Author: Prashant Sharma

The workforce of the majority of organizations is evolving in one or the other ways because of numerous factors like competitive markets, multigenerational workforce, new complexities of businesses, digital evolutions, employee diversity, and much more reasons. The new L&D strategy set, talents, efficiencies, and creativities are snowballing day by day, making the entire professional universe even more competitive. Due to the major shift from a knowledge-based economy to a digital economy, now a vibrant workforce is a mandate to sustain the business.

Under such circumstances, it’s obligatory to remain and keep your teams updated with the required skills, knowledge, and talent. Recent research has proven that investment in this sector is one of the significant expenses management is undertaking to create and ensure a coordinated strategy to meet the company goals in the long run.

The training and Learning process is defined in this diagram as per their contribution in a real sense to the employees.

Training is the process of equipping employees with the knowledge and skill required to perform a particular task. Learning and development is the process of absorbing that information in order to increase skills and abilities and make use of it in a variety of contexts. Constant learning results in the overall development of the resource, which results in giving the company a high-performing employee.

Components to be considered while carving the L&D strategy process in an organization. For most prominent responsibility of L&D is to have a flawless process of attracting and hiring the right people and retaining them for longer.

• Attracting and Hiring the right talent.
• Training them as per the organizational needs.
• Motivating and engaging them.
• Building employer brand in their mind.
• Emphasizing and creating a value-based culture.
• Developing their capabilities.

L&D Objectives:

It’s important to understand and define the real objective behind this entire process of L&D. The focus is on shaping the desired culture, fostering new ways of thinking, developing new behaviors, and driving strategic opportunities.

Main Objectives

• Drive Organizational Growth– Moving closer to the end goal
• Enhanced Resource Capabilities– Closing the skill gap, resulting in better performance
• Engaged, Involved and Thriving Workforce– Resulting in increased retention
• Better Learning Culture– which triggers intellectual stimulation encouraging creativity and innovation
• Individual Growth– which brings better job satisfaction

L&D Framework or Strategy:

Capability assessment and Training Needs Identification
Every organization has different business priorities and demands for various skill sets. They first need to analyze whether their employee is skilled enough to take the role and deliver the expected result. Hence it’s vital they first have to deep dive to find out the real need and gap in training among its employees.

Understanding the real gap in skills, behavior, and attitude is the key point to be considered before implementing an L&D strategy. At Inferenz, this process is well defined, discussed, and revised as and when required for better clarity about the employee’s real state. Most of good and well-organized companies have a deliberate and systematic approach to capability assessment followed by training need identification.

Training Need Analysis & Evaluation
After finding those gaps, the next thing to be done is to study and understand the extent of that gap and how this gap can be fixed or met.  Training needs analysis to seal that gap effectively, whereas training needs evaluation is simply understanding whether training should be conducted or not for that particular gap. Or in other words, the gap can be fixed by some other means but not training.

Designing the precise Program/ Curriculum of training
Once the needs are understood, the approach to meet the needs is planned, and training programs are selected and designed effectively to make sure the impact is deep and long-lasting. At Inferenz, the L&D strategy teams create the content as per the need of the employees, team, or the project they are involved in. The designing of content depends on the majority of the intent, type of crowd, understanding levels, and learning styles which certainly vary from employee to employee, and the projects they are involved in.

Many organizations now provide digital training, but research says there is no substitute to in per-personal classroom training. The main objective remains the same the learning must be utilized in their actual job.

Execution & Implementation
At Inferenz, training is planned, scheduled, and managed flawlessly so that there is a clear, better, and continuous understanding of the subject matter with the required handouts and takeaways for reference.

Evaluation of the impact
The impact of the training provided needs to be evaluated to understand its effectiveness. They are generally measured by Key Performance Indicators KPIs. There is no simple way to accurately find out the impact of such training. Many organizations have the traditional methods of evaluating that through learning program completion scores etc.

Yet much other organization like Inferenz believes in a real-time attitudinal change or Feedback from the participant after the session and reporting leader to gauge the efficiency and impact of the training conducted.

