What is a Prerequisite in Employee Training?
Building a business that lasts is a lot like building a physical structure. You would never ask a contractor to put up the roof before the foundation is poured and cured. Yet in the rush of daily operations and the excitement of scaling a team, managers often inadvertently ask their employees to do exactly that. We throw them into complex projects or advanced training modules without checking if they have the structural integrity to support that weight.
This is where the concept of a prerequisite comes into play within your learning and development strategy. It is not just a bureaucratic gate or a hurdle to slow people down. It is a safety mechanism. It ensures that every member of your team has the necessary context, vocabulary, and basic skills to succeed in the next stage of their journey. Using prerequisites correctly helps you reduce the stress of management because you know your team is building on solid ground rather than guesswork.
Defining the Prerequisite
In the context of learning management and employee development, a prerequisite is a specific course, module, or certification that a learner must complete before they are granted access to a subsequent course. It functions as a mandatory dependency. The learning management system will technically lock the advanced content until the introductory content is marked as complete.
This mechanism serves several logical functions for a business owner:
- Ensures Baseline Competency: It guarantees that everyone in the advanced room speaks the same language.
- Prevents Cognitive Overload: It stops employees from being overwhelmed by concepts they are not yet prepared to handle.
- Standardizes Output: It ensures that the methods used in advanced tasks are based on the specific foundational protocols your business established.
Prerequisites vs. Recommended Learning
It is important to distinguish between a hard prerequisite and recommended learning. This is a common point of confusion for managers designing their first internal training programs. A prerequisite is binary. You either have it or you do not. If you do not have it you cannot proceed. This is useful for linear skill progression or safety compliance.
Recommended learning is different. It suggests that a learner might benefit from previous knowledge but does not stop them from proceeding if they feel confident. You should use prerequisites when the risk of failure is high or when the next step is literally impossible without the previous step. You might use recommended learning when the topics are related but not dependent on one another.
When to Enforce Prerequisites
Consider these scenarios:
- Technical Hierarchies: You cannot ask an employee to repair a specific piece of machinery if they have not completed the general safety course for the workshop. The safety course is the prerequisite.
- Software Training: An employee should not take the course on Administering the Database before they have taken the course on Using the Database. The interface will not make sense to them without the primer.
- Management Tracks: Before a team member takes a course on Conflict Resolution, they should likely complete a prerequisite module on Company Values and Culture to understand the framework through which they should resolve that conflict.
The Psychology of Structured Learning
Beyond the technical definition there is a human element here. When you clearly map out prerequisites you are telling your employee that there is a path. One of the biggest stressors for teams in growing companies is the feeling of being lost or unprepared.
By establishing prerequisites you provide a psychological safety net. You are signaling that you do not expect them to know calculus before they learn algebra. This reduces anxiety. It allows the learner to focus entirely on the task at hand without worrying that they are missing a secret piece of the puzzle that everyone else has. It creates a culture where mastery is built step by step rather than through chaos.
Questions for the Manager
As you look at how you are training your staff and sharing knowledge, you should approach prerequisites with a scientific mindset. It is not about adding rules for the sake of rules. It is about efficacy.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Are there tasks my team struggles with because they lack a fundamental piece of context?
- Am I frustrating high performers by forcing prerequisites they already know from previous jobs?
- Could I use a test-out option to satisfy a prerequisite for experienced hires?
- Is the sequence of my training logical or just chronological based on when we created the content?
By answering these, you move from hoping your team learns to ensuring they have the structure to succeed.
