In today’s global world, organizations must create accurate and useful training content for employees in other regions, countries, and continents. These organizations need to localize their training. This goes beyond just translation, including changing phrases, colors, and images.

In Localizing Your Learning: How Adapting Your Content Can Make Training More Effective, 311 TD professionals answered questions about how they localize training, how it benefits employees, and the challenges they face. Approximately two-thirds of respondents adapted some of their e-learning offerings, and 76 percent of those organizations were at least somewhat effective in their efforts.

Other key findings from this study include:

• Translating language and phrases was a common way for organizations to localize their training.

• When organizations localized e-learning content, learners benefitted. Training was more effective, learners retained more information, training could be completed faster, and satisfaction with training increased.

• A lack of time, staff, and funding were the top three reasons organizations struggled with localizing content. These were similar to the struggles preventing organizations from starting the localization process. A lack of staffing was the top reason why organizations didn’t localize training.