Can you remember what you had for dinner yesterday?
What about five days ago?
If you struggled with the second question - us too. And it’s down to something called the forgetting curve. Simply put, the more time passes, the less likely you are to retain information.
This can obviously be a problem for those responsible for workforce education - and as a result, implementing knowledge retention strategies has become a vital part of the learning design process.
But are all knowledge retention strategies created equal? How can you make sure your workforce will actually remember what they’re taught - even when there’s a lot of information to absorb?
The answer lies in assessments. We’ll be digging into why they’re so important and how you can design a good one today:
- What is the forgetting curve?
- What is knowledge retention, and why is it important at work?
- Knowledge retention strategies and counteracting the forgetting curve
- Assessment design principles: how to test your workforce effectively
- How to design an effective knowledge retention strategy
Without further ado - let’s get started.
What is the forgetting curve?
The forgetting curve model is the creation of 19th-century psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus.
What did Ebbinghaus discover about forgetting?
The curve shows our memories naturally lose information over time - 50% of all new information within one day, and 90% of all new information within a week. The percentage of knowledge a learner retains is called a knowledge retention rate.
There are several types of forgetting. These theories include:
- Decay: unless strengthened or reinforced, memories will decay over time
- Interference: new information or memories replace or confuse those already in the short-term memory
- Retrieval: memories can only be accessed with cues or in a different context, unless they’re moved to the long-term memory
Now we know about forgetting, how do we remember?
What is knowledge retention?
A knowledge retention definition is capturing and preserving information in our memories; in other words, nurturing the ability to remember.
The aim of any training program should be what neuroscientist Andrew Huberman describes as ‘offsetting forgetting’: taking proactive steps to combat the forgetting curve, and helping workers retain knowledge long-term.
More on what these knowledge retention strategies look like in a moment. First, why is knowledge retention so important in a professional context?
The importance of knowledge retention for frontline workers
Frontline workers - the people who serve us food, work on a shop floor, man a warehouse, or make deliveries - are often expected to have vast reserves of knowledge. Their paychecks are often determined by how fast and how accurately they can work. In other words, the tasks they complete have to be second nature.
Their knowledge is particularly important when you consider a lot of their work is manual and potentially dangerous - operating machinery, for example. Knowledge retention is essential for their productivity, working standards, and their safety.
That said, the way they’re taught isn’t always conducive to knowledge retention. Desk-based employees often benefit from a continuous learning culture at work (mandatory corporate training or a learning experience budget, for example), but the same can’t be said for frontline employees.
In our most recent research piece, The State of Frontline Training, Tech, and Trends: 2025 Report, most frontline employees reported being trained every month or with even longer gaps in between sessions. These gaps are too large for knowledge retention to take place - and unsurprisingly, the majority interviewed also said that they remembered their latest training not well or somewhat well.
Knowledge retention is an essential outcome of the learning process - so, how do we encourage it in our workers?
How to increase knowledge retention, and counteract the forgetting curve?
There are a few different levers you can pull to promote critical knowledge retention. Fundamentally, they all revolve around consistently covering the information, in different ways, at regular intervals:
- Repeating information: your workers re-read the material, or someone verbally explains it once they’ve read it
- Presenting information in a different way: a common method is microlearning, which distills lessons into short, visual, bite-sized chunks
- Applying lessons to real life: making hands-on practice part of the lesson
- Assessment: testing your workers, usually digitally, on what they’ve just learnt
Not all of the techniques mentioned above are created equal. Learning programs are often limited to just one knowledge retention technique - often repetition, as it’s easier to implement.
Do the same, and you’re missing out on the most effective learning and knowledge retention techniques: presenting information in a different way and assessment.
Elements of effective knowledge retention strategies
Practicing/enforcing spaced repetition (the process of learning new material and reviewing it across multiple learning episodes to increase retention) is one to leverage here.
Microlearning makes information easier to consume and retain by breaking modules down into bite-sized chunks, reducing cognitive load. These short lessons can also offset the forgetting curve when used as a touchpoint to reinforce other learning formats.
In practice, this might look like an in-person session to start, followed by a microlearning lesson two days later, and another microlearning refresher two weeks later.
