New Year, New Skills—Employee Training in 2020

Picture the following scenario: it’s early on a Friday morning and you usher your work team into the conference room for their quarterly group training activity. Your team seems low energy and not terribly committed to your presentation. You wonder to yourself, “how can I improve my team’s engagement… how can I get them to absorb this important information?” Meanwhile, your team members are probably thinking something along the lines of, “I wonder where I should go out to eat with my friends over the weekend…” Sound familiar? We’ve all been there. Luckily, there are ways to change up your employee training that can successfully engage your team. Part of that has to do with integrating eLearning into your workplace training sessions.

Regularly enhancing and improving employee training exercises is essential. Training for your employees is beneficial to both your company and your employees for many reasons. For example, regular training encourages improved employee performance, increased engagement, and fosters employee retention and growth. Additionally, they help create happier customers, address internal weakness, and help track and manage employee skills. If you are someone who has found yourself making excuses and putting off updating your employee training methods, you may want to consider some of the harms that you could be doing to your organization and how you can put a stop to it. Do not be a contributing factor to the staggering statistic that organizations are losing $13.5 million per year due to ineffective employee training.

Why Your Organization Should be Engaging in Regular Employee Training

A common misconception about employee training is that employees will take the skills that they learn on your organization’s dime and then leave the organization for other work opportunities, making the money you spent on developing employee skills ultimately useless. However, research has shown that employees who are appreciated will stay in their current jobs. So, as a manager, you have to decide whether or not you want to invest in your employees. What you should keep in mind is that investing in your employees means investing in your organization’s future. Sure, such investments are a risk—but what investments aren’t? The best you can do is make sure that your risks are calculated. Investing in your employees with carefully crafted training and educational advancements is a calculated move to guide your company towards success.

Research has shown that companies that invest $1,500 or more per year on employee training average 24 percent higher profit margins. Additionally, companies that routinely offer comprehensive training have a 218 percent higher overall income per employee than those companies that forego staying on top of regularly providing skills and educational courses for their employees to engage in.

Remember, employee development courses can only be considered a good investment if you are mindful about how effective and engaging such courses will be. Consider the following ways that investing in your employees’ development will benefit you:

• Increased flexibility in the market – your employees will be prepared to respond to changes in the market
• Lower employee turnover – investing in your employees will make them feel valued and more likely to stay on
• Increased loyalty – again, appreciated employees will benefit your organization due to their dedication to produce quality work
• Competitive advantage – smart employees produce high level work and attract other talented individuals to work for you

Embrace the Future with Online Learning Engagements

Recently, Amazon announced plans to rework their employee training by focusing on automation and technological advancements, citing the changing American workforce of today’s world and will take training fully into the digital world. The goal of this employee training revamp is to bring Amazon’s employees to the absolute forefront of the digital world. Now, you do not have to feel pressured to take an Amazon-level leap with your employee training and education efforts. After all, you may not have a spare $700 million laying around to invest in such programs. However, Amazon’s move should serve as an inspiration to you as you consider how to tailor your future training programs to be better suited to rapidly changing technologies.

You can start with considering integrating eLearning into your workplace. ELearning has become a necessary tool for education courses and workplace training. It is rapidly expanding from college courses, to continuing education courses for professionals and to employee training courses. The global eLearning market is projected to reach $325 billion by 2025 (Research and Markets) from $107 billion in 2015 (Forbes). It is important to avoid accidentally alienating your company and your employees by missing out on this booming sector for educational opportunities.

The companies that stay on top of technological advancements are the successful ones because they stay up-to-date with current trends, they have increased employee focus and dedication with less of a need for manager supervision, they maintain a better bottom-line, and their company successes attract top talent. Taking your employee training materials online is a great way to begin to work towards being an organization that embodies each of these traits.

The Benefits of Online Training

In 2017, about 77 percent of U.S. corporations used online learning for their employee development. Here are some major reasons why they chose to switch over to eLearning rather than traditional in-person methods:

• Metrics – a great benefit of online training is that you can get metrics on usage and completion. When employee training are mandated by the organization, measuring who uses online training and when they use it can show what employees are driven to invest their time in self-improvement in their work role. Furthermore, metrics can help provide a sense of how effective a training is and whether or not it needs any changes and/or improvements
• Stay on top of trends – since technology industries are always advancing, frequent and relevant training can help keep your organization ahead of the game. Encourage employees to stay involved with current market trends as part of your trainings
• Flexibility – offering employee learning courses online gives employees the chance to strategically work the training into their schedules so that they can stay productive
• Learning retention increase – eLearning increases retention rates by 25  to 60 percent because participants can engage at their own pace and revisit information as needed
• Measurable Return on Investment – training materials can help employees to feel more engaged in their work. By taking training online, your organization can measure ROI which will give you better insights about your employees’ and your business’s growth
• Accessible – Online training is more easily accessible because they can be used on different devices and in just about any location. In a world where modernity matters more and more, it is important to keep training available to anyone who wishes to use them

How to Improve Your Current Training

87 percent of millennials in the workforce say that professional development in their current jobs is very important to them. With so many millennials, and now Gen Z individuals, dominating the workforce, it is increasingly important to consider the implications of a tech-savvy work environment.

The best and most measurable way to improve your current employee training methods is to take it online. Here are some areas of employee training that you might want to consider taking online:

• Soft skills training – soft skills such as leadership, interpersonal relations, managing emotions, communication, problem solving, adaptability, etc. are crucial to today’s workplace. In increasingly diverse and ever-changing workplace climates, the need for updated and effective soft skills training is more important now than ever. Bringing this type of training will help your organization to stay innovative along with the top businesses
• Compliance training – compliance training involves education about sexual harassment prevention, diversity, physical violence, gender-based violence, etc. It is important to mitigate risk by keeping your organization in compliance with all rules and regulations that apply. Be sure that your employees are appropriately engaged with online training so that they can easily and frequently receive the most up-to-date information available
• Safety training – the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) states that regular safety training is critical to the safety and productivity of your workplace. Do not risk letting your employees fall behind on current safety regulations. Providing your employees with online courses will help to ensure that they have the truest and most current information. You can also easily keep track of employee completion and certifications this way so that no one misses important updates

Next Steps

Provide only the best training courses for your employees. They deserve it. In order to get started, trust in your ability to find the best way to engage with your employees and uplift them with educational tools and training materials. Remember, when you invest in your employees, you are investing in the long-term success of your organization.

If you’d like to know more, KnowledgeCity has a wide variety of training materials available including a library of preexisting training courses. You can engage with these videos when you need something specific or wish to add on to your existing training materials. If developing your own courses is more your style, engage with your creative side and get your training materials integrated into an online format with the Custom Course Creation services provided by KnowledgeCity. If you want to develop your capacities as a leader who keeps up with their employees’ training advancements, the Learning Management System can help. Regardless of how you choose to get started, now is the time to keep up with the rapid developments of the technology world and how they are affecting our workplaces and employee training dynamics.