Recent research has indicated that innovative training tools are playing a more significant role in the world of professional development. Discover why technologies are becoming the empowering choice for training professionals and employees across industries.
Empowering employees has never appeared to be as simple as it does today. Tools and strategies abound to ensure that your employees are skilled and ready to take on the market challenges common to every business.
But with so many tools out there, are you choosing the right ones for your employees and business, or is your tech stack just spiraling out of control?
The 2019 L&D report from findcourses.com found that of all the tools available to businesses, 63% of businesses plan on using E-learning technologies in their training functions. Micro-learning videos, virtual classrooms, and mobile learning were next in the running.
It’s clear that the days of the mandatory HR ‘training day’ are long behind us. Employees today have the ability to take their training into their own hands thanks to the flexibility of innovative tech-based training tools.
Given that the majority of market challengers forecast a 41% increase in their Learning and Development (L&D) budgets, choosing the right training tools is central to cement your competitive advantage over the long term.
Read on to discover practicing training professionals’ experiences from the L&D report, and discover the best innovative training tools to effectively empower your employees.
Technological Training Offers Increased Flexibility
Agility and innovation go hand-in-hand, and by taking advantage of innovative training solutions you’ll allow your employees the increased flexibility they need to access and understand training on their own terms.
Using innovative training tools will bake agility into the infrastructure of your L&D function, and create an empowering cycle of professional development organically. For example, Learning Management Systems (LMS) can centralize tech-based training solutions in one accessible platform for employees to return to and make use of as they require.
For Anthony Sandonato, VP of Learning and Development and Wyndham Destinations, innovation and agility are natural byproducts of building an agile L&D infrastructure.
“Our L&D team structure is built upon that flexible framework, and designed to remain nimble and adjust to continuous organizational changes without compromising either the speed or quality of our talent development strategies,” explains Sandonato.
The needs of your organization will inevitably change, and tech-based training solutions will offer you the agility necessary to make the most empowering impact with training. Change training materials on a dime to upskill your employees where and when it matters most. An agile training infrastructure is particularly important for keeping your organizational, L&D function, and operational goals aligned to keep your business thriving.
Experiment, Recalibrate, Repeat
Whether you’re just starting the shift towards more innovative training solutions or technology is old-hat for your organization’s L&D function - the first new tool you try out won’t necessarily be the one that works for your employees. Ensure that you feel comfortable with the latest change management techniques to make the transition as smooth as possible. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a culture of employee empowerment won’t be either.
Many e-learning solutions offer the option for demo-weeks or months. Give something new a try, gather employee feedback, then make the decision to invest in a new tool, strategy, or technique once you know it’s the right fit for your organization.
Head of US Learning and Talent Development at Bayer Karen Bicking has seen the success of experimentation first-hand. Piloting an action learning program for the pharmaceutical side of the company had an almost immediate effect.
“We took some leaders and they delivered some work on some projects that were outside of their normal space,” she says. “They gained experience beyond their regular role and gained exposure to senior leaders. We’ve seen a great outcome from that with a number of them being promoted already even though the program has just concluded.”
While that experiment was a clear success, Bicking explained that Bayer always collects employee feedback and evaluations to drive innovation with a strategy informed by employees’ experience. LMS are one tool to facilitate employee empowerment with ease.
Centralize Employee Empowerment with the Right Technology:
Learning Management Systems & Internal Opportunity Marketplaces
Innovative LMS like Lessonly offer you the opportunity to track the viability of innovative training tools in real-time. Integration with your existing tech stack means that you’ll be able to quickly create, transfer, and tailor learning resources already in use, and track how your employees are interacting with training materials - all on one platform!
If you decide to upskill your sales team in a new area, LMS allow you to drill down into their engagement with the training content to understand its actual impact on daily operations. If employees aren’t making their learning goals, you can use a data-driven approach to recalibrate your training function and ensure that employees are getting the knowledge they need to succeed.
With LMS’ easy accessibility, employees will feel more empowered to participate in training themselves, and control how, if, and when they’ll develop within their professional roles. Furthermore, you can centralize employee empowerment over LMS by communicating important information like project and mentorship opportunities to allow employees to put their newfound skills into practice right away.
As a manager or leader, you can create an internal opportunity marketplace full of tools for employees to flourish in their professional lives. Empowerment breeds accountability, and with LMS employees will choose whether or not to take advantage of what’s on offer.
Max Maccarone is a content editor for the professional development search engine findcourses.com. Originally from Canada, Max relocated to Stockholm after graduating from York University in Toronto. An avid traveller, Max is dedicated to creating diverse and engaging learning and development content for a wide-range of publications.