Incorporation of L&D interventions into HR Processes
Just like the L&D process must be aligned with the business of the organization, it must be aligned with the HR Processes as well. Human resource is an integral part of any organizational system; they are involved in scrutinizing profiles, interviewing and selection, appraisal, and succession planning of the workforce. To understand this at Inferenz, L&D gets merged with the HR system to evaluate and train the candidates accordingly. At the same time, with the training evaluation, the HR team has a fair understanding of the actual growth of the employee, which can assist them in a genuine appraisal.

An organization’s ability to learn and translate that learning into action rapidly is the ultimate competitive advantage. — Jack Welch, former General Electric CEO

As the Pandemic hit the World in 2019, digitalization of the entire L&D is the biggest revolution in the field of Knowledge Sharing.

The era of learning has changed drastically. Learners nor the techniques have remained the same now. The last couple of years of the Pandemic has turned things upside down. In fact, we have discovered skills, creativity, and passion that we could never think of or could never have even attempted. Over a period of time, organizations, companies, professionals, and almost all individuals have learned to grow and understand the importance of knowledge and .earning in life. Hence they are eager to learn and be informed, updated, and smart to walk confidently with the evolving world.

With this alteration of learning, let’s discover the latest L&D trends every Learning professional must be updated about in 2022.

• Reskilling and Upskilling for Digital Workplace.
• Content Repurposing.
• Agile Learning.
• Customized Learning Experience.
• Engaging and Impactful Material.
• Collaborative Knowledge sharing.
• Gamification

1- Reskilling and Upskilling for Digital Workplace.

The digital era has trained the young generation naturally to be adopted the technology molding their professional life accordingly. A press release in Feb 2021 says, because of the evolving scenario, 58 % of the existing workforce in the organization needs new skill sets to do their job efficiently.

Organizations are now wanting their employees to be in pace with technology or learn new skills in accordance with the same. Hence, upskilling and Reskilling have become the mandate for sustaining in the digital workplace.

Upskilling, which means adding an existing skill set within a role due to technology, and Reskilling means learning and adding a new skill for a different job role. Free and democratic social media access has made people become self-learners.

2- Content Repurposing

The content is an extremely important aspect of learning and development because its quality of it ensures the interest of the reader, viewer, or learner. However, it is extremely important to keep revising and making it more interesting, catchy, and convenient for today’s learners. Creating and repurposing such content increases learners’ interest as well as adds to several competitive advantages, improves SEO, and targets a better audience.

Many companies research and proves that this increases their page views and posting the same content with different flavor also helps them identify which form of content is giving them the best results. Repurposing content also helps you save time in creating new content, topics, and keyword research.

3- Agile Learning

Learning and Development (L&D) Agile way of learning is basically to roll out the training content and knowledge in bits and parts that are distributing or breaking a large volume of content into paramount or small content for better and quick learning.

Things like a quick read, audio, activity, and video knowledge in a small bit, and parts that induce quick and effective understanding amongst the receivers.

ALSO READ: 5 Essential Tips for Corporate Learning

4- Customized Learning Experience

The old approach of “One size fits all” is not acceptable to the kind of learners we have today in the era of digitalization. Just like the way not all fingers are of the same size, we have a wide range of learners, their types, learning style, capabilities, and absorption levels. The learning leaders need to revise their approach and put efforts into providing or creating user-friendly content that the learner can access at their ease.

• Creating specified training paths.
• Using AI technology ensures learners’ control over their own learning.
• Self-paced learning.

Creating content that is close to user experience is the demand of the time because of the big shift in the learning era and the learners both.

 

5- Engaging and Impactful

In the e-learning world, the learning level becomes extraordinary when you have content that appeals to the learner. Content that engages them mentally and them feel more focused and involved in the process. These quick tips, like real-life experiences, factual information, case studies, short and simple yet interactive, gamified content, pictorial, audio-based, etc., keep the learner engaged and impacted.

