As employees search for purpose in our new hybrid world, there is an increasingly clear link between learning and development (L&D) and workforce retention. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 Global Talent Trends Report, 59% of workers associate professional development opportunities with a superior company culture. Organizations that show employees they care about their personal growth — and equip them with the tools to succeed in their careers — are more likely to retain top talent.
This evolution of work also calls for a new paradigm in employee training. Your workforce values flexibility and independence more than ever before — and expects the same from their training and professional development opportunities. In a world where 95% of knowledge workers desire a flexible schedule and 78% want flexibility in working location, mastering the art of hybrid training can make you an especially attractive employer.
Forward-thinking companies can reinvent L&D with an eye toward the modern worker, providing a consistent, flexible and engaging learning experience through on-demand training.
Purpose-built Training for the Hybrid Age
On-demand training is tailor-made for today’s distributed workplace. Also known as asynchronous training, it consists of prepared digital materials that employees can access online whenever and wherever they need them. Instead of one-off live courses repeated across your company, you can provide a foundation of pre-recorded videos supported by live sessions that are captured and saved as additional resources.
With access to video content and self-paced courses, employees can guide themselves through the learning process at their convenience. There’s no better way to unite a geographically distributed workforce with different habits, schedules and patterns of engagement in a single professional development program. An on-demand approach supports an inclusive, consistent and empowering training paradigm that can give your business a powerful competitive advantage in a demanding employment market.
Best Practices for Implementing On-demand Training
1. Record Live Training to Enable Consistent and Equitable Access to Materials
As your training programs evolve to include both in-person and virtual components, recording live training sessions is an essential first step to a consistent, accessible and effective L&D program for all employees.
Recording training and making it available on-demand to everyone at your company regardless of their geographical location or seniority can level the playing field for distributed employees and increase knowledge and competence throughout the organization.
Not only does on-demand training ensure the same experience for all employees, but it also supports those that learn at different paces by allowing them to review material as needed. When people can access educational materials at their own convenience, they’re more likely to stay engaged. By keeping your employees tuned in with a steady stream of content, you’ll foster the type of atmosphere where everyone can become the best versions of themselves.
2. Establish a Centralized, Digital Learning Library to Efficiently Scale Training Across a Distributed Workforce
Many growing companies face an increasingly distributed workforce with an ever-expanding need for new skills and competencies. On-demand training supported by a centralized, digital learning library helps L&D programs cost-effectively scale to meet these needs with a single source of training truth for your organization.
By saving your training material in a single digital library, trainers no longer have to repeat courses for different teams or locations, saving time and budget by recording a single on-demand video that can be distributed across the company.
As a living library, you can easily edit and expand training materials in response to market conditions, technological changes or learner needs — rolling out updates across your organization instantly. Successful businesses must be able to efficiently grow and adapt, and on-demand training can help your company maintain the dynamism it needs to remain competitive.
3. Simplify Discoverability to Empower Employees to Take Control of Their Learning
Today’s workers are always on the go, and flexibility has become less a perk than an outright necessity. The same employees who expect robust professional development opportunities might not have the time to watch long lectures or the desire to participate in in-person training sessions.
Help employees take control of their learning by making training material easy to discover and utilize. Tools that empower employees to search within training videos for both written and spoken words can help them quickly find what they need without watching an entire presentation or meeting.
Be sure to place employee needs front and center as you introduce an on-demand model — ask employees for feedback to find out how they are using your training. What’s working for them, and what could be better? Each learner’s unique circumstance will determine their experience, so keep an eye out for unexpected pain points. On-demand training isn’t static and will be most effective when you’re willing to make adjustments.
4. Encourage Social Learning to Strengthen and Retain Institutional Knowledge
The ideal workplace provides a dynamic environment where people can learn and grow together. On-demand training can become a major component of this type of development-based company culture.
The best on-demand programs foster collaboration and social learning like peer-to-peer video recordings that connect colleagues and industry experts. The goal isn’t to create polished, professional-grade videos that employees watch at home instead of Netflix, but rather to leverage your organization’s institutional wisdom to produce authentic and actionable learning materials.
Have people throughout the company record videos on topics that fall within their areas of expertise. Set up learning groups where colleagues can share ideas in informal, bite-sized recordings. This type of social learning supports an inclusive, dynamic environment that helps attract and retain employees.
Supporting Employee Purpose and Agency
Like you, hybrid employees value purpose and agency in their work — solving meaningful challenges while being able to drive their career forward in the way that works best for them. By leveraging on-demand training, you can create an L&D framework that takes these concerns into account, creating a more valuable and empowering workplace: the key to success in the hybrid-era competition for talent.
