As the new year begins to unfold, take the time to look at the state of your training program. How effective has it been historically? Are current employees getting the most out of their training in respect to their career growth? It’s important that organizations evaluate their programs and jump on trends that their employees will benefit from the most.
One of the most intriguing training trends for 2016 is personalization. It’s opening doors for better training engagement and organizational growth among workers. According to AllenComm CEO, Ron Zamir, “Personalization and adaptive evaluation is a trend that hasn’t fully arrived yet, but will pay off in results as it becomes more and more sophisticated. The companies who are pioneering it are seeing an improvement. And the more you can build training that is truly individual, the bigger impact you’ll see.” With an increasingly younger workforce, personalization can make a bigger impact on their future career goals, in and outside of an organization.
Below are three benefits personalization can give to both large and small corporate training programs.
1. Learning programs can relate to individual learning needs
As you know, every employee comes into a job with different levels of experience and knowledge. Rather than create a corporate training program that’s “one size fits all,” personalization makes it so organizations can meet those individual training needs and match how they best learn and can apply the skills. This then carves the way for better engagement and employees can retain information at a better and faster rate.
For example, one training method that incorporates personalization is microlearning, where learning is focused and compact to train for knowledge that is immediately applied on the job. This personalization interwoven in microlearning also creates learner autonomy, which can make the training more motivating and create a desire to seek out additional training.
2. Better engagement with training
When training creates user engagement, it can mean less employee time wasted and more importantly, less employer money wasted. Moreover, the incoming workforce, known as Millennials, crave individual attention and career growth. Adam Miller, CEO of Cornerstone OnDemand explains, “This is a revolutionary shift from the traditional sense of on-the-job training. Training no longer exists solely to meet compliance or company-mandated policies. The best training program today is a rich learning experience that taps into employee interests, passions and career goals.”
Furthermore, 58% of Millennials expect employers to provide them with learning opportunities relevant to their jobs. As an organization, look for an elearning company that offers a variety of custom elearning solutions that cater to employees personalities and company culture.
3. Create a skilled workforce
Lastly, personalization can not only engage the learner, but in the process, create a more skilled workforce. Employees will bring more to their jobs when training is catered towards them and thus, become an asset or resource within the company. Another way to boost engagement and build leadership qualities is by having employees become experts in fields and then apply that knowledge by teaching each other.
Furthermore, organizations hinder themselves when they don’t make learning opportunities or tools readily available, so as a company, see what training gaps you can fill now. As personalization continues to develop and grow, its impact will become even bigger to individual learners.
Though true personalization is still in its beginning stages, a little goes a long way with training and is already making an impact on how well people retain new information.
