Be honest. Have your company’s training methods been in place since the days when mutton chops and bell-bottoms were the “in” thing? While there’s huge pressure to keep pace with the times in today’s constantly changing corporate world, many training departments have been stuck in stasis using the same old traditional training methodologies. It’s as if corporate training has been stuck in a time warp!
For business to remain competitive, corporate learning must enter the 21st century. There’s no better time than now to start making the transition. As you begin to move forward, here are four essential components to take you out of the past and into the present:
1. Flip the way you develop training.
The old way of doing things put training content first. Learning leaders identified the content they thought employees should know and then delivered the corresponding training. Today, we know this approach is completely backward. If content isn’t connected to business targets, it doesn’t allow the organization to tie training to any sort of tangible success.
The best thing to do is to start with the end result in mind. What objective does the business want to accomplish? Maybe it’s to decrease worker’s compensation claims. Maybe it’s to increase sales numbers. Maybe it’s to reduce customer complaints. Whatever the goal, begin with the outcome as your guiding light. Any training without clear business objectives won’t help the company get to where it needs to go.
2. Swap large chunks for bite-sized pieces.
Overwhelmed. Strained. Brain-fried.
Remind you of anyone? If it isn’t you (congrats!), it certainly describes most modern workers. Today’s employees must remember more information than ever just to keep pace with ongoing changes. Plus, they’re expected to sit for hours and hours of training, process massive information dumps, and retain everything without any follow-up.
If you really think about this cycle, the methodology doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. To make sure your employees know their stuff, shorten the amount of information they receive at once, and incorporate a few minutes of training into every workday. Through microlearning, employees can build their knowledge gradually over time without feeling overwhelmed. Combine microlearning with other proven memory techniques like spaced repetition and repeated retrieval, and learners will keep the information fresh in their minds for the long term. It’s a win for everyone.
3. Make information accessible.
Learning opportunities are all around us. That’s so obvious it’s almost cliché, but it’s also more meaningful than ever. Google has become the go-to for seeking answers to just about any question under the sun. Developing a new skill? There are probably entire channels on YouTube dedicated to it.
Modern technology has allowed people to access information in just a few clicks, and it’s frustrating for employees when they don’t have the same opportunity at work. When they can’t find answers, they’ll often go looking to sources outside the organization to locate the information they need, which likely isn’t consistent with your way of doing business.
Instead, provide employees with easy access to the company knowledge they need to do their job no matter when and where they need it. Don’t be afraid to encourage employees to learn from each other. They’re already sharing knowledge and skills anyway, so give them a virtual space at work to collaborate. The payoff will be a variety of tips and information that help employees improve their job performance. Sharing information will only have a positive financial impact on the business.
4. Go high tech.
Another truth: Millennials will make up half of your workforce by 2020, and they’re more comfortable with technology than they are making dinner. As for the other half, they’ll also have become accustomed to technology and will be eager to promote its adoption. It’s unavoidable either way.
Instead of resisting modern technology, employ it in a way that appeals to modern workers and improves your company’s bottom line. Consider a learning platform, for instance, that creates personalized and adaptive training experiences. It isn’t news that everyone learns in a different way, so build your training process around a respect for the individuality of each learner. Personalize content so that it makes sense for each role, and use adaptive learning technology to target subject knowledge gaps automatically by assessing each employee’s level of expertise as it changes over time.
The best high-tech learning solutions are mobile-accessible, use proven memory-building techniques and wrap the entire training experience in gamification. When training is effective – and fun – workers of all ages will stop thinking about training as something they have to get through and, instead, start making it something they want to do.
