Corporate Learning: All You Need to Know

Burnout. Most of us have experienced it before it was cool. Stress, an overwhelming number of tasks, long hours of work, and disappearing personal lives. Those are the obvious factors contributing to the Great Resignation. But, if you stop to think about it, then you’ll quickly realize that that’s not the whole story.

Have you ever lost track of time while working on a project? Chances are that if you did, then you remember those projects with fondness and you’re not alone in that. You were challenged. You were engrossed in building something. Inc. Magazine found that 83% of workers leaving their job said they felt like they weren’t growing. If you’re not growing, then you’re stagnant, unmotivated, watching the clock, and dreading your work.

To address this part of burnout, companies are leaning in on corporate learning to encourage employee growth and fulfillment. So, let’s explore what corporate learning is, and how it contributes to employee fulfillment and makes your company more competitive.

Jump to:

• What is corporate learning 
• Why corporate learning is so important to develop within organizations
• Main benefits and challenges of corporate training
• 3 steps to create a better corporate learning environment
• Kaltura Corporate Training solution
• The future of corporate learning
• Conclusion

What is Corporate Learning?

Corporate learning is the development of employees to help them understand and then adapt to a fast-changing environment. Though training employees how to use new software or even compliance training is a form of development, it does not cover the entirety of corporate learning. Corporate learning helps instill a culture of learning that encourages experimentation and innovation. Corporate learning helps employees acquire new knowledge, apply that new knowledge, and, perhaps most importantly, share that new knowledge so that others may benefit from it. The latter is why many say corporate learning establishes a culture of learning with an emphasis on culture.

Why Corporate Learning is so Important to Develop within Organizations

We’ve recently hosted a discussion about millennials and gen z in the workforce and why they were leaving and how learning and development are very important for gaining and retaining top talent. For example, Gallup found that 87% of millennials say “professional or career growth and development opportunities” are important. And other statistics abound such as CNBC reporting on a LinkedIn workplace report finding that 94% of employees say they’ll stay longer at a job if companies invested in their learning.

Beyond helping in the hiring process and employee retention, there is additional ROI. ELearningIndustry found that companies that spent $1,500 on employee learning earn 24% more than companies with lower training budgets. Investing in employee development helps employees be more productive and that translates to the company being more productive and competitive.

The ability for companies to adapt and innovate is a key competitive advantage. To adapt, they must have a growth mindset and encourage their employees to embrace lifelong learning. Developing corporate learning establishes a culture of learning and promotes thinking ahead. By promoting learning, companies are investing in their long-term growth and success.

Main Benefits and Challenges of Corporate Training

3 Challenges of Corporate Learning

So, we talked about why corporate learning is important to develop within organizations. Before we go into some more benefits, let’s talk about the challenges leaders face in making their companies a learning organization.

1. Investment and Leadership Buy-In
   Nothing is free. Learning can be quite expensive. It requires developing programs and content as well as purchasing tools and services to support it. Learning also takes employee time. Instead of accomplishing their objectives, they are pulled to the side to learn. That can be a bit abstract when looking at it from a high level. That’s why it’s important to align corporate learning with company objectives. Remember, the goal is to help the company perform better over time. Even here it is a challenge, as it’s difficult to measure learning ROI. Learning attribution is as accurate as marketing attribution. It’s also difficult to get commitments for long-term, strategic goals. Many in leadership are looking to impress investors now, rather than in 5 years.

2. Rigidity and Hierarchical Culture
   As Forbes reported, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella found that Microsoft’s culture was rigid and hierarchical when he took over, and this was a problem. Systems in place discouraged challenging the norm. Performance assessment created a culture of competition rather than encouraging cooperation and collaboration. Complex reporting structures stifle the ability of employees to make decisions or even promote new ideas. The benefits of creating a learning culture are great, but it does require a whole new approach. Rather than providing fixed paths, employees are encouraged to have autonomy and the freedom to experiment. For some companies, this is a major shift in thinking. Change management is never easy and such a fundamental change in thinking is even more difficult.

3. Knowledge is Power
   Why is this a challenge? Well, the power of a learning culture is in the freedom of information where employees can acquire knowledge, apply it, and then share it. This helps the company. However, the individual that holds knowledge may not be so willing to give up their keys for fear of losing the value they offer to the company. Instead, longtime employees may feel the need to hoard knowledge to prop up their worth. Leadership can combat this by committing to organizational transparency. Transparency from leadership promotes trust and is an example of how to act.

3 Benefits of Corporate Learning

Now that we understand some of the challenges of corporate learning, let’s review a few benefits that go beyond what we previously mentioned.

