HR Basics: Training Lesson Plans

HR Basics is a series of short courses, designed to highlight what you need to know about a particular human resource management topic. In today’s HR Basics, we explore the steps to create and implement a great training lesson plan.

A training lesson plan (also called a session plan) is an organized description of the activities and resources you'll use to guide a group toward a specific learning objective.

A training lesson plan is an organized description of the activities and resources you'll use to facilitate a training session. Your lesson plan can be as simple as a brief outline, or more complex, with scripts, prompts, and lists of questions that you plan to ask.

It's useful to use a standard lesson plan template. A lesson plan template helps you organize material consistently over sessions, and avoid duplicating topics.  There are hundreds of options when it comes to lesson plan templates.

In your lesson plan, you will pull together your learning: statements (course title, description and objectives), activities (training content, methods and timing), and Materials (resources needed to successfully facilitate) into a document you will use to facilitate your training.

A well-crafted training lesson plan provides a facilitator with everything they need to deliver effective training experiences designed to meet the developmental needs of their audience.