 

Custom training is necessary if your company is experiencing any of the above challenges or your team struggles with meeting job requirements. 

To see examples of custom training materials created for leading construction companies, check out our work here. 

Determining Custom Training Topics and Learning Objectives

Custom learning solutions are created based on who the learners are (e.g., PEs, PMs, Sups), your desired outcomes, and delivery logistics.. As you may have already experienced, unoriginal employee training solutions are not designed to help with your company’s specialized training requirements. If your team has a particular training need, you must work with an experienced instructional design team who knows how to engage construction teams. 

Learn more about us here. 

General e-learning programs often do not provide the specialized online training courses for the construction industry your team needs to get the job done right. These training programs and guides are mainly geared toward common job site safety and compliance challenges but don’t cover more complex or unique tasks. 

The first step in creating custom learning solutions is determining the gaps in your learning program. We’ll consider the training you already have in place and the areas where your team struggles with meeting expectations. We’ll determine if there are training solutions that can close those gaps. 

Training topics should always align with business goals. There are certain safety, quality, and productivity training basics every employee should understand, but some employees need specific training to help them streamline their daily tasks. Before setting out to create a custom solution, we’ll partner with you to create a strategy for implementation. 

With over 20 years of instructional design experience under our belts, we know how to plan successful custom e-learning solutions. Our e-learning consultants work with you to assess your current training program and create a content development plan with clearly defined learning objectives in mind for measurable results. 

At Media-Vox, we know how necessary customized e-learning solutions are to overall company morale, efficiency, and productivity. That’s why we tailor our process for your construction company’s unique needs. Every team, especially the construction industry, needs engaging content with featured real-life scenarios. As instructional design experts, we know how to create e-learning content that informs and motivates your team to develop and maintain new skillsets. 

Creating a Variety of Learning Materials for Maximum Employee Engagement

Written job guides are a great tool in every construction team’s onboarding toolbox; however, they are not the only way to develop your team’s skillset. We know how hard it is to capture your team’s attention these days. With a constant stream of video clips, texts, and social media pings, it’s hard to create learning materials that inspire your team to apply what they’ve learned. 

Adding variety to your training program offers your construction team the engaging and motivational content needed to improve their job site performance and reach yearly goals. 

Creating a mix of custom online learning solutions, like videos, on-the-job aids, and real-world interactive scenarios is the best option for tackling training and development obstacles in the construction industry. Engaging with the content in different ways and at different points in the learning journey encourages employees to keep progressing on their KPI metrics while also boosting their self-confidence to perform their jobs well. 

At Media-Vox, we encourage a variety of learning solutions to inspire your team. Whether through engaging, high-quality videos that use stories and examples straight from the job site or interactive experiences that encourage self-reflection and critical thinking, our custom training solutions meet your team where they are, in the most relevant and impactful way.

Creating Custom E-Learning Solutions for Different Skillsets

Training needs vary from team to team. New employees may require introductory training for common on-the-job scenarios they’ll encounter. On the other hand, more established employees may need more specialized, focused e-learning solutions to help them reach annual performance goals. 

Before creating a custom online training program for your construction company, we’ll consider your team’s learning needs. Asking the following questions will help us gather useful information before we begin:

1. Where are your employees struggling, and where are your project teams struggling? 
2. What are your leaders saying about individual and team capabilities and performance results? 
3. Is training the right solution for the gaps/problems/opportunities identified above? In other words, would an increase in knowledge and skills achieve the desired outcomes? 
4. How would a solution to these problems/opportunities impact your business overall? 

Answering these questions will give us a better idea of your company’s development needs and where training can have the greatest impact. 

As we consider training programs for different needs within your company, we need to consider how the training will be assigned and when. New hires may have a host of introductory learning solutions to work through within their first few months, while specialized training may need to be assigned a few months after onboarding. 

Employees who have been in the construction industry or as a part of your company for a few years may only need to refresh their training annually. To ensure we meet your learners where they are, we’ll get clear about who the audience is, the gap you are trying to fill, and the desired outcomes you want to achieve. 

Your employees can’t learn new skills if they don’t engage with the training you offer them. We know the only way to ensure your team is engaged and motivated to improve in their roles is by creating varied and custom content designed specifically for the construction industry.

Linking Learning Outcomes to Company Metrics

The custom e-learning solutions we create for your construction company always have a foundation in measurable goals and metrics. You want a workforce that follows safety protocols and strives to increase productivity and quality using specialized skillsets that meet performance standards and client expectations. The best way to do this is to provide your team with relevant training aligned with well-articulated end goals. 

When you partner with strategic instructional designers like Media-Vox, you get the expertise that comes from hundreds of successful custom e-learning projects. We don’t create construction training programs in a vacuum. We create custom e-learning solutions with your company’s business goals and desired learning outcomes consistently in mind. 

A critical step in creating custom training connected to your metrics is with skillful, focused subject matter expert interviews. We completely integrate into your company to learn your unique processes and company culture to create online training courses that lead to measurable business results. 

Our strategy planning session may include questions to get you thinking about areas the company is falling short of KPI metrics or other performance measures. These gaps indicate an opportunity to create impactful training materials that work for your teams. 

We are confident that through our instructional design and strategic planning process, your team will receive the training needed to achieve desired performance and behavior results. 

Getting Your Construction Teams Involved in Creating Custom Learning Materials 

One of our favorite parts of creating e-learning programs for the construction industry is getting to know your company and partnering with your team of experts. This partnership is vital to be able to educate your employees on the protocols and processes that make a job site successful. 

Finding out what high performers are doing, and more importantly, why and how they’re doing it is the foundation for learning content that is relevant, meaningful, and impactful for your employees and the business.  

With a deep understanding of how adult learners engage with and absorb information, we gather the important information needed to create custom e-learning solutions. From capturing real stories and on-the-job scenarios relevant to your learners to crafting conversational scripts for meaningful experiences, your construction teams will have the custom training content they need to think critically and develop professionally. 

We pair our extensive instructional design expertise with outstanding video and design skills to bring learning to life in a way that achieves your desired learning outcomes. 

Read about our proven strategy and design process here. 

Partnering With Media-Vox to Create Custom Training Solutions

Getting started with Media-Vox is as easy as getting in contact with us. First, reach out via email, by phone, or by filling out this contact form. Connect in the way you feel most comfortable to discuss your company’s training needs. 

Then, we’ll walk through the strategic approach and expert process we use to create custom e-learning courses that feel like you made them in-house. From robust project planning to interactive e-learning development, you decide the scope of work that makes sense for your construction company’s culture and budget needs. 

No matter the scope of the service you choose, your company will feel like a true partner in the entire process. At Media-Vox, nothing is cookie-cutter. We pride ourselves on integrating with your company to create strategies, videos, written guides, and other e-learning solutions that feel like they were made by your own team. 

Our priority is to provide high-quality, interactive training and development programs that engage and impact the development and efficiency of your team. If you’re ready to give your construction team the right resources to get the job done, contact us here.