Every organization must make periodic investments in corporate training as it enhances the skills of employees and keeps them motivated. Employees also understand their organization better through training sessions and can work with a positive mindset to achieve the company’s business goals and be more productive.
In the past few years, corporate training has evolved into a dynamic field with more and more changes and trends making an appearance. This year too, there are several trends in training that are on most HR professionals’ lists. Let’s see what 2019 has in store for organizations investing in training:
To every organization, training is important because it puts them on the path to innovation. They can also increase production and offer a better quality of customer service. When a corporate trainer transfers specific knowledge and skills from the learning medium to the work environment, training becomes truly effective and gives better results. For these few reasons, reinforcing training in organizations is a major trend in 2019.
Observers and experts in HR feel that there is a need for continuous learning and development now more than ever. At the top echelons, there’s a shortage of major skills which threaten the growth of a company, hence it is better that a corporate trainer provides the required training that eases them into higher positions.
Learners today are expected to make learning and development a continuous process. With ongoing feedback about staff’s performance coming into play, the need to be ready for challenges at work are felt. For this, it is extremely important for a professional corporate instructor to upskill staff sufficiently.
Professional lives are becoming increasingly busy with employees having little or no time for anything else. In such a scenario, microlearning or taking in small modules of content in an easy to accept form, is ideal.
Though YouTube videos are popular learning mediums, mobile devices aren’t far behind. On this medium, it’s common to see easy-to-upload, quick to create and inexpensive content being loaded frequently. With the help of a professional and experienced corporate instructor, this will only grow.
Many forms of microlearning have gained currency in recent times. These include:
These forms of microlearning can be organized into small chunks of information so that employees can click into them according to their convenience. However, this microlearning medium isn’t just about convenience and being an on-the-go learning product.
It’s also about harnessing the best and latest in available technology. With cloud and mobile technologies coming into play, content can be easily accessed as and when required. A good corporate trainer can use this to empower their staff with the latest techniques, data and technologies which can make their bottom-line surge.
When a corporate trainer creates tailor-makes learning content to suit employees’ specific situation, the learning experience is meaningful to them. With learner management systems coming into effect, personalized learning has been given a major thrust.
Through this, each employee’s development profile is recorded in a database which serves to personalize all aspects of the learning experience. By being able to access a learner management system, employees can match their educational aims based on their individual goals.
Earlier, only a corporate trainer would train staff, but now people managers are training and developing their own teams. By empowering these leaders to train and develop their own team is now a top priority of organizations. Since the manager is already known to the team for his expertise, employees feel they are in safe hands when he or she takes over the coaching and training aspect of their careers.
In recent times, social networking sites have gone beyond being sites for sharing your holiday photos, catching up with school friends or being up to the minute with the latest news. Now, companies are using these platforms for imparting online training courses.
For example, companies encourage their staff to network with an industry expert in the industry to upskill. By using these notable platforms, employees and organizations can reap huge rewards in the training department.
With social media sites, employees in any part of the world can interact with their colleagues in different time zones and benefit from their expertise.
By posting helpful links and writing relevant blogs, sharing tips from their own experience and co-working on projects, they can give out valuable information that will add to the learner’s experience and skill set. They can also interact via video conferencing and other interactive project management tools.
The scope of social media allows employees to access information whenever they want—even 24x7. With these platforms, they can read and research subjects according to their convenience. They can reach out to industry experts and the organization’s corporate instructor to grow their own knowledge base and build the required skills. If they are looking for peer support and feedback on a regular basis, this too is possible.
The fact that learners are apt to remember better and more after watching a video than by reading text makes this form of training highly acceptable and one to watch out for in 2019. If companies want their staff to enjoy an e-learning course, they should arrange for video-based training, offered by a corporate instructor.
Video appeals to several of our senses and to learners of varying abilities. This is one reason for its popularity as a learning tool. To meet the needs of a variety of learners, it is necessary that the content should use several learning styles.
Ideally, the training content should be as short as about two to three minutes. The presenter should be an expert and enthusiastic about his subject. He should be able to engage with as many learners as possible and arouse their interest in the subject. Text should be simple and direct.
Gamification is not just a hot trend among teenagers, it’s a training trend for corporate houses. If done well by a good instructor, it can bring employees a range of benefits, such as:
To learn concepts, games are a good medium because they also give out knowledge. They do this by placing learners in real life situations, thus making sure that they handle some aspects of their lives well.
Shrewd customers are long past the age of overpromising brands. Now, they look for a brand’s story. The rationale behind this is that if companies narrate their story well, they can increase the value of their services or product range manifold.
Storytelling can be used for various purposes in training:
Stories can be included in the course in case studies, videos and games. Along with the narration, it helps to have an objective that employees should aim for. As a training tool, a story helps to explore the steps involved in solving a problem. They should create interest in the listeners, be meaningful and they should be able to recall it when required.
They should also be emotional in nature so that they stimulate employees to action. In fact, the story should act as their call to action feature.
Every year, training budgets grow, and this trend is set to rise in the coming years. Though the training and development industry is worth several billion dollars, yet professionals find it difficult to provide actual results with expenditure on learning and development. Similarly, executives find it difficult to demonstrate return on investment for teams undergoing training.
The way forward for organizations to measure return on investment in the learning and development area is to gather insights in this field using an evidence-based route based on strong metrics and data. To spell the return on investment of training and development proposals, a thorough assessment of the organization’s development needs must be considered. Along with that, an analysis of learning outcomes and a description of how this addresses and increases productivity should be drawn up.
Employees go to corporate instructors with individualized training needs. This is one of the biggest trends in training with employees having more learning choices now than before. Companies that have a good learning management system (LMS) offer a variety of training methods for employees to choose from based on their specific needs and convenience.
With smartphones more on the rise now, employees can access content wherever they are and whenever it is needed. About 75% of employees do some part of their self-learning using a mobile device while almost all learners say that the mobile device’s format has in fact increased their learning.
Organizations who are keen to improve their staff’s learning experience are now actively looking to make mobile devices a big part of the training and development pie.
Another trend to look out for is the content delivery that’s now artificially intelligent. Content that’s specific to an employee’s training needs is delivered directly to him. One form of this type of training is gamification where the learner behaviour is predicted artificially so that training is updated, interesting and relevant to the user.
For employees, it makes sense to have content that’s relevant and fresh. However, not all organizations provide such content. Allowing employees to create their own content online through their experiences is empowering for employees and can be used by their colleagues too.
These days, organizations also support apps that manage, share and publish content that informs employees across all levels of the most relevant content. By content being crowdsourced, content is refreshed continually, and irrelevant data is removed, thereby always being fresh and useful.
Corporate houses are investing into digital training programs that ensure employees that they can develop skills specific to their jobs and continue to work. This online mode of learning helps learners acquire important elements of training programs at their own pace and convenience.
The e-learning mode of training helps learners devise their specific goals and organize time for sessions. Learners can pursue the subject they wish to learn in distant learning format and reap the benefits of it by increasing their work efficiency.
Learners who want to be more productive at work should take specific soft skills training. By virtue of using this training, learners should be able to practice their newly acquired skills at work. It should be so designed that it is part of the learner’s psyche and easy for him to retain. It should also be confidence-boosting and he should be able to transfer this new knowledge to his day-to-day work.
Learners should be encouraged to assess their own skills and create a road map of where they would like this training to take them.
If you follow some or all these training trends for 2019, your organization will reap benefits. You will be proud to have strong and autonomous learners for employees who continually engage in training programs and demonstrate actual progress. Once they overcome their weaknesses, they will be on the road to achieving the company’s goals and making a mark for themselves professionally.