Assessment is another - underutilized - piece of the puzzle. As Andrew Huberman explains in his podcast, periodic testing offsets forgetting. The more times a worker is tested on their material, the better their retention will be - regardless of their learning style. In practice, this could look like including an interactive short quiz during or immediately after the learning material.
In fact, testing improves retention and recall more effectively than studying alone. This is down to something called the testing effect. Let’s take a closer look.
What is the testing effect?
A testing effect definition is the idea that ‘the retrieval of information from memory through testing produces learning advantages that are superior to studying alone’. In other words, the process of remembering increases learning retention.
The testing effect has been, well, tested over multiple studies. Here’s an example.
In one study, participants were divided into groups and given new information to read about animals:
- The first group read it four times
- The second group read it three times and tested themselves once
- The third group read it once and tested themselves three times
The best-performing group in later tests? Group three.
The more tests taken to expose a learner to material, the more likely they are to retain and perform better in subsequent tests.
How to measure knowledge retention?
The advantages of testing don’t end there. Testing can also be used to evaluate your workers’ knowledge, which is key to making sure they’re doing the job correctly and safely - and that your own education strategies are working.
Digital assessment - ideally distributed as part of digital elearning - is most practical for today’s workforce. That said, they’re not a silver bullet: they have to be executed properly to have the desired effect on your training program. Let’s take a look at how to design an assessment that promotes knowledge retention.
Assessment design principles: how to test your workforce effectively
Not all assessments are created equal - they have to be designed well to have the results you desire. In a nutshell, it’s all in the questions you ask:
Reword multi-choice assessments
When trying to remember, people tend to look for patterns for familiarity.
If you have an option phrased exactly how it was taught placed alongside other options that are new, the learner is likely to select the phrase or sentence they’ve already heard.
The problem here is they’re encouraged to select an answer that feels familiar - which isn’t the same as actually recalling the information and knowing it’s correct.
If you do opt for a multi-choice assessment, re-word the correct answer. The verbiage used here should not be the same as the verbiage used in the lesson or material consumed previously.
Doing so prevents the learner from choosing the answer that looks or sounds recognizable, and accurately tests whether they have the information or not.
Ask open-ended questions
The most effective tests are open-ended questions.
Without any context, the learner is forced to think, recall, and process information to produce an answer.
Doing so reinforces what they’ve learned - which improves the knowledge retention rate and encourages the information to stick in the long-term memory.
Expose learners to the correct answers
Another must is including the correct answer in the test.
Experiments show if learners fail to retrieve information before being shown the correct answer, they go on to remember the information better than those who have studied it. As long as they’re exposed to the correct answer, the memories are strengthened. This is because seeing a correct result locks learning into your neural circuits, and offsets natural forgetting in the process.
This approach can be implemented into your assessments by providing feedback for all answers - and if they’re incorrect, indicate what a correct answer would be.
How to design an effective knowledge retention strategy
Time to put it all together. Here’s how to build techniques like assessment into your knowledge retention strategy:
Step 1: set out your mission statement. For example: I’m going to combine digital assessments and microlearning, inputted at certain intervals, to improve assessment scores.
Step 2: set out your plan. For example: I’m going to include a digital assessment in the classroom environment, and follow it up with a microlearning lesson on the same topic one day after. This microlearning lesson will feature a video quiz.
Step 3: set out how you’ll measure success. For example: I’ll run this for six months, stopping midway to evaluate, and will look at assessment scores to gauge success.
Knowledge retention strategies: final thoughts
Knowledge retention strategies are as important as the material you teach in the first place. The exact strategy or strategies you choose will depend on your unique business - but whatever you go with, make sure it’s underpinned by a well-designed digital assessment.
Include short quizzes in or immediately after training material, with open-ended questions and the correct answers demonstrated, and you’ll keep your workforce knowledge retention rates - and ultimately, the quality of their output - high.
At eduMe, we’re obsessed with providing the best training for your frontline workforce - which, naturally, includes assessments in multiple formats. Want to see an example? Check out our scenario video tests, which assess worker’s problem-solving skills by allowing them to choose the outcome of a real-world situation.
