In a small company, training rarely has an owner. There is no learning and development team and no LMS administrator. Usually there is a founder, an operations manager or a team lead who explains the same things to every new hire and hopes they stick.
The data shows how often this ends with no structured training at all. According to Eurostat, in 2020 63.5% of EU companies with 10 to 49 people provided continuing vocational training, against 92.8% of companies with 250 or more. Among the staff of small firms, only 27.5% took part in employer-sponsored training courses, against 42.4% across all firms, according to Cedefop.
The main reason is not money. Among companies that do train, 36.8% say lack of time for staff to take part limits their training, against 23.4% who point to the cost of courses.
The obstacle is not money. It is time.
This guide is for small and medium-sized companies and startups that want a training routine that takes little time to build and little time to follow.
Why the usual approach does not work in a small company
Most training formats were designed for companies with a training department. They assume someone who builds courses, someone who books rooms and people who can stop working for half a day.
In a small team, each of these assumptions fails:
Nobody has time to build courses.
The person who knows the procedure is also the person who runs it.
Nobody can stop working.
Two people out for a day of training can mean a shop without staff or orders not shipped.
Nobody checks whether it worked.
Attendance gets recorded, if anything. Understanding does not.
The result is training by shadowing, which works only as long as the senior person has time, and loses knowledge every time someone leaves.
What actually works: four principles
Research on learning points to two techniques with the strongest evidence. A review of ten study techniques led by John Dunlosky gave its highest utility rating to practice testing and distributed practice. Rereading and highlighting received a low rating. In a study by Roediger and Karpicke, people who were tested on a text remembered substantially more after two days and one week than people who studied it again, even though those who restudied felt more confident.
For a small company this translates into four principles:
Start from what you already have.
Procedures, product sheets, onboarding checklists, slides from a customer presentation, a recorded video walkthrough. The knowledge exists. It just is not in a form people can learn from.
Keep each lesson short.
One idea per lesson, readable in a couple of minutes, so it fits between two tasks instead of replacing them.
End every lesson with a question.
A question that requires a correct answer shows whether the point was understood. Reading to the end shows only that someone scrolled.
Spread the lessons over time.
Five lessons over two weeks are remembered better than five lessons in one afternoon.
A four-week plan
Week 1: choose one topic where mistakes cost money. Onboarding of new hires, a returns or warranty procedure, a new product, a safety rule. Collect the documents that already explain it. Do not write anything new.
Week 2: turn the documents into lessons. Aim for five to ten lessons, each with one key point and one question with a single correct answer. Write wrong options that reflect real mistakes you have seen, not obviously absurd ones.
Week 3: send the lessons to a small group. Three to ten people are enough. Send one or two lessons a day, at a time that does not clash with peak work, and skip the weekends.
Week 4: read the wrong answers. This is where the value is. If most people choose the same wrong option, the problem may not be the people: the document may be unclear or the procedure may be confusing. Fix the source, then extend the course to the rest of the team.
What to measure
A small company does not need a dashboard. It needs three answers:
Did people answer correctly?
Not whether they opened the lesson, but whether they got the question right.
When did they answer?
Straight away, after a few days, or only after a reminder. Late answers usually mean the timing or the channel is wrong.
Which wrong option did they choose?
This tells you exactly which misunderstanding to fix.
Hours spent on training say nothing about any of these.
Measure answers, not hours.
Where zick learn fits
zick learn turns existing company documents, presentations and videos into short lessons, each ending with a true/false or multiple-choice exercise. A lesson counts as completed only when the exercise is answered correctly within 72 hours, and every answer is recorded, including the wrong option chosen. The company reports an average of 15 minutes to create, edit and finalise a course.
The Start plan is designed for small and medium-sized companies and startups:
€300 per month, or €3,300 per year, excluding VAT, for up to 300 named learners.
Activated online on your own, with a 15-day free trial. A card or IBAN is required to start the trial, and the monthly plan can be cancelled at any time.
Lessons are delivered on zick chat, the browser-based web chat, with no integration needed.
10 AI transformations and 60 minutes of video transformation per month, one admin seat, and weekends skipped automatically.
Start does not include delivery on Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Chat, Webex or WhatsApp. Those channels are available from the Business plan. See plans and pricing.
If you would rather see it first with your own content, you can request a demo.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an LMS to train employees in a small company?
Not necessarily. An LMS is useful for managing large course catalogues and formal records. To make sure a small team understands a handful of procedures, short lessons with a question at the end and a record of the answers are usually enough.
How long should a training lesson be?
Short enough to fit between two tasks. One idea and one question per lesson works better than a long module that people postpone.
How can I tell if training worked without an HR team?
Look at correct answers, at how quickly people answer and at which wrong options they choose. Then check whether the mistakes the training was meant to prevent become less frequent at work.
Sources: Eurostat, continuing vocational training in enterprises (CVTS 2020) · Cedefop, participation in CVT courses in small firms · Association for Psychological Science, Dunlosky et al. 2013 · Roediger and Karpicke 2006, test-enhanced learning · zick learn plans and pricing · zick learn FAQ
