The corporate world has undergone several monumental changes in the way it operates over the last couple of years, mostly because of the Covid-19 pandemic playing an unwanted catalyst. AS workplaces closed down and the workforce got inside their house, the going got tough, and if not for remote work solutions, many businesses would not have survived the blow dealt by lockdown mandates.
Technological solutions and the internet made it possible for businesses to continue to a great extent by allowing people to work from the confines of their homes. In the new normal, ensuring that the workers receive adequate training and knowledge to perform a job role to fruition became a headache for HR departments and employers.
Today, the face of corporate training has drastically changed because of the sudden digital revolution and other situational demands that have arisen since the second half of 2020.
Although, it’s not like the changes came all of a sudden because many of these were in the making for quite some time because of societal, behavioral, and other stimuli. Let’s take a look at the five new valuable trends in corporate training that stand out.
1. Focus on assessing what learners need in their training
One of the most significant and positive changes in the corporate training pedagogy is the increased focus on actively identifying what individual workers need to learn based on their existing knowledge, skill sets, strengths, weaknesses, and interests. The result of this approach is the popularity and prevalence of personalization of the training process.
A personalized training process allows individuals to feel valued and improves the overall efficiency of an organization by individually making the workers reach the pinnacle of their capabilities.
2. Training technology has evolved & became super efficient and dynamic
Coming back to our discussion on how technology has played a major role in changing corporate training, it will be poignant to mention how learning management systems like Paylocity have revolutionized the way businesses design, create, and impart their training to their workforce.
A capable LMS provides various features to improve the interactivity of the training modules to grab the attention of learners and engage them for better knowledge retention and understanding. It also possesses real-time feedback mechanisms, efficient communication channels, learning progress tracking & assessment services, among other useful features. HR departments have gained a lot from technological progress.
3. Rise in demand for flexible working and training
Ever since workers have gotten a taste of remote work, because of the unavoidable conditions propagated by the pandemic, they have started realizing how they can manage their professional life with efficiency without compromising their comfort and personal lives.
Therefore, the demand for flexibility has risen among workers, and now they expect a hybrid work environment that allows them to work and train remotely for at least some part once the situation calms down and offices start reopening.
4. Focus on mental health and emotional wellbeing
Societal focus on mental health and emotional wellbeing has cultivated a shift in the corporate work culture where business organizations now want to take active cognizance of the same for all employees. The shift is a welcome one and has assured workers that they are more than just cogs in the machine. This is a fairly significant step as an employee who is not feeling their best mentally and emotionally cannot remain happy, and happiness is directly proportional to productivity.
5. Recognition of the vitality of soft skills and human factor
Businesses now realize that soft skills such as creativity, compassion, problem-solving, resilience, emotional intelligence, and more are the backbones of every other skill like hard work and commitment to the job. The recognition of the importance of the human factor and these soft skills is a vital change in the training and development pedagogies followed by the corporate world.
Conclusion
These changes are here to stay and bode well for the future of training. All businesses must be on the same page with these changes if they want to see themselves stay relevant in the future.