6- Collaborative Knowledge sharing
Collaborative Knowledge sharing is used as a strategy for organizational development. The sharing of any information or knowledge, or skill grows more with communication, transfer, and sharing of knowledge, discussions, developmental programs, and interactions through one-to-one or using social media. Human resources can play a major role and play a strategy or practice to create collaborative knowledge-sharing work culture by implementing all of the above.

7- Gamification
When learning becomes fun, it’s more in demand. There are several ways now to make training and learning more evolved and interesting to increase their usefulness. Games have always been fun for all age groups; people love to play and win. It’s an exciting way to interact with the online world. It certainly improves the absorption of knowledge and retention of the same and keeps the learning process ongoing and in demand.

Conclusion

Digitalization has profoundly impacted the Learning and development (L&D) sector. There is an extremely progressive and positive revolution that is taking place for the excellent development of future generations.

Corporate Learning has become customary in the last 2 decades because of unpretentious reasons like developing organizations, conception of different roles and departments, smart and capable workforce, evolving learning dynamics, and last but not least, the big digital revolution.

As per a recent study, 75% of 1500 managers surveyed from across 50-odd organizations were found dissatisfied with their company’s learning and development function. They felt they were not given enough training and guidance on their roles to grow further as a professional.

Organizations and even employees today have become aware, alert, and prompt in ensuring their development. They are well aware that it is important to be fully skilled, proficient, competent, and groomed in every way to withstand the competitive business environment.

With all the above, let’s discuss 5 essentials of Corporate Learning to be kept in mind in today’s era.

1- The Alignment of Business and learning.
2- E-Learning in corporate learning.
3- Choose the correct Learning Software.
4- Managing Generation diversity.
5- Making it a Culture.

1- The Alignment of Business and learning

Corporate training now is no more ordinary and general training with those stereotypical learning materials and styles. Today organizations prefer their workforce to understand, act and perform in agreement with the company goals, vision and mission. With the awakening of business experts and increasing competition, organizational leaders are focusing on upskilling and reskilling the employees to drive business performance hence corporate training needs to be designed in accordance with the same.

2- E-Learning in corporate learning

E-learning obviously needs to be included in corporate learning to reach out to more learners in a convenient way in this rapidly evolving digital world. It is adaptable for all kinds, less expensive, and in demand of the hour. It requires no staff or trainers but smart content.  It can reach from one employee to a group of employees and even hundreds of them in no time. The delivery mode is faster than the traditional methods. It also ensures the customized content per the learner or the business need. It gives the flexibility to learners to learn at their own pace and style anywhere, anytime.

3- Choose a correct Learning Software

Continuous employee training is a mandate now for organizations to succeed. From new employee onboarding training to the departmental or particular skill or enhancement or even new skill training, all the training is to be planned, created, scheduled, and uploaded for the learners for easy and quick access. There are many software available to handle the above, but you must go for an LMS (Learning management software), which:

• Help you to do a proper need analysis
• Bifurcate the content as per roles and responsibilities
• Enables learning at a global scale (if your employees are globe diversified)
• Able to provide collaborative learning
• Save time and money both

ALSO READ: The Future of Blockchain Technology in India

4- Managing Generation Diversity

With the diversified work culture, there is a huge difference between the generations who work together in an organization. Companies hire people from all generations because they need creative and dynamic people along with experienced and settled individuals. They all have different learning styles, paces, absorption, and attitude. Generation diversity is another challenge for corporate training.
To meet this challenge, organizations must:

• Avoid making assumptions and stereotyping anything
• Age and seniority-specific need analysis
• Listen to the diverse set of learners
• Customize the learning content and style
• Adopt various communication styles
• Refine existing learning techniques
• Assemble age-diverse teams for projects

5- Creating a natural learning Culture

Learning has been a continuous process for ages. It must be well taught and set in the mind of employees. Not employees from all industries, departments, or even individuals feel the need for training. Many people are reluctant to experience this because of the industry or even their individual nature. The need has to be generated so naturally that it looks like a general process that everyone has to go through consistently. Culture development helps a lot in the entire corporate learning process.

It’s best concluded as –  

 “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me, and I learn”
Making sure the involvement, once involved it becomes an individual path.