As digitization accelerates change in enterprises across industries, business leaders are increasingly challenged to find new and innovative ways to lead, motivate, engage, and manage the modern workforce.
As we move forward in the new year, corporate training leaders are also looking for the next best thing when it comes to learning and development. This is because the latest learning trends will dictate how quickly behaviors are changed to enhance business performance.
These key corporate training trends for 2018 reflect an opportunity for training professionals to further develop and deliver highly engaging learning experiences that enable staff to rapidly realize proficiency.
Social learning is all about making the learning experience a shared activity. According to research, as much as 98% of companies believe in supporting learning and sharing of good practices across the business by increasing the use of in-house social networks by as much as 55%.
In 2018, you’ll see more organizations leveraging collaborative learning platforms with forums, chat boxes, and intra-mail servers for users to engage, discuss, and collaborate on assignments. This initiative will be key going forward as enterprises are now increasingly embracing remote workers and bring-your-own-device programs.
But going completely digital will be a challenge for many businesses if staff haven’t been previously exposed to this type of corporate training. So to be successful, these types of organizations need to take advantage of insight-driven interactive tools like T2K|Echo which combines both in-person instruction and digital learning for maximum effect.
In a workplace filled with digital distraction, micro-learning will grow in importance to help corporate training programs succeed. Micro-learning (which can also be used as an extension of social learning) is basically training broken down into small parts to help educate learners with a minimal investment of time.
At present, the average human attention span is about 8 seconds (which is even lower than the average attention span of a goldfish) and threatens to diminish even further. As a result, you can expect micro-learning programs to gain more traction this year as it provides a highly efficient and effective solution.
It’s also the perfect solution for companies that have employees that require training but are always on the field. This is because learning activities are delivered in small chunks (that don’t last more than 5-10 minutes) and can be easily consumed during the course of a normal working day.
Micro-learning can take several formats that include the following:
These are then spaced out with regular quizzes to test the knowledge gained by the worker. This year, micro-learning will grow even further in countries like India where they have embraced a mobile-first learning strategy.
The benefits of AR and VR technology for corporate and occupational training is obvious, but we have yet to see it in corporate training. But that might be about to change as this technology is now more affordable and accessible than ever before.
With this cutting-edge technology, organizations can take corporate training to another level by dlivering highly immersive and engaging learning experiences. For example, instead of making workers watch a video or read 30 pages about a situation, you can offer a role play situation where employees can gain hands-on experience that’s completely free of risk.
As they say, the best way to learn is by doing, so you can expect to see more AR and VR technologies (supported by machine learning) incorporated into training programs. However, this doesn’t mean that it will be ubiquitous as its still relatively new and although prices are falling rapidly, it can still have a significant impact on your budget.
As technology keeps changing the way we do things at an accelerated pace, 21st-century workers will need to adapt quickly to thrive in an ever-changing environment. To achieve this, companies will need to invest and leverage technology to effectively connect and educate the modern workforce.
