In my last article, I argued that courses alone don't change behaviour. What actually shifts how people work is a structured sequence of activities over time. I call this a learning workflow. This article gives you a practical recipe to design one.
If you're looking at one of your current programmes and thinking "we have a course, but not a workflow", you're not alone. That gap is exactly what this recipe is designed to fill.
Step 1: Get crystal clear on the behaviour
Define, in plain language, what you want people to do differently and how you'll recognise it in the workplace. If you cannot describe the new behaviour specifically, you cannot design a workflow to achieve it. "Better communication skills" is not a behaviour. "Giving structured feedback within 48 hours of observing a performance issue" is.
Step 2: Map the key activities over time
Sketch a simple sequence across weeks and months, not just the hours of a training event. Think about what needs to happen before, during, and after any formal learning. Manager briefings, workplace experiments, peer discussions, practice tasks, and check-ins all belong in this map.
Step 3: Add only the content that fuels those activities
Once the activities are clear, decide what content is actually needed and when. A short video, a job aid, a case study, a few reflection questions. Resist the urge to add more content just because it exists. Content should serve the activities; it is a means to an end, not the end itself.
Step 4: Build in reflection and feedback loops
For each key activity, ask: how will people reflect on what happened, and who will give them feedback? Manager prompts, peer coaching, and simple self-reflection questions are all part of the workflow. Without this, activities happen in a vacuum and the learning doesn't consolidate.
Step 5: Automate the nudges wherever you can
Manually sending reminders and prompts quickly becomes unmanageable at any kind of scale. This is where technology earns its place; not to deliver content, but to deliver the sequence of activities consistently, to every learner, over time. This is exactly what a Learning Workflow Platform is designed to do.
Where to start
Pick one existing programme where you know the behaviour change isn't happening as it should. Work through these five steps and sketch out a workflow around it. You don't need to redesign everything at once.
People Alchemy is built specifically to deliver and manage learning workflows at scale. If you'd like to see how it works in practice, visit https://peoplealchemy.com.
Paul Matthews is the founder of People Alchemy and author of three books on learning transfer and workplace behaviour change.
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