Table of Contents
Introduction
With the increasing need to grow your team’s talent, it is becoming difficult to manage and lead teams – especially the technical teams. Thus, investing in employee training and skill development is less of an option and more of a necessity now.
These trainings and efforts made in the direction of skill development of your employees can stimulate better workplace values, productivity and employee retention.
A well-formulated training plan enables your team to not just maximize their skill set but also expand their expertise. With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, such online training and e-learning are inevitable and they have become an integral part of the company’s culture.
Such software and training modules were there before the pandemic, but they are receiving more and more attention as our lives focus more to operating from a home environment.
Lockdowns due to the pandemic and strict social distancing measures brought in-person operations to a standstill. Hence, employees were left with no other option than to adapt to the new learning and training strategies.
Why is it necessary to upgrade your training strategies?
Companies, both small and large, are continuously transforming and making alterations to their learning and development (L&D) strategies to adapt to the business environment. We have identified key trends given below that are making it necessary for businesses to upgrade their training strategies.
1. Need of a robust Learning Culture:
As per a recent Gallup poll, 59% of millennials, 44% of Gen Xers, and 41% of baby boomers say that learning and growth opportunities are extremely important for them. IT is the most considered factor by them while applying for jobs. Thus, promoting a learning culture becomes important.
It is like treating your employees as your customers and understanding their problems, then furthermore devising dynamic training programs that help to solve their problems. Companies, along with training the employees to perform the tasks and work efficiently now and in the future, also need to understand what motivates employees to learn.
Of course, the motivation differs amongst individuals, however, businesses should keep in their mind that employees are looking forward to and now expect skill development and learning opportunities that ultimately help them in either job promotions or open up the chance to transfer to a better job opportunity.
2. Automation and Innovation
As companies are undergoing a digital transformation by adopting new automation and Artificial Intelligence technologies, there is a growing knowledge and skill set gap between the new technology and capabilities of existing employees and the overall workforce. Thus, businesses need to rely on new training strategies to bridge the gap.
PWC surveyed more than 1000 CEOs across all the industries for their 21st annual CEO survey, and they found that 80% of the CEOs often find it difficult to find the employees with the right skill set to stay advantageous. While managing their business, this is something that worries them the most. In addition, the survey discovered that 76% of the CEOs are already facing a lack of tech skills in their current team.
The learning and development department has a bigger role to play in this situation. They need to develop training strategies and modules to upskill and reskill the employees to meet the competitive demand. They would need to keep doing this time and time again as and when technology evolves.
3. Changing Workplace Dynamics
The trend of remote working has been gaining popularity for years however the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic kicked remote working culture into high gear. Businesses were left with no option than to move their operations completely online as nations went into lockdown. Few companies have even adopted a hybrid work model (both remote and office working) permanently.
As businesses are moving towards remote working, online learning has become even more essential. However, with such a major switch in the entire workplace dynamics of a business, from in-person training to online ones, Learning & Development (L&D) departments need to come up with altered processes and attitudes to cope with the change.
L&D departments face dual problems while responding to the situation,
a) Helping businesses to adapt to the new remote work routine and technology
b) They need to inculcate this skill into other employees remotely
Thus, L&D departments need to adjust to the dispersed workforce and provide them online solutions to their problems that can be accessed from anywhere.
4. Adherence to Quality Standards and Addressing Weaknesses:
With skills set becoming obsolete sooner than ever, most employees will have weaknesses in their workplace skills at some point in time. A dynamic training strategy would allow businesses to strengthen the required skills that would allow each employee to improve. An enhanced learning program would bring all the employees to a higher level and develop their skills and knowledge.
In addition to the development of the skill set, businesses need to fight the competition from other businesses too by adhering to the quality standards. Thus, to keep at par with the other businesses, it is important to constantly evolve training strategies to increase employee productivity.
5. Combating Job Hopping
Despite the best efforts by the businesses, employees change jobs – regularly. This is something unavoidable however strategic planning can be helpful in mitigating the risk.
Besides incentives and positive reinforcement, the best way to minimize job hoppers in your team is by ensuring that you provide efficient training and growth to your employees. Modern employees are more entrepreneurial in their careers and the businesses.
This creates opportunities for continuous training and development and individualized career paths to have a better hand at mitigating the risk. Using advanced technology could be a help in this scenario. The seamless integration of cloud-based systems and modular training programs can add value to your existing training practices without adding to the cost.
Skill sets age out faster than ever before, so it is important for your business to take a long-term view of how important upgrading corporate learning strategies is to the future success of your organization.
Conclusion
It is true that there are indeed some serious challenges that businesses face while upgrading their corporate training strategies, however, there are many ways to modernize training so that learning is repositioned to become a better management tool.
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