How to Make Learning Stick in Training Sessions (For Good)

Training sessions always look great on paper, but if they don't actually affect real-world habits, they're just a fancy distraction. Knowledge retention is how you transform the training process into useful skills or valuable wisdom that lasts in the long term.

Modern studies of the forgetting curve commonly report that learners lose about 50% of new information within an hour of training, around 70% within 24 hours, and up to 90% within a week if there is no reinforcement or practice. A 2022–2024 set of workplace learning reports similarly describes that participants in traditional, one‑time training retain only about 10–20% of the content after a few months and apply only roughly 15% of what they learned on the job.

How do you encourage long term memory to make sure key points or skills hold firm in the future? We'll break down the learning process to help you create effective training that finally sticks for good.

The Science of Sticky Learning

To create training content that lingers in learners’ minds, you need to understand how the brain stores and retrieves memories in the first place. The human brain divides memories into a few categories:

• The prefrontal cortex manages attention and short-term working memory. It is active when you first hear someone’s name, follow new instructions, or understand a new concept in a training session.

• The amygdala tags experiences with emotion, which influences what we pay attention to and remember. For example, delivering a presentation for the first time or receiving unexpected feedback makes the learning more memorable because emotion is involved.

• The hippocampus encodes new information and connects it to what you already know. It helps you remember a new policy, system, or framework by linking it to familiar processes or past experiences.

• The cerebellum automates skills through practice and feedback. It stores learning for frequently used skills, such as running a regular meeting, using a software tool efficiently, or applying a conversation framework without thinking about each step.

How does all of this relate to your training? Mainly, it's important to understand the different ways learners store information. Some may thrive with experiential learning (or 'learning through doing') but struggle to remember facts or numbers. Meanwhile, other workers may have a great long-term memory but haven't had enough unique experiences to build new memories.

7 Principles to Promote Long Term Retention in Your Training Sessions

Everyone learns in different ways and that's okay. As a trainer your goal is to create a dynamic and flexible learning environment where your participants can recall information. To achieve this shift to designing for memory and application!

Try mixing-and-matching these principles to reduce cognitive overload, help participants understand more, and encourage retention in the long term.

1. Grab Their Attention (and Keep It)

The more distractions there are in the learning experience, the harder it is for people to catch what's actually important. When setting up an active learning environment, make sure to eliminate common distractions such as:

• Loud noises (inside or outside)

• Constantly checking phones or tablets

• People walking in and out of the room.

You can also help retain information by:

• Using curiosity, surprise or prediction gaps

• Chunking content into bite-sized information with clear structure

• Introducing brief, varied learning activities every 8 to 10 minutes

• Using clear visuals, such as an explainer video or a PowerPoint presentation. According to a behavioural neuroscience study, roughly 65% of the population are visual learners.

2. Encourage Proactive Learning Instead of Passive Listening

Just sitting and listening isn't nearly enough to get your audience absorbing what you're telling them. Active learning gives your participants full control over how they're storing and applying new skills, tips, and tricks.

There are many ways to get your learners actively involved, such as:

• Asking learners to summarise what they've learned with a bullet list or conceptual sketch

• Replacing long explanations with questions that guide discovery

• Doing an 'explain it to a colleague' exercise so they can both repeat and break down what they've learned

• Using short prediction questions before revealing the full answer.

3. Make Learning More Emotional

According to groundbreaking new research, emotional stimulation increases memory retention by increasing cohesion across multiple parts of the brain. If you want a long-term learning, tap into people's emotions in your training by:

• Using powerful storytelling that share real-life examples and case studies

• Encouraging peer discussion where people bring their own stories to the table

• Inviting reflection and perspective sharing on real work scenarios.

4. Reducing Cognitive Load

More often than not, learners struggle with a lot of new training information because it's just not applicable in everyday life. Also known as extraneous load, you have to trim out the fat and leave only what's necessary, such as:

• Creating simple step-by-step instructions for complex tasks

• Removing all non-essential content or slides

• Spreading out the learning with short breaks to avoid overwhelm.

5. Use Retrieval Practice

Retrieval practice is a great tool because it helps refresh people's memories with simple tasks, practical activity, or imagination exercises. For example, you can give your participants a pop quiz during or after a session to double-check everything is sticking.

Even asking learners to recall what they've learned without picking up their notes is a good way to see what's sticking and what's not. You can also invite retrieval through a quick scenario challenge to apply key concepts or models.

6. Space and Revisit Key Ideas

Sometimes a one-off workshop just isn't enough to help learners recall information effectively. If you need an alternative, one example could be a multi-touch program where participants undertake pre-work activities and reflection (which supports priming), in session learning and activities, and post session reinforcement (which support spaced repetition).

You can also try 'micro learning' via short-form videos and email nudges that get participants to apply the learning in the flow of work.

7. Engage Multiple Learning Pathways

Active learning is infinitely more effective than passive observation. When you engage other systems in the brain with a dynamic session, you give participants a well-rounded approach to the learning experience.

Group problem solving, peer coaching, and role playing are a few great examples of getting people to engage in several types of learning in a session.

We'll Help You Create Training That Sticks

Ready to give your participants training that they can actually remember and use? We invite you to switch up your usual training by picking just three of the principles we listed above.

What will you stop, start, and continue to make learning stick?

Read our blog to learn even more ways of training and inspiring today's hard workers.