The Implications of having Too Many Trainees in a Corporate Training Session

22nd January 2021

The very act of corporate training is generally influenced by a multitude of factors surrounding the organisation and its sessions. Typically, a corporate trainer training course tends to thoroughly explore these factors, and the measures that trainers can take in order to cater to them. That said, the number of trainees or participants attending a corporate training session also plays a major role in determining the effectivity of the training sessions. Notably, it is largely believed that having too many participants can shrink the efficacy of a training program, and this blog considers some of the main reasons behind this.

• Burdensome: Needless to say, if you as a trainer were expected to train a group of fifty participants originating from different professional and personal backgrounds, then you would have a hard time ensuring if everyone has understood the topics, assess everyone’s progress, re-explain some of the concepts, and resort to a training method that caters to all the participants’ learning preferences. In fact, the very idea of having to facilitate so many participants can burden and demotivate the trainer from delivering their best.
   
• Lack of interactivity: Imagine hosting a session with more than fifty learners and having to glean everyone’s opinions and experiences. The entire session time will be consumed by this, and the scope to teach the topics or analyse them will be eliminated. On the contrary, if no exchange of idea is promulgated, then monotonous, instructor-led sessions will be conducted, and the room for innovation and brainstorming will be curbed. Either ways, the training effectivity will be disturbed.
   
• Time consuming: As pointed out in the previous reason, and as commonly highlighted in a corporate trainer training course, handling too many participants can turn out to be very time consuming, which in turn can perturb the satisfaction of the learning objectives. As it happens, having to ensure if every trainee has grasped the topic, deriving everyone’s views, and even assessing them will take up more time. When this happens, the instructor may resort to an authoritarian approach of feeding the information to the learners in a rush, instead of focusing on the delivery of quality learning.
   
• Different learning styles: Just like young learners, even adult learners tend to possess different learning preferences. While some may enjoy reading and writing, others might be visual learners. In a relatively small classroom, it is possible to attend to the varying learning needs. However, with too many learners, it is almost impossible to design a session wherein the learning preferences of all the trainees are satisfied.
   
• Difficult to track progress: Be it a practical or a theoretical training session, with too many learners, it is very difficult for the trainer to keep track of the learners’ progress. Importantly, some issues faced by the learners often get overlooked, and the problem eventually spills into their respective performances. Trainers can help alleviate problems in the learning process once they have identified them. However, with too many learners, the very identification problem gets affected.

The aforementioned reasons clearly demonstrated that having too many participants in a training session may not always be a good idea. Despite being cost effective and the ability to train many people at one go, when it comes to effectivity, dealing with bulk learners can pose severe challenges.

Written By : Shivangi Chakraborty