Article highlights
- Policy Retention Is Failing
- Why Policy Retention Matters More Than Ever
- How PowerRecall Elevates Your Training Program
- Built for Efficiency and Scale
- Retention Is the New Training Frontier
Employee training can feel mundane and all about checking the boxes without really taking in what is being taught. When it comes to public safety, healthcare, and government, skimming over the material isn’t an option. And while it may be normal for employees to forget a policy here and there in other industries, forgetting about your training can be dangerous in high-stake industries.
The fact is that no matter how many hours spent in onboarding or policy rollouts, too many employees forget the most critical parts of their training soon after the session ends. Unfortunately, this results in policy compliance gaps, violations, and operational risks that could have been prevented.
So why does training often fall flat? And more importantly, how can we fix it?
Policy Retention Is Failing
Training programs often cover all the material in a comprehensive, engaging, and creative way. It’s not always the content that is lacking that leads to employees not retaining the information.
If you really break down the makeup of training programs, you’ll learn that they rely too heavily on one-time events: workshops, slide decks, or dense policy documents. Do you remember the last time you sat through an information session? Information overload was thrown at you over a set period of time.
These static methods don’t align with how the human brain actually retains information. Studies show that people forget over 50% of new information within an hour. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus mapped this out for us in the late 19th century. This “forgetting curve” demonstrates that without reinforcement, even the most essential information fades rapidly from memory.
The forgetting curve shows a steep decrease in retention right after you learn something. If you space out the learning into several sessions over time, the trainees are more likely to remember the information. Ebbinghaus also discovered that the more repetition and exposure to the information, the longer employees will remember the material.
When policies and protocols are not taught repetitively over time, even well-trained employees can make mistakes during high-pressure situations. By implementing spaced out training sessions and repetitive microlearning, you can increase policy retention while decreasing detrimental mistakes.
Why Policy Retention Matters More Than Ever
In public safety and regulated industries, policy compliance isn’t optional. However, when employees don’t remember the policies, human error can result in life-or-death situations. Whether you’re managing EMTs, law enforcement officers, correctional staff, or government agency administrators, one forgotten detail can cascade into a compliance issue, lawsuit, or worse.
PowerRecall enhances policy retention by transforming learning into a continuous, personalized experience rather than a one-time event. This results in better outcomes, safer operations, and improved readiness for anything that comes your team's way.
Risks of Low Retention
Litigation: An employee in a high-stakes industry must remain compliant in order to protect the people they serve. Being forgetful with sensitive information or violating policies can open up the possibility of lawsuits. Employees who work in such critical areas know the importance of retaining information learned at training, even in high-stress situations.
Public Safety: A police officer who fails to adhere to mandates will be held accountable for such mistakes. It is imperative to implement policy retention methods so public officers can perform their jobs while minimizing risk to those around them.
Healthcare: A physician is responsible for the well-being of those they serve. If they fail to follow protocol, it can result in injury with lasting effects or even death.
Using software like PowerRecall increases training program quality and benefits employees and administrators in these crucial roles.
How PowerRecall Elevates Your Training Program
Enter spaced repetition, the learning method proven to extend long-term memory retention. This technique involves reviewing information at strategically timed intervals, just as you're about to forget it. The more exposure you get to the policies, the more likely you will remember them, even in the most urgent scenarios.
Have you ever made your own flashcards? You place the ones you know well in a pile to be left alone while reviewing the others in a more repetitive manner. PowerRecall brings that proven technique into the modern training world, with AI-powered training tools that automate the micro-learning process, personalize learning paths, and optimize policy recall across teams.
The learning is tailored to the trainee, so they can get a specialized training in just minutes a day based on how well they retain the material. One employee may spend more time in the software than another, ensuring that each person finishes with a thorough understanding of the training content.
Reinforce Job-Critical Information
With digital flashcards covering everything from de-escalation tactics to infection control protocols, your employees train on real-world scenarios that matter most. High-liability, low-frequency tasks become easier to recall under pressure.
Support Promotional Processes
Load study guides and procedural documents into PowerRecall to help candidates prepare efficiently for exams or internal promotion boards. If information changes over time or new information needs to be introduced, you simply have to upload the new documents to produce the necessary digital flashcards.
Strengthen Specialized Teams
Whether you're prepping SWAT, K9, disaster response, or air medical teams, PowerRecall ensures specialized knowledge stays sharp and ready for deployment. The program is designed to help trainees recall critical information during high-pressure situations.
Improve Performance and Policy Feedback
Use analytics dashboards to monitor engagement and retention. See where employees struggle, and adjust policies or training materials proactively based on feedback from their quiz sessions.
Built for Efficiency and Scale
Unlike other platforms, PowerRecall works directly with your existing PowerPolicy documents and user groups. That means you can enjoy the following:
Ease of Creating Initial Content
Since PowerRecall integrates with your PowerPolicy documents, you can easily input current training materials and update them as needed. PowerRecall will pull from the materials to create a comprehensive set of digital flashcards based on your workplace needs.
Alerts to Review Cards Affected by Policy Changes
Automatic alerts notify admins when linked policies change, so trainers know when to review content to keep it current. It’s a tech-forward, time-saving solution that scales effortlessly across departments and locations.
Identify Areas of Improvement with Analytics
Pull reports to see which training flashcards need improving. With the help of built-in analytics, you can identify knowledge gaps and create more comprehensive digital flashcards in those areas.
Retention Is the New Training Frontier
When your employees forget what they’ve been taught, even the best training materials fall short. Policy retention isn’t just a training goal; it’s a business must. PowerRecall transforms training from a one-time task into an ongoing process rooted in the science of memory.
See how Cincinnati ECC improved policy comprehension in the the case study below:
With AI-powered micro-learning, digital flashcards, and real-time analytics, PowerRecall helps you ensure every employee remembers the policies, protocols, and procedures that matter most, so they’re ready when it counts.
