You’ve seen this play out: training sessions are booked, calendars filled, and teams gather for their introduction to a new system. It happens a week or sometimes a month before the software goes live.
Ignore the fact that it’s a training session, which means everyone but a select few are passively attending. That’s right, they’re just watching someone else talk about the new software and possibly some vague disparate images on each slide.
Fast‑forward to launch day. Confidence evaporates. Employees didn’t receive any real practice and can’t remember essential steps. Yes, that’s right, the training was too long ago, and it didn’t really offer the right practice in the first place.
That means support tickets are likely to surge, and someone inevitably asks: “Didn’t we train everyone on this already?“
The answer is yes, but human memory doesn’t work on project timelines, nor does a training session offer what employees truly need. That’s one reason we don’t mess with instructor-led training for technical topics. We also don’t recommend training employees too far in advance.
Employees forget skills they learn too far in advance of when they need to use them.
That’s our focus today. Skills learned too early fade before anyone gets the chance to use them. And in digital transformation, a lot of change happens all at once, and cognitive load is already high. Timing becomes as important as the content itself.
This post explores why training too early is one of the costliest mistakes in enterprise training, and how smarter timing and reinforcement can dramatically improve adoption.
Why We Forget: The Memory Science Often Ignored
Memory fades when we don’t use what we learn. This isn’t a training problem, it’s a biological one.
There’s a well-documented pattern that isn’t so much scientific as it is an obvious fact of being human. The “forgetting curve” can be observed in every person and varies depending on the person and the topic. It shows that newly learned information decays rapidly in the first few days unless what’s learned is used.
In a corporate environment, where people are juggling multiple priorities, the decay is even faster. For technical workflows, the forgetting curve is brutal espcially for those who are not technical. If someone doesn’t perform tasks shortly after training, their recall suffers.
Busy days make it easy to forget what we learn if we don’t use it early and often.
This is why employees who train too early often don’t understand the topic as well as they should when they start the real work. Not only that, but it can make using performance support more difficult. The Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve is the official term for the forgetting of what’s learned. Fortunately, there are some great ways to defeat it.
Now that you know employees forget (in case that wasn’t obvious), it’s more obvious why timing matters in learning. But what’s the cost of training too early? A lot, actually. Let’s take a look.
The Real Costs of Training Too Early (Even When It’s Only a Week or Two)
Most training isn’t scheduled early because it’s optimal. It’s scheduled early because project logistics demand it. Employees have work to do in addition to training, rooms need booking, calendars fill up, vendor availability is limited, and project managers feel pressure to “check the training box” well ahead of the need to use it.
These are decisions based on the project and not the people who need to use the tool. Big mistake.
Training too early carries many costs:
- People revert to old habits: When a month or even a week passes between training and use, employees default to what they used to do, even if those workflows are obsolete.
- Support channels get overloaded: IT and project teams end up serving as impromptu trainers during go‑live because employees can’t recall core steps.
- Training ROI plummets: A well-designed training session loses its value if employees forget most of it before ever touching the system.
- Morale takes a hit: Employees feel frustrated and rushed. They thought they learned it, so why can’t they remember now?
The sad irony: the training wasn’t bad. It was just too early.
If You Must Deliver Something Early, Deliver the Right Thing
Sometimes, early enablement is unavoidable. But enablement doesn’t have to mean course.
Early in a project, before employees even have access, they don’t need deep procedural knowledge. What they need instead is orientation, expectations, and simple introductions. This is where communication and reference materials shine.
Instead of long courses, provide:
- clear “what’s changing” explanations,
- simple job aids for top workflows,
- short 45–90‑second micro‑videos,
- and searchable FAQs.
These resources don’t rely on memory; they live outside the mind, ready to be used when needed. They bridge the gap between early awareness and later action without overwhelming people with details they’ll forget.
Not only that, but the simple introduction is likely to improve how a scenario-based software simulation will be received. If employees have something to start with, they’ll get more from it.
Early enablement should reduce cognitive load, not increase it, and risk increasing forgetting.
Training Should Happen Close to the Moment of Use
The most effective training happens when the system, workflow, or tool is available to use immediately after learning. That doesn’t mean they have hands-on practice with the software, but it does mean they have access to is shortly after they practice.
