Depreciation of Training Value Over Time

Despite significant investment in training programs, annual training program reuse hovers at a rate of about 50% annually, meaning that approximately half of a given company’s training portfolio is not being utilized annually. Annual expenditure and time investment on new training program development exceeds the attention placed on maintaining legacy content by a wide margin.1 This is especially problematic because old training programs still contain valuable information developed in cooperation with a company’s subject matter experts.

View our Infographic for a visual journey of the Learning Content Depreciation

As years pass by, legacy training content depreciates in value and effectiveness for a number of reasons:

Year 1
Content inaccuracies
Company statistics change, products get updated with new specs, and errors in the original content are uncovered over time.

Year 2
Outdated design
The graphic design for PowerPoint slides and e-learning courses tends to look dated after a few years.

Year3
Training not aligned with business needs
Older training programs might not be aligned with the company’s business needs and desired employee performance outcomes.

Year 4
Changing learner demographics
Training solutions that might work well for Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers might not be suitable for Millennials; changes in learner demographics require L&D professionals to revisit their methodologies.

Year 5
Outmoded digital formats
E-Learning content developed in Flash, legacy versions of rapid development tools, and in older versions of SCORM can result in non-delivery of the content over learning management systems and on newer Internet browsers.

1. 1. The Association for Talent Development. (2009). “Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of- Training.” Learning Circuits Archives.