Improving staff training is often on the top of the list for nonprofits, especially in the human service sector. How can we keep our staff up to date as we implement new policies and improve our procedures? New staff have a lot to learn, which is one challenge, but often getting existing staff to change old habits can be an even bigger challenge. You probably have a staff handbook that gets updated, but how many of your staff are really reading it and if they do, are they taking it all in?

So how can we educate staff in a way that they actually take in the information and how can we know if it’s working?

Coming to the marketing world with a background in education, I see a lot of similarities in the two. In fact, I think both disciplines can really benefit from the other’s best practices. I could say a lot about this topic, but I’ll save that for another post. In the meantime, the key point is that you can use the same tactics and tools you are using for marketing to help train your staff and get them more engaged in your organization’s work, beyond what their particular day to day job is.

So here is a list of 5 marketing tactics and ideas to get you started. If you’re new to any of these tools or you don’t have a digital strategy already in place, I recommend testing the waters and trying each tactic out one at a time, but if you have a good grip on some of these tools and the capacity to try something a little more involved, then try combining a few of the ideas below to make a full education and feedback engagement loop with your staff.