This presentation template focuses on training employees on how to recognize and avoid phishing scams, which can be exceptionally costly to businesses. Notice how each slide uses simple visuals and a two-toned color scheme to ensure people can easily understand it and take the lessons to heart.
Besides presentations, infographics can also make effective training manuals:
This process infographic explains data collection techniques for infographics (going a bit meta now — don’t mind me). But you can edit it to explain any training process in your company. This particular version is meant to live online, which means employees can access it so long as they have internet access.
A training manual can also be in the form of an ebook, like this one:
Consider an employee manual template like this one for your remote workforce. Simply swap out the app and software icons for the ones you use and update the other items to make them appropriate for your team.
Employee handbooks and training manuals aren’t necessarily the same, though they often include similar or identical content. Use this template to make the best of both worlds by adding a page or two that describe specific tasks or processes that all new hires need to know.
There’s no single type of training manual, so your mileage may vary, but generally an employee training manual should include:
Use this eBook skills training guide as a template for your training manual, particularly if your company’s brand is light and friendly. The bright colors in this template are ideal for companies with approachable personas.
Writing a training manual can seem like an overwhelming task, and it’s an important one to be sure. But being as organized as possible before you begin the writing process can help. Using the previous section, ask yourself what the audience for this manual needs to get out of it, and then work backward to provide it.
Basically, to create effective training manuals, you can follow these seven simple steps:
Here are a few other tips for writing your training manual:
Think your company’s training plan could use a change? Suggest a revamp with these training proposal templates for a more efficient, tailored and engaging introduction for new hires.
Here are some tips and tricks for setting your team up for success with a winning training manual:
Training manuals provide the perfect opportunity to introduce employees — especially new hires — to your corporate identity. Even in internal materials, you should use your brand colors, fonts, logos and illustrative styles. Doing so from Day One can help ensure new team members are on board.
This onboarding manual template employs a bright and colorful design style that makes it clear to any new hire that this particular organization is fun and approachable.
This talent management handbook, on the other hand, has a subdued, monochromatic look and feel that’s a great match for companies with a neutral, organic brand personality.
If your company is technology-focused, this employee handbook template could be ideal, thanks to its bold use of black and dark blue along with pops of bright colors.
For Venngage Business users, you can apply your brand colors and logos to your training manual templates in two simple steps. First, upload your branding elements to your account or type in your website and have Autobrand automatically extract your brand color palette for you:
Then, open your training manual template and apply your brand colors in one click with My Brand Kit:
New employees can feel overwhelmed with onboarding documents early in their tenure, which is why I always recommend brands reduce the number of words in their training materials in favor of appropriate visuals. Besides facilitating the employee’s learning process, using more visuals in training can help with knowledge retention and improve employee productivity.
The types of visuals you can include vary depending on the format of your training manual. Examples include data visualization, icons, illustrations, photographs and more.
This onboarding training manual is short on words and long on eye-catching, engaging illustrations and well-placed section headings to keep the eye moving. The combination of brief text and large imagery helps ensure employees will actually read everything instead of glossing over it.
Consider including diagrams and charts like this fishbone diagram that was created to explain how to solve complex medical issues. If your training manual needs to touch on highly technical or scientific matters, this type of diagram is a perfect addition.
Explore the steps of a process with this flowchart, an ideal inclusion for training manuals that need to cover specific processes. Remember to consider everyone who will consume this information. For example, if I were to include this in a general training manual, I would make it broader and describe what other departments are doing while the sales team does its thing.
While it’s important to be brief, it’s helpful to give your team members examples of good and bad behaviors, decisions and performance as part of a training manual. And switch them up from year to year so people don’t assume only those examples are good or bad.
This do’s and don’ts job aid infographic is a perfect addition to any training manual, as it gives you a chance to provide useful tips to show people what to do — and what not to do.
Especially when dealing with technology, it’s helpful to show employees exactly what they’re dealing with. This training manual template does that using illustrations, but it could easily be updated to show actual photographs as you explain how to do a specific task.
Have more questions about training manuals? We’ve got answers.
Yes, there are several training manual templates available in Microsoft Word, though depending on your comfortability with Word, they may be difficult to update for your purposes. Plus, if you want to add multiple images or icons in your training manual, it might be hard to organize that with Word. I’d suggest using alternative digital tools like Venngage for training content editing and training material creation.
A training manual template is a training document with placeholder pages and information that can allow you to quickly and easily add new information. Some employee training manual templates include blanks for you to fill in, while others are filled with meaningful content to help you create effective training content.
This blog is populated with lots of training manual examples — but if you need more templates, feel free to explore Venngage’s templates page. You can create a training manual using one of the manual templates as well — it’s free to get started.
Whether you’re helping new hires settle in or launching a new process, it doesn’t hurt to have a few effective training manuals in your back pocket. Effective training manual documents can benefit both the employee and the employer, helping to improve employee efficiency and ensure a smoother training/onboarding process.
If you’re ready to create impactful, actionable training materials for your employees, start with a professional training manual template by Venngage.
A veteran of newsrooms and agencies, Jennifer Gaskin is a writer, editor and designer who is the only living person not to have strong feelings on the Oxford comma. She's an award-winning practitioner of journalism and information design who spent the better part of a decade as the creative director of a digital marketing shop. As a writer, Jennifer contributes to a variety of publications while working with clients as well as taking on her own projects.
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