Many new employees may come into their roles with relevant degrees and similar past experience, however, most of what is learned happens on the job. From individual company nuances and policies to required HR trainings, corporations are looking to offer their employees with corporate learning programs.
Additionally, with the growth of technology, nearly every industry continues to evolve and be disrupted, providing an endless flow of new knowledge to be learned to ensure your company remains competitive. Today’s companies are best suited to provide regular corporate learning and development to their employees. Corporate training and development not only provides business leadership with continued confidence in their employees, but employees themselves value opportunities for growth and training on new skills.
What is corporate training, and what are the benefits of investing in employee education?
From leadership training to computer training to communication training, corporations can greatly benefit by investing in the education of their employees.
Corporate training allows a company to prepare its employees to meet short term expectations, such as adopting best practices for pitching and speaking about your products and services through a public speaking course. It can also help your employees to succeed in the long term, by providing them with managerial and leadership training, which they can use to grow at your company and manage teams in the future.
Corporate training development is something every business can benefit from. It provides a means to improve employees’ performance, morale and skills, by focusing on their professional development. Many organizations are implementing different corporate training programs to address specific enterprise needs and promote new working practices.
What different training methods exist?
There are many different methods in which to offer training. These include master classes, which typically involve bringing in or conferencing in an expert speaker to hold a session on a specific topic of their specialty. This provides an opportunity for thought leadership within the company as well, where a senior designer for example, could hold a master class for younger designers to learn from.
Many companies develop training initiatives themselves internally, while others look to enlist corporate training solutions providers and pay for third-party programs. Some companies also offer these courses in-person, while others opt to do so online, either live through a web conferencing tool or pre-recorded videos.
What should you keep in mind when creating a training program?
There are many possibilities for both live and online corporate training to consider when in the planning phase. These include:
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- How in-depth the training should be: Are you looking for effectiveness and efficiency, for example? Is it a one-off training or a series of trainings?
- How timely or evergreen it can be: How often will you need to update the material? If it requires regular updates, it may not be worth investing in, but if it’s something that should last a while, you should look to make it high-quality as possible and consider providing it as an online business training which can be consumed on-demand for example.
- What technology and tools to use to make it more effective: With so many technology tools on the market, corporate online learning can prove to be highly effective when compared to in-person offerings. Today’s video platform and recording tools allow for interactive components, for example, such as captions and interactive transcriptions which will allow viewers to seamlessly take notes, highlight important bites of information and search for them later. Online tools also allow for sharing of the information with other colleagues who may not be able to attend, but who could greatly benefit from the course material. Technology and online elements can also provide easy ways to incorporate tests and assessments within the courses offered should retention of the majority of the information covered prove to be mandatory for completion.
- Different learning needs to consider: Technology tools like closed captions and transcriptions also help an array of employees who may consume and retain information differently. They can provide visual cues to accompany the auditory ones, as well as opportunities to consume the video silently in specific situations that warrant it. Providing these additional tools can also help employees with disabilities.
How do you know if the training program was effective?
It’s important to receive feedback from participants through the form of evaluation and surveys. Garnering constructive feedback can help you to craft better training programs in the future and gain an understanding of what worked and what didn’t.
It may also prove effective to do monthly check-ins with the employees who took your training programs to see how often they’re utilizing these learnings in their actual work. Providing training and seeing these skills being implemented effectively is a great testament of the usefulness and success of the training topics provided. This will also allow for progress assessment of employees’ growth upon completion of the course or training offered.
Finally, using data and metrics whenever possible is a great gauge of success for corporate online learning. The more technology tools you utilize in offering these trainings, the more you’ll be able to witness and back up future investments in training to stakeholders. Many video platform providers can offer you key insights to assess engagement with the training videos provided for example. You can then see at what point viewers dropped off and ascertain who completed the corporate training videos in full.