So Many Kinds of Corporate Training!
Rebecca Rozakis
What comes to mind, when you think of corporate training?
Is it a hired trainer lecturing to a packed conference room? A series of online modules new hires have to complete in their first weeks on the job? A formal certification process? Or maybe it’s wider than that. Learning and development come not just from the top down, but from knowledge shared between employees. But how can all this be captured, measured…and improved?
The fact is, employees’ needs to learn vary wildly, depending on their job function and the kind of information that needs to be passed on. Trying to determine your training needs based on one or two learning and development use cases will end up leaving gaps. Corporate training comes in many varieties, each with their own needs and advantages, and any given employee will probably need multiple types over their employment at your company.
So how many of the following types of training does your organization support? How many do you actually need? And how will you balance all these different priorities?
Type 1: Basic Skills Training
Description: There are some skill sets that are useful across many industries. How to use specific common software—Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Adobe Creative Suite. Basic networking skills. Business etiquette. Whether trying to upgrade an entire workforce’s skills or bringing individuals up to speed, sometimes an organization will need to offer training on the fundamentals.
Type 2: Soft Skills Workshops
Description: Many organizations want to improve their employees’ soft skills, from conflict resolution to stress
reduction to management skills. These are usually taught in a seminar or workshop format.
Type 3: Compliance/Governance Training
Description: For some jobs, employees are legally required to keep current certifications to practice their professions. While it’s the employee’s responsibility to pass single-time tests such as the bar or CPA exam, many employers must re-certify their employees regularly. This could also apply to compliance issues such as security training, safety training, harassment training, and the like.
Type 3: On-boarding and On-Going Training Specific to Your Company
Description: While training for common skills and certifications can be relatively easily outsourced, every company will have information specific to them that must be transmitted. Starting with on-boarding, when new hires need to learn about the company and its culture and values, through continual updating of market conditions, technology,
and product lines, companies need to train employees on information that cannot be obtained elsewhere.
Type 5: Job-Specific Skills Training
Description: Not everyone in your company has the same needs. Salespeople, repair teams, support staff, and so on: each need their own specialized training.
Type 6: Just-in-Time Training/Capsule Training/DIY Training
Description: Most of the types of training until now have been top-down, planned courses for bringing everyone up to speed at once. But it can be even more effective to make training on specific procedures easily searchable and discoverable, and let employees train themselves whenever a new need comes up. Whether it’s a sales executive brushing up before walking into a pitch or a repair person troubleshooting a specific kind of equipment in the field, employees will sometimes need to know a certain piece of information, right NOW.
Type 7: Knowledge Sharing
Description: A huge amount of information lives inside your employees’ heads. Make it easier for them to share that knowledge with each other, and keep institutional knowledge alive. Build a culture of transparency and empower your employees to improve performance across the company!
What Do All of These Types of Corporate Training Have in Common?
They go great with video! Today’s video technology is flexible enough to handle all of a company’s learning and development needs. Video makes it easier to do both live and on-demand training, at scale. Easy to create and easy to access even on mobile, video helps teams build the searchable knowledge database they need to bring new team members up to speed fast. Better yet, it’s instant information available whenever and wherever it’s needed. Taking a holistic approach to video, through a centralized video knowledge base, is the next step in corporate training.