Why does proximity matter so much?
Because memory strengthens when it connects to real context. When employees can practice with:
- realistic data,
- realistic tasks,
- familiar tasks,
- and systems configured the way they’ll use them,
the training sticks. When training happens close to the moment of use, employees can create mental models anchored to genuine work, not hypothetical scenarios.
This means PMs, IT, and training leaders need to coordinate closely so the training is performed when the environment is ready, rather than simply to get boxes checked before the platform goes live.
Training should never be a pre‑go‑live formality. It should be a just‑in‑time prompt for proficiency.
Reinforcement: The Missing Layer That Makes Training Stick
Even well-timed training fades if it’s not reinforced. People need gentle prompts after the initial course to strengthen recall for important tasks that are performed regularly. But reinforcement doesn’t mean additional meetings or more modules. It means lightweight, digestible reminders that help employees retrieve knowledge at the right time.
Post‑training reinforcement works best when it’s short, focused on one concept or one task, spaced over time, and delivered in the channels people already use. That could be Teams, Slack, or whatever.
Reinforce skills by providing employees with short task-based reminders and hints.
A reminder two days after training might link to a job aid. A nudge a week later might prompt someone to try a workflow. A brief refresher, no-pressure quiz, or scenario at day 14 can reactivate key knowledge.
When reinforcement is spaced and repeated, people convert short-term exposure into durable long-term memory.
In‑App Messaging: Training That Lives Where Work Happens
Among all reinforcement methods, one stands above the rest: in-app messaging, in-app help, or contextual help (all different names for the same thing).
Unlike emails, LMS notifications, or PDFs, in-app guidance appears at the moment of need. They show up in the context of an application exactly where the action they learned (or are learning) about happens. That means the information they learn is in their real workflow as long as it’s not happening when they’re limited in time or in a high-pressure situation.
This contextual timing is incredibly powerful. The user doesn’t have to recall what they learned weeks ago; they get guidance precisely where their memory might fail. It’s training fused with action.
In-app messaging can:
- highlight new buttons or fields,
- walk users through complex workflows,
- surface job aids without requiring a search,
- or remind users of policy changes the first time they perform a related task.
It expands your digital system and makes it easier to surface helpful information and walkthroughs for employees. That means ongoing training can happen where work happens rather than separate from it.
A More Realistic, Memory‑Aligned Training Strategy
When organizations align training with not just cognitive science but common sense, too, a transformation happens. Training stops being a one-time event and becomes part of a continuous change journey.
A smart training and communication plan follows a rhythm:
- Early stage: orient people with simple, stable, high-level reference and preview materials (what’s coming?)
- Pre‑go‑live: deliver realistic and scenario-based training just before first use, when the environment is ready (how do you do it in relation to my job?)
- Go‑live: support with in-app guidance and easily searchable resources, such as a knowledge base (where do I get help now that I’m doing the work?)
- Post‑go‑live: reinforce with brief nudges, updates, and reminders (how do I do that again?)
When teams adopt this rhythm, confusion drops, adoption rises, and training costs decrease, not because the training was cut, but because people finally remember and apply what they’ve learned.
Wrap Up
Training too early is not compatible with people on every level. We forget, and it creates too many negatives and nothing positive. It’s typically done because of rollout logistics, but that doesn’t take into account people and our infinite imperfections.
You can’t change the way human memory works, but you can design training that respects it.
Deliver training closer to first use. Replace early training with reference materials and communication. Even with good training that’s available right before gaining access to software, there’s still a need to reinforce knowledge through short, spaced prompts and in-app help.
Bringing guidance directly into the application is a great way to cement skills and for those lesser-used skills to always have a reminder close at hand. It’s kind of like posting a short job aid on the wall next to the printer, always available and easy to use.
When you align training with how people actually learn, digital transformation stops feeling chaotic and starts feeling achievable.
If you’re ready to do more with training employees in ways that will help your software succeed, schedule a free consultation. We specialize in software simulations, performance support, contextual help, and more that will help prepare your employees to thrive in a changing technical world.