Sometimes, choosing training content is more difficult than starting the training itself.
Most HR managers and L&D professionals have been there. They want to help their people grow, so they start looking for the best training content.
But “best” is a moving target. What works for the technical development of a software engineer will not work for a manager learning to give feedback. And none of this will help law enforcement teams stay in compliance with the country’s laws.
When you try to solve all training needs with one large, unstructured library, two things happen: training budgets disappear, and students stop clicking.
Choosing the right training content is not about how much training content you provide. It’s about how well that content fits the job that needs to be done.
The real challenge of training is not the content. It’s worth it
We often hear that teams need more training. But when we dig deeper, the problem is rarely a lack of studies. Lack of focus.
Training often fails because different needs are combined into one big learning campaign. For example, it is not possible to use the same approach to teach an introduction to Python as to prevent abuse.
That approach creates three predictable problems:
- Decision fatigue: Too many options, not enough clarity
- Low finish: Students do not know what is important, so they take all this as noise
- Differences: You provide good content for the wrong result (or the right result at the wrong time)
So, stop thinking about content as a list and start thinking about it as a tool for a specific task. In accordance with The TalentLMS 2026 Annual L&D Benchmark Report, 95% of HR managers agree that better training and skills development improve employee retention. But if the training content is a random bunch of useful videos, it’s hard to align these goals.
Three common training tasks that most teams need to solve
A better way is to divide the training into activities. Ask yourself: What does this training need to do now?
Once you name the job, choosing the content becomes easier. And generally, most training falls into one of these categories:
1. Daily on-the-job training
This is how the company actually works. It includes skills that everyone needs, regardless of their role or department.
- Communication and feedback
- Time management and productivity
- Cooperation, conflict, and cooperation
- Foundations of leadership
- Soft skills
2. HR and legal compliance
This is a non-negotiable layer. The goal here accuracy, documentation, and up-to-date. Training is often mandatory and very specific to where your employees live and work.
- Prevention of harassment
- Racism, morality, and ethics
- Security requirements
- Data privacy expectations
3. Industry or role specific skills
This is a deep dive. That’s right training for special talent. And here, consistency is more important than volume.
- Protocols specific to health care
- Financial services regulations
- Production safety and SOPs
- Ways to sell by role
- Technical skills are integrated with work
Elena Goulas
Head of Content Librarian at Epignosis
Elena oversees the strategy, development, and quality of the company’s customized courses, including TalentLibrary, and manages relationships for all third-party content integrations.
Pro tip: Why the order of training is more important than the volume of content
The majority training challenges they are sequence problems, not content problems. The order in which you present training often has a greater impact on engagement than how much content you provide.
- Start small: Introduce training that can be done by many students at the same time. Early wins build momentum.
- View data: Use early termination patterns to reveal where intensive training is needed.
- Expand as needed: Introduce special programs as a response to a real need, not as a starting point.
Important priorities: The right content at the wrong time still fails.
Daily on-the-job training is the foundation of many teams
If you’re wondering where to start, start where the training has the most impact.
Daily workplace training creates consistency, moves faster, and lifts the floor. It’s coming out fast, everyone is getting the AZs of how to communicate, collaborate, and work, and very little progress is seen in work and culture.
With TalentLibrary, you get your teams moving fast with high-quality, bite-sized lessons that cover what’s important. It’s built in TalentLMS, ready to launch when you need it, without spending weeks building training content from scratch. You can explore a wide range of topics and offer courses or collections that best suit the needs of your people, all from one central library.
Real-world impact: A wider circle
A wide circle is a health care organization that relies on training to keep employees, contractors, and volunteers compliant and compliant with internal procedures. When their previous platform can’t keep up, student engagement drops.
After moving to TalentLMS and adding TalentLibrary, Wider Circle reported a 56% increase in student engagement.
Danielle Eldridge (HR L&D Lead and LMS Administrator) sums up this change simply:
“With TalentLMS, we now have one central resource for all our training.”
That is the first point about the content of the foundation. You scale and unlock momentum without rebuilding the training from scratch.
Where HR compliance is negotiable
There is a clear line between must-know skills and must-know compliance. In the case of government-mandated training or legal requirements, being on the far right is not enough.
Compliance training content needs to be accurate, timely, and secure. That is why the focus of compliance frameworks and best practice guidelines is shifting from completing courses to the importance of measurement, documentation, and effectiveness.
Easy Llama purpose-built for HR compliance, especially for US-based teams. It handles the heavy lifting of staying up-to-date with changing regulations, so it’s not necessary. It is the ideal tool for work where the goal is to reduce risk and meet legal standards.
TalentLMS has paired with EasyLlama to offer a special bundle that brings all the HR compliance courses you need in one package. This helps organizations streamline access and manage training content.
When regular training is not enough
Eventually, people in your organization will reach a point in their careers where standard training is not enough. For example, senior developers may need additional training for a new cloud architecture. Or sales teams may benefit from industry-specific negotiation strategies to successfully close deals in competitive markets.
When you reach this stage of expansion, target depth and specifics are important. OpenSesame in TalentLMS can support such niche and industry specific needs. However, it’s important to point out that this is where you can go after you’ve established a skill base. Selected depth is more important than volume. But that also depends on your needs.
How it all comes together in TalentLMS
The best part? You don’t have to choose one path and stick to it forever. TalentLMS is built for flexibility.
You can get started with TalentLibrary to get your basic training live in hours. As your company grows, you can add an EasyLlama layer to keep up with HR or connect OpenSesame to your specialized departments.
Everything stays in one place. Your readers don’t have to jump between five different websites, and you don’t have to manage five different sets of reports. Start simple. Then, add special methods if needed.
An easy way to decide
Here is a decision table to help you choose the right option:
Start simple. Stretch with intention
When you’re building a training (or rebuilding), the pressure to be perfect can push you to perform spectacularly.
But remember, you don’t need to solve every possible future problem before you solve it you trained your first employee.
Start with the foundation. Get your team to learn what’s important, see what they respond to, and then add complexity where it’s really needed. By matching your content to the specific task at hand, you’ll save money, save time, and, most importantly, help your people grow.
