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Job Aids

11215268?v=2022-03-16t10-50-39-807
Published: Thursday, May 14, 2020
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Hello, Instructional Design & Training pros, 

I've been working on designing a few job-aids lately and failing. I was looking at templates and ideas for how to format one online. Then I thought to check with the best training community there is.

Does anyone have any ideas, tips, tricks, or best practices for creating a job-aid? What do you include in them? How do you keep them concise? How do you format one? What advice would you give someone who is about to create their first job-aid? 

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Please leave some insight and best practices.

Thank You!

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Make the Job Aid "easily accessible". Use multiple delivery media...such as paper, on line, QR code accessible from the workspace, machine, or tool so the end user can immediately access it when he/she needs it. Give the end user the option to download it as a PDF so they can store it on a personal device or company provided device. Create 3 minute "short" videos and host on You Tube or Vimeo on a specific task, process or concept. Make this searchable.
Lisa, we use Vimeo. You can password protect your videos. Or you can place multiple videos in a showcase and limit who is seeing them.
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Experienced L&D person here, but new to manufacturing. I would love to hear more about how you use short video for training. Where do you host them? YouTube might not have the privacy settings our company would need for the training videos we want to create.
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I thoroughly enjoy content creation. Creating job-aids is intricately linked to graphic design for me. If you do not have experience being the end-user definitely get the end-users input upfront. Screenshots are always helpful. I try to keep job aids as close to a one-page format. Anything past one-page is typically accompanied by a procedure, which is more in-depth than the job-aid (cheat sheet). I use Adobe Photoshop, Snagit, and Microsoft Word as my primary job-aid tools.
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Probably the best advice I learned from a colleague was to ask the end user. He asked them to tell him what materials have they used that worked best for them. He went to their job-site and asked them about how they would use it, and what features it needed to have. He asked them what information they needed and in what order. In the end he created a product that was very well used.
You can create the best product in the world but if the end user doesn't own it, the won't use it.
I agree 100% with what Melissa said. You want to create job aids that the employees will actually use so I've found it best to get input from the managers/supervisors as well as the employees what's missing from their current resources, job aids, materials and go from there. It's easy as a Trainer/ID to get wrapped up in the artistic details of things but if the end users won't use it or "own it," it won't be very effective.
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