Mercy Ehrler reveals the seven sizzling strategies on this year’s training horizon.

Reading time: 6 minutes

Training is an essential part of any corporate strategy, allowing organisations to help their employees become more productive, learn the ins and outs of company software, and implement new technology into their daily workflow.

However, training is more than teaching computer packages and company policies; it’s also a chance to ensure your staff and your company goals align efficiently.

The corporate world grows increasingly complex every day. Today’s large organisations often have several offices in various locations around the world, or entire departments of remote employees, which can make training significantly more difficult than it’s been in years past.

But as the face of the workplace changes, so do the ways that companies train their teams – the training trends that business professionals expect to see in 2020 prove just that.

Full-venue events

As the name suggests, a full-venue event is one in which a company takes over an entire facility. There are many benefits to hosting a full-venue event.

You have greater control over the layout of your space, which allows you greater freedom and creativity to convey your message through branding.

You don’t have to compete with other speakers or companies vying for your attendees’ time, and you can safely discuss sensitive information, as there are no other competitors that might be listening close by.

Full-venue events serve as part training conference, part corporate bonding retreat

Full-venue events are also particularly effective when you need to train a very large group – for example, a group of employees at several different offices.

A full-venue event would allow you to bring all these employees together for one event, which can serve as part training conference, part corporate bonding retreat.

Actionable coaching

While large, branded events are a highly effective way to train big groups of people, there is still no substitute for one-on-one training between employees and managers on a daily basis.

For this reason, it is highly likely that many companies will begin adopting actionable coaching techniques in the coming decade.

Actionable coaching is a more hands-on form of management, in which a manager uses technology and project management tools to monitor, assist and provide valuable, constructive feedback to employees.

This allows the manager to form a closer relationship with employees by offering positive feedback when appropriate and providing assistance when needed.

By taking this extra time and a more hands-on approach, companies who use actionable coaching can boost team morale and create a more effective and productive workforce.

Online and virtual learning solutions

As more companies shift from an in-house workforce to a largely remote one, virtual training and online learning solutions have become an essential part of the corporate toolbox.

Webinars (both live and pre-recorded) and web-based training programmes can ensure that every employee gets exactly the same training, regardless of where they are located.

Virtual training can also work well when your group of trainees exceeds your current available space. While it can be highly effective (and a lot of fun) to gather your employees in one venue for a training event, getting all team members in one physical location can be a logistical, cost-prohibitive hassle.

With access to learning content from anywhere, employees can learn about new products or company policies from their own desks or even from home, enabling you to train everyone at once without having to host multiple events or coordinate travel schedules.

In cases when hands-on training is necessary, the industry will also likely see a large increase in the use of cloud-based virtual training labs.

Hybrid learning

One of the greatest challenges in corporate training is ensuring that all learners receive an equally effective training experience.

Every employee has his or her own learning style, and effectively communicating with everyone at once is not always easy.

Unlike passive virtual training, hybrid learning better engages trainees by allowing them to use virtual methods to interact and engage with their instructors

This is especially true in the digital space; when a trainer cannot always see their trainees, he or she cannot fully know if the training is effective.

Luckily, some companies are mitigating this challenge by implementing hybrid learning techniques into their training programmes.

Unlike passive virtual training, hybrid learning better engages trainees by allowing them to use virtual methods to interact and engage with their instructors.

These can take many forms – two-way video communication between remote attendees and classroom participants, interactive elements of presentations, or even just a simple chat function alongside a webinar screen.

But no matter the implementation, an engagement-focused approach overwhelmingly increases knowledge retention and understanding.

Video-meeting technology

Whether a company opts for an independent online learning programme, hybrid learning, or a little of each, there is one tool they will always need: effective video-meeting technology.

As the corporate world becomes more spread out, digital meetings are a highly effective way to bring everyone together quickly and more personally.

This is true for both brainstorming meetings and training sessions for one simple reason – when your team members can connect with one another, they are more likely to connect with the material they are learning.

Microlearning

According to industry analyst Josh Bersin, the average employee can only allot 1% of his or her daily schedule to training. That’s only 24 minutes each day!

Through microlearning, employees continuously improve in their work without sacrificing too much of their time each day

As technology makes people’s lives faster and more productive, it appears that there simply isn’t time for effective corporate training – that is, unless a company embraces microlearning.

Microlearning is a system that offers employees small bits of information (usually two to three minutes’ long) that can be immediately incorporated into one’s work habits.

This can be as simple as a handout placed on an employee’s desk or a short video explaining how to use a new app.

Through microlearning, your employees can continuously improve in their work without sacrificing too much of their time each day.

Artificial intelligence

It’s no secret that or AI, or artificial intelligence, is likely to become a large part of the corporate training environment in the coming years.

In fact, it seems that most employees welcome the idea of adding AI to their work process; according to a 2018 study by Oracle and Future Workplace, about 93% of workers claim they would “trust orders from a robot”.

AI is an invaluable tool when it comes to analysing massive amounts of internal metrics, data, as well as internal and external feedback.

This technology can be leveraged to identify areas of necessary improvement and segments within the business or workforce that might stand to benefit from additional employee training.

Whether a company uses AI, digital training, or events at branded venues to train employees, there is one thing that will not change in the coming decade – employees need to fully understand and feel confident in their work to do it effectively.

It is for this reason that high-quality training has always been, and will continue to be, a corporate necessity.

About the author

Mercy Ehrler is director of marketing at Attune.