In our previous blog “The beauty of empowering your employees” we took a look at why is it important as an organization to train your employees. The benefits range from reduced attrition rates to a significant boost in employee morale, and everything in between.
And now, as an organization that understands the beauty of empowering your employees with training and development, the next step is understanding the how? How to deploy a perfect mix of technology and approaches to effectively train your employees in a way that truly makes an impact?
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Providing advanced training platforms
training was once an arduous time-consuming task for both the trainer and the trainee, today, it has become an easy to access and interesting method of disseminating information throughout the organization. Course-delivery platforms like the modern LMSes have significantly reduced the efforts put into traditional training. Furthermore, modern mobile friendly LMSes have allowed access of information and training courses to an always mobile force like sales and field service. Not only are these cost-effective methods of training, but used correctly they are- engaging, interactive, efficient, and time effective methods of training employees.
When trying to resolve issues of attrition and employee retention, there is little doubt about the role that LMSes and eLearning courses have played. A report by CNBC had pegged the market of LMSes at $7.8 billion for 2018, this is driven by the fact that 80% of the organizations interviewed realized the importance of these systems, and were looking to actively implement an LMS. It’s quite clear, an LMS is most definitely necessary for driving modern-day training initiatives.
Moving towards social learning
Even as children, we often spent hours studying with close groups of friends and study buddies. This often resulted in a form of collaboration, where we taught our buddy a topic we were good at, and they, in turn, would teach us something they were good at. This is an example of social learning, something we as adults can also now harness. Sharing knowledge in a social environment, amongst peers, can open a whole new world of possibilities, even within corporates. Think about it- we learn, witness, and experience something new every day. When all of us commit to sharing our varied daily experiences, all of a sudden, we are armed with the wisdom of the crowd. Harnessing the ability to learn socially in a corporate environment is truly advantageous. As an L&D or HR manager, social learning is a huge opportunity, not to be missed! The simple act of enabling employees to share content, discuss topics, and refer to training material available freely over the web enables social learning! Often, it involves employees sharing training content that they once used to self-train themselves.
LMS systems are often the best methods of facilitating social learning. Here employees can share freely available content in a team, department, or organization-wide basis. This, in many ways, is the perfect blend of teaching philosophy and technology.
Incentivize training
Organizations looking to improve the overall quality of the workforce, understand the importance of learning and development. What they often miss out on is incentivizing those undertaking the training program. Incentivizing successful attempts at learning something new, with monetary or other methods of acknowledgements, motivates employees to actively participate and learn more.
In a competitive world, promotions, recommendations, and increments are often tied to successfully attempting and learning critical new skills. This knowledge gives your employees reason to learn and develop. However, it is important to ensure that employees do not associate monetary and other perks as the only incentives to train. Self-development, skill building, and improved knowledge base is incentive enough for an organization to promote training amongst employees.
Managers need to contribute and take the initiative as well
Managers in charge of departments and teams may not be focused on the need to nurture hungry talent, but rather, on the day to day delivery of their tasks. A recent study revealed 5 out of every 10 employees felt their managers were turning a blind eye towards their training needs. A recent hospitality industry survey revealed 31% of the top-level management realized the importance of an LMS, but the middle-level managers or line managers were not promoting extensive use of it. By encouraging managers to train and provide LMS like systems to employees, the high attrition rate faced by the service / F&B industry- which is at 70% yearly can definitely be brought down! It doesn’t take too long to understand how managers and team leaders fit into this equation. The beauty about having advanced modern LMSes is the ability to track line managers who do not take L&D seriously, in fact, the LMS in many ways is a beautiful system for managers to promote team building activities as well.
Training employees in today’s times call for a judicious mix of technologies and approaches. Getting the mix correct ensures benefits to the organization like profitability, efficiency, and employee belonging. The technology available currently is perfect to achieve a seamless blend of approaches towards training. Modern systems like the LMS, which harness the power of social learning or tracking middle-level managers (line managers) who do not support the training initiatives, and support hosting courses like eLearning courses, can provide clear value to an organization.
If you would like to know more about how an LMS can help you achieve a robust training and development initiative drop us a line at contact@abaralms.com or Click Here m to get a 30-day free Abara LMS trial.
