Digital Transformation Of Employee Training And Development

When it comes to training your employees, the sky is the limit! No matter how skilled and capable your employees are, there is always scope to learn new skills. Owing to new technological advancements getting made at an accelerated pace, it has become increasingly important to keep your employees in tune with the latest trends in the market. 

Gone are the days when employees went to seminars and workshops that required their physical presence for weeks. Thanks to digitization, employee training and development have undergone a massive change in the last few years. 

In 2021, irrespective of the department they work in, your employees can get trained without them having to venture out of their homes. Digital tools and practices have facilitated seamless training of your employees without physically appearing for the training sessions. 

Before understanding the digital transformation of employee training and development, let us understand why it is crucial for an organization to train its employees. 

Why Is It Important To Get Your Employees Trained?

1. Increased Engagement
   
   Employee engagement often dictates the mood of the employees working within an organization. If your employees are not trained to perform their tasks better, they will likely feel less engaged as they can't give their 100%. This results in an unwanted decrease in the genuine drive to work for your organization and stay connected with its goals.
   
   When you train your employees well, they feel valued by your organization and are driven to give their best in what they do. This increases the overall employee engagement within your company.
   
   
2. Increased Employee Productivity
   
   Naturally, trained employees are likely to be more productive as compared to their peers. If you can undertake successful training and development of your employees, they will perform their tasks well and attain organizational targets better. Trained employees are more likely to possess advanced skills and capabilities to drive more revenue and make the most of their respective roles.
   
   
3. Staying In Tune With The Technology
   
   One of the most significant advantages of getting your employees trained is that it helps you get in tune with the latest technological trends in the market. Regular and extensive training helps your employees adapt to the latest practices and use the latest technological platforms prevalent in the market. This helps you get an edge over your peers and cater well to the ever-changing needs of your clients.
   
   
4. Better Customer Relations
   
   Especially in customer-facing employees, providing them with adequate training would help them build healthy relations with the customers. Right from training your employees to approach new leads to help existing customers get their issues resolved, adequate training allows your team members to interact with your employees in the best way possible.
   
   
5. Better Onboarding Of Remote Employees
   
   One of the biggest challenges faced by HR managers while working remotely is that of onboarding remote employees. When managers cannot physically interact with the new employees, ensuring their well-being and tracking their progress becomes challenging.
   
   Getting your employees trained helps you in onboarding them better. Through digital modes of training and development, HR managers can help new employees get trained in specific skills essential to get started. Effective training and development allow the management to ensure that the new employees are ready to join the organization and start their respective jobs.
   
   
6. Improving Overall Management
   
   Training and development are not limited to the subordinates. An organization needs to get its managers and team leaders trained to improve the company's overall management. Managing employees and leadership are skills that need to be taught to ensure an organization's smooth functioning. When you get your managers trained, you can rest assured that your employees are in safe hands and under ideal authority.
   
   

Digital Transformation Of Employee Training And Development

Over time, the training and development of employees have shifted to digital platforms. Neither organizations nor employees are willing to invest a fortune in hiring dedicated trainers and setting up on-premise workshops to get the employees trained.

Gone are the days when employees were required to regularly participate in live training sessions as a group. The advent of digitized platforms has significantly transformed the modes of employee training and development.

The digital alternatives allow your employees to get trained irrespective of the location they are working from. Over the last two years, several companies worldwide have resorted to functioning virtually with employees working remotely. Digitized training and development of employees allow these companies to provide holistic training to their employees without interacting with them physically.

Here are some of the most important modes of digital training and development that allow your employees to get trained from their respective digital platforms: 

1. Microlearning
   
   Microlearning is a fairly new mode of training that is in sync with the limited attention span of employees. Mainly due to excessive consumption of microblogs over time, the overall attention span of individuals has reduced significantly. If you make your employees subscribe to lengthy courses and bulky literature, they will likely forget most of the knowledge gained.
   
   Microlearning allows you to provide limited and bite-sized content to your employees. Here, you provide training resources to your employees that take 10 minutes of their time daily. When your employees consume limited content every day, they will retain more information, leading to successful training sessions.
   
   Microlearning helps you feed all your training resources on a centralized platform and have your employees access the same from any location according to their convenience. It prevents them from sacrificing their work hours to get trained. In order to increase the effectiveness of microlearning, you can get your employees trained using a collaborative platform. Here, you can provide your employees with training materials by adding them to the knowledge base of your collaborative platform. This helps your employees learn new skills and apply them on the same platform they use for work.
   
   
2. Learning Management System (LMS)
   
   Learning Management System (LMS) is an important invention in the field of e-learning. It is a software application that organizations can use to administer, document, track, and report learning materials to get their employees trained. LMS can be considered as a digitized version of a classroom. A single platform can be used to provide your employees with training materials and make regular assessments by conducting tests. An LMS application helps managers to keep track of training sessions and ascertain their effectiveness.
   
   Modern LMS applications allow organizations to automate several processes and create personalized training sessions for their employees. During specific events like employee onboarding and appraisals, these applications allow managers to assess the skills possessed by the employees and the skills that should be taught to them.
   
   
3. Mobile Applications
   
   Mobile Applications are essentially extensions of the Learning Management System. These applications can be developed to get your employees trained in specific skills. Based on your requirements, you can develop applications that allow your employees to access training materials from anywhere and keep track of their progress on a regular basis.
   
   Whenever you are getting your employees trained, it is always advisable to use engaging content formats. In 2021, employees are no longer inclined towards reading plain texts with a few images in between. To obtain the best results, make sure you add videos, images, infographics, animations, and other engaging content formats. Further, gamification of training sessions improves the effectiveness of employee training and development. When you throw in exciting challenges and set milestones that are to be achieved throughout their training sessions, your employees would enjoy the process of getting trained.
   
   
4. Extended Reality
   
   Extended Reality (XR) is a fairly new model of digital training and development. It is more immersive in nature as it transforms the learners into an alternative/extended reality. Technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are getting increasingly popular modes of training as it makes the training experience unforgettable. Especially if you are willing to train your employees in skills that require high concentration, focus, and practice, using extended reality would help you improve your training sessions.
   
   

The Final Word 

These were some of the most important modes of digitized training and development. Irrespective of the scale of your organization and the industry you operate in, it is always advisable to switch to digital platforms for getting your employees trained. This would add flexibility to your training modules and provide a wide range of resources to your employees. 

Before adopting a digital mode of employee training and development, assess the specific needs of your employees and the skills they need to learn. This would provide you with a sense of direction for implementing a platform that best suits your needs.