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A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop

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Employee training materials: a practical guide for instructor-led training

Ask most people what they mean by "employee training materials" and they'll gesture vaguely toward slides. Maybe a handout. If you're lucky, a printed agenda that's been living in the same folder since 2019 and has survived three team restructures and a global pandemic. That definition isn't wrong, exactly. But if you're an L&D professional running instructor-led training at any kind of scale, it's incomplete in ways that quietly cause real problems: inconsistent delivery, facilitators left to improvise, participants who don’t have materials to refer back to, and a slow accumulation of variations of the same document living in three different shared drives. This post is for the people trying…

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Pre-training and post-training survey questions: all you need to know

Before the training starts. After it ends. Thirty days later, when the dust has settled and real life has reasserted itself. Each of these moments is an opportunity to gather important information about your participants, about your design, and ultimately about whether what you did actually mattered. Surveys are one of the most accessible tools a trainer or L&D professional has to make a single session into a longer, more impactful collaborative process. By starting to ask questions before the workshop you can begin to reach out to participants. They learn a bit about you, you learn a bit about them, and can tailor your work accordingly. As for collecting…

Explore Author Profiles in the SessionLab Library

Many facilitation techniques start as small experiments. A facilitator tries something in a workshop, and it works. They refine it, run it again, and decide to share with others. Facilitation knowledge is widely shared, but it can be difficult to trace the origin. You might first see a method in a blog post, later in a slide deck, then referenced in a social post or book. Author Profiles in the SessionLab Library connect facilitation methods, templates, and their creators in one place. In this post, we'll explore how they work and how you can create your own. What are Author Profiles? An Author Profile is a public page in the…

How to create more effective facilitator guides

Running training at scale is a challenge. You need to main high-standards as your training programs grow and facilitators work across countries, languages and formats. Facilitator guides create a structured way to scale training and ensure quality, but how can you standardize and maintain version control while also giving trainers room to breath? In this guide, we'll share what makes a great facilitator guide, walk through the key components, and offer practical tips for building guides that work whether you're supporting five trainers or five hundred. Let's dig in! What is a facilitator guide? A facilitator guide (also known as a training guide) is a structured document designed to help…

SessionLab is SOC 2 Type II compliant

We’ve recently completed our SOC 2 Type II attestation at SessionLab. This is a major security milestone for SessionLab, but it goes further. It reflects something broader about how facilitation work is evolving, and what teams increasingly expect from the tools they rely on. Being SOC 2 Type II certified helps us meet those expectations, so teams can confidently use SessionLab as a shared workspace for designing, managing, and scaling high quality facilitation. Let's explore why this matters and explain SOC2 type II attestation in a little more detail. What is SOC 2 compliance? SOC 2 is an internationally recognized compliance framework focused on how organizations protect customer data. It…

SessionLab 2025 recap

2025 was a big year for SessionLab. We focused on one core shift: bringing your entire session design workflow – from brief to follow-up – into one connected workspace. With Pages, Forms and the context-aware AI assistant, you now have the tools to centralize your process and streamline your complete design process. No more jumping between docs, spreadsheets, and different tools. This post recaps the most impactful product updates we shipped in 2025, along with a few practical tips to help you get more value from them in 2026. Let's dive in! 1️⃣ Pages: your session brief and report, right next to the agenda Pages introduced a dedicated space inside each…

Building a complete session design workflow in SessionLab

Designing an effective workshop does not start and end with an agenda. It’s a process that begins with client conversations and continues through planning, design, delivery, feedback, and reporting back to stakeholders. Whether you're a facilitator designing bespoke client workshops or an L&D lead creating training programs at scale, it can be a lot to manage. Below, we'll explore how SessionLab's new features combine to help you organize your end-to-end planning process in one place and streamline your workflow. Organizing everything involved in planning and running a session can be complex and time-consuming. Trainers need to connect needs assessment and training needs to their agenda design. Stakeholders need to be…

How to facilitate scenario planning workshops

The future isn’t something we predict. It’s something we explore. In these complex, uncertain, and frankly scary times, facilitators are increasingly being asked to help teams think long-term, make sense of the uncertainty, and plan for the unknown. Whether you’re guiding a group through climate resilience strategies, preparing a nonprofit for demographic shifts, or helping a company imagine the impact of AI, future scenario planning can be a powerful tool for navigating future challenges. This article is a practical introduction to how to run a scenario planning process. We’ll look at what futures thinking actually means (no crystal balls here), how scenario planning works, and why it’s so valuable for…

SessionLab Vs Excel

Before SessionLab, I would design complex sessions in Excel. Timing and organization have always been important to me as a facilitator and it seemed to make sense to create my agendas in a spreadsheet. When working in Excel, I found myself frustrated with endless copy and pasting, manually calculating timings and struggling to stay on top of my learning flow. Whether it was presenting a messy spreadsheet to clients or struggling to maintain formulas, the task of finalizing my agenda always filled me with dread. There has to be a better way, right? Back when I had to use Excel, I would always end up with a completed agenda and…

10 Favorite Facilitation Card Decks (and How to Use Them)

Facilitators love card decks. Why? They're tactile, visual, flexible, and reliably powerful. Whether you’re mapping a system, guiding reflection, or helping a group build connection, there’s something magical about putting a beautiful, idea-rich card into someone’s hands. Combined in an opening or reflection activity, card decks feel like an invitation: to pause, to imagine, to engage with the work a little differently. Many card decks include inspiring illustrations, designed to awaken the imagination and introduce some wonder into your workday. Here’s why facilitation card decks are such trusted tools: They help spark creativity when the blank page feels daunting. They’re quick to grab when you need a new idea, fast.…

Announcing the Workshops & Wizards facilitation deck!

Workshops & Wizards is a deck of cards designed to teach groups about facilitation skills and support personal growth and development. Send participants on a learning quest, discuss what equipment perfect* facilitators might use or give kudos for positive examples of facilitation in action. Learn more about how to use Workshops & Wizards to support your session below. Download the free print-at-home version, try out the digital deck and register your interest in a physical edition. What is the Workshops & Wizards deck? Workshops & Wizards is a deck of cards that helps teach key facilitation skills, improve collaboration and help you run better workshops and meetings. Each card is…

How to collaborate while planning an event with SessionLab

Great workshops and events are a team effort. Turning a draft agenda into a real-word, memorable event requires the involvement of quite a few different stakeholders. In this article we’ll look into all the ways SessionLab helps facilitators and trainers collaborate effectively while working on a workshop or event. We'll cover every stage of the process, from initial design all the way to delivery and share how you can streamline your process and creating engaging experiences with the help of SessionLab. The first part of a facilitator’s job is often quite a solitary affair: me, at my desk, sometimes with some help from AI, working on an agenda to get…

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