Employee training, an essential part of every organization, has grown exponentially over the past few decades. There are many training techniques available today to help employees improve their jobs and stick to industry standards.
Training Considerations
Before considering specific training methods, the first step is to identify a goal. It is important to know what the company wants out of its employees. Is this a new skill? Is it to promote a better and safer workplace? Or learning new methods about specific processes?
Knowing and recognizing the audience is the next important consideration when choosing a training technique. Depending on how the training is conducted, participants may be new employees, experienced employees, or part of senior management.
Last but not least, the step is to consider the various barriers that affect the training. This includes the company’s training budget, training time, and resources, and materials readily available to the training team. These training considerations help limit the choice of effective training methods.
Training Methods
1. The Instructor-led Training (ILT) Approach
This is one of the most popular ways to train employees. This is often referred to as the gold standard, as many training techniques often try to mimic it more closely. This method of training, whether practical or in a classroom setting, enables companies to provide personalized and hands-on learning to employees.
For many companies, this approach is more meaningful in terms of resources. Beyond hand gestures and personalized learning, there are many other important benefits of ILT techniques. This includes lower fixed costs, higher perceived costs, and, most importantly, employee networking opportunities.
2. The Technology-Enabled Training Method
Digital learning is becoming increasingly popular in many organizations today. Although this training provides several benefits to a company, the most important thing is the ability to train a large number of employees in different geographical locations at any given time.
Training is often thrown around for reasons such as limited time, limited budget and training resources, and competitive preferences as part of training challenges. Enter technology-driven training to address these concerns. First, this type of training can be obtained anywhere and anytime. Students do not have to sit in a traditional classroom.
This will eliminate reasons such as limited time and the availability of a student or trainer. Second, the technology-driven training approach means that all study materials are digitally available. There has been a significant reduction in overhead costs, and it is hoped that reasons such as limited budgets will be reduced.
Finally, digital course modules allow employees to shed light on their learning path at their own pace and ease. It should address training challenges such as competitive preferences and schedule conflicts.
Numerous studies show that trained employees translate into better employee satisfaction and higher company returns. And each training method offers its advantages in responding to the needs of the company, which is exposed by assessing the training purpose, audience, and barriers.
With so many training methods available today, companies need to be able to choose the most effective concept for their business that leads to greater learning success.
