Learn how to create a comprehensive training manual for your team with our step-by-step guide and free templates.
Ankit Vora September 2, 2024
Ineffective workplace training can have serious consequences like:
In short? Neglecting employee training is a mistake you can't afford to make.
The billion dollar question is: how to produce effective employee training manuals?
In this guide, I'll show you how to create comprehensive training manuals for your business.
Let's get started.
A training manual is a structured and comprehensive document or resource that provides employees with the necessary information and instructions to acquire specific knowledge and skills to perform the job effectively.
It serves as a reference and learning tool to support employee training, development, and onboarding processes within an organization.
Training manuals are more than bulk text — they hold the processes that keep teams running.
You can create training manuals for different roles in your company to smoothly onboard new employees across different departments.
Existing employees can also use them to gain a better understanding of the company.
👀 Check out our list of the top training manual Chrome extensions to streamline your training processes and create engaging materials.
Here's an intro to the different types of training manuals and free templates you can use to create comprehensive training manuals in seconds.
A well-structured training manual can be tailored to meet the unique needs of any training program:
✅ Check out this free training manual template to kickstart your own training program.
A comprehensive customer service training manual template should typically include information about your company's offerings, customer service policies and procedures, and guidelines like:
Task manuals create clear and concise instructions for any task or process. For example, you may need a task manual for marketing and sales teams that provides step-by-step instructions for sales or campaign processes.
✅ Try our step-by-step guide template to build visual task manuals in seconds.
Use an employee handbook to train employees on company policies and benefits. It can also provide information like how to raise invoices or work with subcontractors.
Create an employee handbook and manual for employees and trainees that includes:
✅ Customize this free employee handbook template in seconds.
Create a well-structured training manual to help employees understand your day-to-day operations. Onboard new employees smoothly by providing:
A quick reference manual outlines the most important information for a specific project, subject or product.
Satefy manuals inform trainees and employees about safety procedures, emergency protocols, and hazard identifications.
Software manuals give insights into specific tools, how to use them and other relevant information like features, troubleshooting and more.
You can also create training manuals to help employees with:
Check out Scribe's template gallery for 100+ free, customizable templates, or try our free training manual generator or ChatGPT training manual generator to build manuals in seconds.
In the next step, we'll show to how to create an effective training manual for your business.
💡 Want to learn more? Use these 15 training manual examples to create resources for your teams and clients today.
Like with any method of procedure, there are several steps to put a training manual together.
Here's a step-by-step breakdown of creating a training manual from scratch:
The first question you must ask: What's the purpose of the training manual?
Understanding the "why" behind the training manual is important.
And once you've done that, the next step is to figure out who you're writing for.
Ask yourself: Who is my target audience? How and when will they access this manual?
This will help you understand where the readers currently stand, their expertise, needs and preferences.
For example, if you're creating a training manual for senior sales reps, you don't need to define basic sales terminologies.
But if you're creating a training manual for new junior sales employees, your purpose would include all the information they need:
The purpose of this Sales Training Manual is to empower new sales team members with the knowledge, skills, and resources they need to excel in their roles within our organization.
So before you start writing, ask questions like:
Answering these questions will help you determine how much supplementary material you need.
The next step is to plan your content. Lay out the essential elements of your training documentation and structure them strategically in a way that makes sense for users.
Organize the information in your training handbook according to different themes and topics, such as:
When creating small one-off training guides, you can outline everything quickly.
But if you're writing a full training session, it may take some time.
This step-by-step guide template will simplify the content creation process for you.
When you create the content, be sure to add a summary for each section.
While planning your content, your focus is to create content that's user-friendly and engaging.
Topics should be easily accessible for new users while returning users should be able to find specific topics fast.
Some things to consider:
The next step is to determine your format. Choose a type of training manual that's easily accessible by users and aligns with your organization's goals.
Here are some popular formats:
The format you choose will heavily depend on your topic and how your readers like to consume content.
For example, if you want to train new hires on the company's policies and procedures, it's a good idea to create a handout or internal wiki so your employees can refer to it again. In this case, it may not be a good idea to create a long video.
On the other hand, if you want to train employees how to use software, you can create step-by-step training using Scribe. Use the AI feature to write your manual for you, based on your company-specific processes.
Many workplaces deliver training materials to employees digitally as self-pace guides, visual walkthroughs, video tutorials and more.