1. Employee Engagement and Team Building
   In today’s increasingly remote and hybrid working worlds, companies are struggling to establish a company culture. Employee engagement is often transactional in the form of meetings and task handling. Gone are spontaneous chats at lunch or even grabbing a drink after work. Providing space for learning opens additional opportunities for employee engagement with company leaders and with their peers. The ability to engage each other and help each other grow is critical for high-performing companies.

2. Shrinking Skills Gaps
   McKinsey found that 87% of executives and managers surveyed experience or expect to experience skill gaps within the next 5 years. New technologies, emerging competition, and automation will continue to disrupt established markets. For employees and companies to remain competitive and relevant, they must embrace a growth mindset. Corporate learning helps mitigate these risks. By committing to investing in employee learning, companies are helping ensure they can continue to compete in an ever-changing competitive landscape.

3. Employee Fulfillment and Satisfaction
   Learning is an opportunity to explore new challenges. Many employees, especially millennials and gen z, don’t yet know what exactly they want to do. They want to do meaningful work. If not given the opportunity to grow and develop, then they’ll quickly become discouraged and mentally checkout. When they do, then it’s only a matter of time until they look elsewhere. The truth is, many companies are offering competitive wages, so salary is very important, but it’s not the only factor for continued employment. Employees want to be challenged and that means they want to grow. It’s better to harness this urge to grow to power your company rather than push it away.

3 Steps to Create a Better Corporate Learning Environment

Corporate learning is important. Though there are challenges, there are great benefits as well. What are some steps to creating a better corporate learning environment?

1. Start Small
   You can even start with your team. Everyone has their expertise and knowledge that helps them do their job. Setup a weekly 30-minute meeting with your team where you have one team member host each week. Let them choose the topic and review it with the team. The important thing is to kick off learning as quickly as possible. Think of your approach as an iterative one – agile vs waterfall.

2. Share, share, share
   Today most of us overshare, at least regarding our personal lives. However, and to our detriment, we don’t often share our knowledge at work. Provide a space for employees to share their knowledge with others. It can be a video portal to create how to videos or even a shared chat channel to quickly share links and interesting articles. Learning doesn’t have to just be about the company products and services. It can be adjacent to the industry or even something totally different.

3. Experiment with Format
   Many folks think development is simply a webinar for compliance training. However, that doesn’t work for everyone. Provide development opportunities through a variety of mediums such as video on demand, interactive video, virtual classrooms, or even in-person get-togethers. Many companies are starting to experiment with hybrid learning events to reach their global workforce through interactive, online, and in-person training extravaganzas.

Kaltura Corporate Training Solution

The Kaltura Video Cloud is uniquely positioned to help companies develop and deliver their corporate learning. I even hosted a live demo webinar about this very topic last fall and have a new one scheduled in a couple of weeks (beginning of May 2022).

What does Kaltura do that’s unique? Well, Kaltura takes a 360 approach to video and learning:

• Share and distribute video through the Kaltura Video Portal. Manage access through enterprise-grade access controls. Make it as open or locked down as needed. Not only are your videos easy to share, but they’re discoverable.

• Create and publish content with Kaltura content authoring tools. Tools like Kaltura Capture help you create dynamic video presentations and video quizzes transform passive content into interactive, lean-forward training. You can even create interactive path videos. Check this one out from Deloitte.

• Deliver engaging virtual classrooms. Learning is better hosted in a place designed for learning. That’s exactly what you get with Kaltura virtual classrooms. Prepare persistent rooms with content, share video synchronously, live assessment with quizzes, engage with polls and chat, and provide awesome breakout experiences.

• Kaltura products are designed for learners of all abilities. Learn more about our commitment to accessibility here.

The Future of Corporate Learning

As most of our futures, the future of corporate learning will be looking at artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality, and virtual reality. These technologies will help identify learner needs and be able to address them by issuing knowledge at the point of need. They will provide a “real world” experience at a fraction of the cost. They will transform what we do as much as the personal computer and the internet have. In short, it will be a revolution. Many companies are experimenting with these technologies today. See what NVIDIA is doing in the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute for starters.  In parallel to that, we can expect continued investment in remote and hybrid tools to address the immediate needs of our hybrid and remote workforces.

Conclusion

We’re operating in different places than we were just two years ago. Employees are now evaluating what they are doing and where they are. In many ways, we’ve become a bit more existential. Younger workers expect a lot from their companies. They expect companies to reflect their values especially around diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). There is opportunity and there is also risk. The opportunity is to invest in our employees to promote their growth as well as ours – to develop our corporate learning. The risk of not doing so is to lose our best employees, those that want to grow and do more and do better and then lose our competitive advantage. The investment in corporate learning is worthwhile.