Speaker 1: Are you struggling to properly inform and prepare new hires every time they're brought on board? A proper training manual can help, and we're here to show you how to build one. Oh, hello. My name is Mike Ploger, and Visme and I are here to teach you how to create an effective training manual. We've all gone through it when we were onboarded, and those of you that are on training and development teams have to run the gauntlet of training new hires on a regular basis. You're stuck devising a new plan for each group of new employees, and that's draining, repetitive, and a waste of time. A well-designed and effective training manual can set the standard for all employees who are fresh to the company, so everyone goes through the same program. The key here is designing a training manual that will increase your employee engagement. Without that, you and your team will be stuck in a never-ending cycle of slow production. We want to avoid that, which is why we're here to help. In this video, I'll share must-have pages to include, design tips, and show you how to create a training manual with ease inside of visme.com. Throughout the video, you'll see dozens of templates you can personalize right now. Shall we? With any professional training, there are five pages that you'll want to include no matter what. Of course, you can include more as necessary for your company, but always try to include the following pages. The very first page should always be your welcome screen. Introduce the company and the manual as a whole. Provide a brief overview of your company's history and what to expect in the following pages. The training process should be introduced in a clear and concise manner. Set a reader's expectations from the onset. Once you've established an introduction, you want to reinforce the goals and objectives for those in your company. What should a new employee strive for? What's the mission of the company? Establish this early on to remind readers why they're going through the manual in the first place and what production they can expect in a short period of time. In order to make the employee process as clear as possible, lay out instructions for them. Often new employees are clueless as to where to begin at their new job. Ensure they're never going without a task by giving them instructions from the very beginning. As you make your way towards the end of your training manual, you'll want to include a summary. Here you can review the critical points of earlier topics while also hinting at next steps and future opportunities. Before you completely wrap up, include an FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions section to answer any questions you anticipate a new employee having. Whatever questions you've received after your previous training sessions, include them in here. Keep this short and to the point, not to add any extra confusion. So those are the pages that you must have, but how about the design itself? Black and white in text? Oh my. You need to create a design that'll keep a viewer wanting more and excite them about their new opportunity at your company. Behold, nine tips to do just that. And keep in mind, all the examples you'll see are templates available within Visme and the platform we have at visme.com. Don't sleep on the importance of maintaining your brand identity. Someone should be able to pick up your training manual and immediately recognize the company it's for without ever seeing the company name. How can you ensure this? It's really quite simple. Utilize the same colors and styles your company uses in other assets, such as your marketing materials and your training manual. You should have a consistent look across all mediums from social posts to expense reports to training manuals. Something you should be striving for in your visuals is harmony. In other words, the balance of materials that make up the overall design. You must be careful when choosing elements for a design. Don't just throw something in there because you need it to take up white space. Design with purpose. If somebody asks why a specific design element is placed there, you should be able to answer that question without hesitation. One tip to discover harmony, set a mood, style, or theme from the very beginning, then build the image with it in mind. Notice the similar colors and icons in this template. The background of frilly text information matches the color of the fruit, and each icon is a similar style. With Visme, you have the choice between various icon styles and then several options to choose from within that style, in turn helping you create harmony. One element we saw with that last example was the excellent use of colors. Colors have associations, deeper meanings, and can elicit feelings in viewers. You should be aware of these meanings as you want your designs to give off a certain energy. Not all training manuals are the same, but they can all be boring if you don't embrace what makes your company unique. When designing, don't settle on the first color or icon or image that you find. Start your planning by writing down three things that make your company unique. Then with those in mind, select design elements that match. If you want to stretch your limits from the standard icons and graphics, use animations. Of course, this is only possible with digital training manuals, but hey, that's an idea for you in itself. Animations like these add movement to your training manuals. They not only catch someone's attention, but they direct it. And creating them isn't as difficult as you may think. How can you do it? Yeah, you may have guessed already, but yes, it is easy with Visme's help. The animations are already built, you just have to click and drag them into your project. A training manual shouldn't be like reading an astronautical engineering book, unless that's your line of work. What I mean is, your reader should be able to read and understand the material with ease. Simplify the terms and processes as much as you can. Starting a new job is overwhelming enough as it is, but you can make it easier for your employees. Aside from the terminology, one way to help is with visual hierarchy. By strategically placing and editing specific design elements, you can guide a reader through the training manual while simultaneously emphasizing importance. One item in the manual may be more important than others, and you need to show that. Yeah, you can make the lettering bold, but there's other ways you can do it too. Maybe an added design element like an arrow or image paired along with it. Size, color, contrast, alignment, repetition, and proximity are all things to consider to achieve readable content. If you're creating a training manual from step one, with no prior success creating one before, I encourage you to start with a template. These serve as guides through the entire process, and you can edit them however you'd like. They're proven to work utilizing colors, shapes, textures, and more in a professionally designed image. Because you can be confident in the design, you can spend more time on your message and content. It's a win-win for all, and an entire template gallery is waiting for you in Visme's project editor. Our seventh tip is in line with properly using visual hierarchy, but I want to emphasize the importance of a proper flow in a training manual. Your audience should have an intuitive grasp on what to read next. The visual hierarchy tips I mentioned a minute ago will help in several directional patterns and designs. Maybe you add numbers or a lighter shade of a color, getting darker moving towards the ending. Arrows and lines are also your friends here. Provide these directional clues so your reader grasps the information easily without getting frustrated and confused. Illustrations aren't just for elementary school art class. You need them in your professional training manuals too. They add to the aesthetic beauty, increase reading comprehension, and help take a reader on a visual journey from section to section. You can't have text taking up an entire training manual. Nothing is more intimidating for a new employee than that. Add illustrations to bring your material to life. And now for our last tip, and one of the most important. Know your audience. Ask these questions to yourself. Who will be using the training manual? Will it be distributed in specific departments? Is it for new employees or existing employees? These simple questions can go a long way in determining what's going to fit and help set your employees up for success. So I know I've been pushing the fact that Visme can help you throughout this video. Did I mention you can build your own training manual in three easy steps? Three. That's it. It is super simple. First you start with a template. Whether it be human resources, lab assistance, food processing, customer service, there's a template for your company. I promise you that. Log into your Visme account. Click that create new button in the upper left corner of your dashboard. Select documents, and in there you'll find training manuals. Once you've found a template you like, start by customizing the content to fit your needs. This will take time, but once you feel good about your message, it's time to add visual elements. Whether it's icons, illustrations, arrows, line patterns, all of the graphics you can envision for your training manual are available to you. And then some. Hit that graphics tab on the far left and see for yourself. There are thousands of options sorted into specific categories, making your search easier. Then the third step is share it. You can download it as a PDF to get it professionally printed, or you can go paperless and share it digitally. Maybe you want to add it to an email or website. You can do that too. Or maybe you just want a shareable link. Yeah, you can do that as well. How you share your material is up to you, and you'll have plenty of options. With that, our little video training manual, if you will, is finished. You now know the pages, tips, and process for creating the perfect training manual for your needs. Want more templates? Okay, fine. How about one for web developers? Need one for project management? Visme has it. Graphic design more your line of work? Cool. Visme has that too. And virtual administration, and social media, and much more. You are literally clicks away from making your life so much easier, freeing up time for you to work on other things. Head to visme.com to get started. But wait, before you do, please like this video. It's what keeps us going, and we want to continue to help you through your professional design endeavors. Subscribing to our channel would help us even more. Just saying. The button is right down below. Anyways, thank you so much for watching. Good luck moving forward. For now, I'm Mike Ploeger with Visme, helping you make information beautiful. Visit visme.com to learn more.