Now, it's time to put it all together. How you create content depends on the format of your training content.
In general, training manuals are made up of several training guides, complete with images and steps for each task.
The content creation process includes:
To build your training guides, you can take screenshots or record your screen — or use a process documentation tool like Scribe to auto-generate step-by-step guides for each process.
Scribe's AI-powered training manual software creates a training manual in half the time. You can capture any process to generate step-by-step training and then use AI to write a full-length manual.
How? Once you've captured your guides, go to Scribe Pages.
With Pages, you can combine your guides, then ask AI to build the rest of your training manual.
⚡ The best part? Scribe's AI automatically creates training manuals based on your company-specific processes.
Now you're ready to share your training manual with all relevant audiences. This process depends on the tool you use.
With Scribe, you can easily share via a quick link, embed in any tool or export into PDF, Confluence or Markdown.
Team members with Scribe accounts can also access all training documentation you share with them through their dashboard.
If your team needs help with a particular tool, just open Sidekick. You can see every relevant Scribe and Page created by your teammates or other community members.
No matter how you share, remember to make your manual easy to access and use.
Once you've rolled out your training manuals, it's important to collect feedback about it. This might be in the form of a survey or support channel. With Scribe, users can leave feedback directly in your internal training manual.
Based on responses, you can investigate potential issues and identify areas where they could be improved.
Set KPIs for training and review analytics to measure the effectiveness of your manual.
After considering these insights, you may want to consider updating it to:
It's a good practice to continuously update manuals to make sure they're always relevant.
Thoroughly audit your manual to maintain its usefulness and continued relevance. Systems, products and features are always improving — your resources have to evolve with them.
Digital automation tools save time by removing the need for manual updates.
Either way, be careful to maintain the source files for your work so that you can go back and make any necessary changes.
You can also create other types of training and development manuals, like specialized training manuals for advanced skill development:
Employee training manuals support your team with detailed information they need to do the job.
Here are a few key points on how manuals benefit your company:
Training manuals offer clear instructions that help employees perform tasks at the highest level of precision.
Training documents set the standard for how things are done.
With a well-defined training program, everyone knows how much training they can access.
Creating training manuals also supports individual professional development, helping you:
If your company already has a training guide or employee training manual, you know a well-constructed training manual supports any member of your team.
Start your employee onboarding process by informing new team members about the importance of learning and growth. A Gallup workplace survey showed that employees who strongly agree they have a clear strategy for professional growth are 3.5 times more likely to say their onboarding process was excellent.
Include a manual in your employee handbook to teach employees that learning and growth are always accessible.
Companies with a good onboarding process increase new recruit retention by 82 percent and productivity by more than 70 percent, according to this Brandon Hall Group research brief.
When a new employee joins the company, HR is swamped with onboarding documents, orientation and onboarding activities.
New workers, HR and management all benefit from a reliable source of truth when onboarding new employees. A training manual helps trainees adapt to their roles and supports them with ongoing job training.
If everyone has access to best practices, they're empowered to do the job well. This reduces the amount of frequently asked questions that pull HR and subject matter experts away from their jobs. A comprehensive guide for employees helps them focus on developing strategies and supports ongoing growth.
The potential cost of noncompliance is HUGE. No employee wants to be caught in the crossfire of a colossal error. Teach employees the rules and procedures that can prevent major mishaps. A detailed training manual is the first step to maintaining proper training processes.
All industries and employees benefit from training manuals and other training documents. Here are a few strategic departments to focus on:
You can also use the topic to help you determine your target audience:
To create an effective training manual, the first page should be an introduction that provides these essential elements:
Use digital collaboration tools like Airtable, Scribe, or Notion to store your manuals as editable files instead of PDFs or handouts that are difficult to update.
Digital documentation tools offer advanced sharing features—like saving documents as links.
When you create training manuals with Scribe, you can embed them into other tools in your team’s technology stack, like Hubspot, ClickUp, Monday.com or WordPress.
While training manuals and handbooks both benefit your company, they are different:
The sooner you write a training manual, the sooner you'll see improvements in employee productivity, results and even retention.
Use a training manual to outline your best practices and establish ongoing education and professional development.
Build your own training manual with our step-by-step guide, or sign up for Scribe today and generate your first training manual in minutes!
