All training has challenges, but corporate technical training has unique challenges. If you’re tired of dealing with the challenges of corporate technical training, then we’ve got some tips for you.
What employees need to know to do their work is constantly changing, and it’s nice to equip employees with the necessary technical knowledge to do their jobs better. Believe it or not, many employees entering the workplace lack the technical skills for their jobs. That goes against all the disinformation about younger generations being tech-savvy but lacking people skills and other soft skills.
It’s never good to focus on training based on generations, learning styles, or anything else like that. This post breaks down some of the challenges in corporate technical training and gives you some strategies that will help break down those challenges.
It’s time to pave the way for a more effective and efficient learning experience focusing on performance. From outdated training materials to disengaged employees, numerous obstacles hinder employees from successfully learning technical topics.
What are some common hurdles you may encounter in corporate technical training?
That’s an excellent question and one we’ll jump into next. We’ll cover rapid technology changes, outdated content, and disengaged employees. There are endless more challenges, but these are some of the most prevalent.
Effective corporate technical training depends on overcoming common challenges.
After you learn about some of the challenges, some approaches to help you overcome them would be helpful, right?
Yes, yes they will be. The approaches will help mitigate some of the challenges of corporate technical training. From gamification to microlearning, we’ll explore helpful techniques that will boost employee engagement and enhance employees’ success with company technology.
By the end of this post, you’ll have a toolkit filled with strategies to tackle pesky corporate technical training challenges head-on. Before we get to that, let’s get into some of the challenges we will try to overcome later.
Corporate Technical Training Challenges
When it comes to corporate technical training, organizations often face several challenges. These challenges can hinder the effectiveness of technical training and prevent employees from learning how to use the tools they need to do their jobs effectively.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these challenges, and next up, you’ll learn some ways to overcome them.
Rapidly Advancing Technology
One of the most prevalent challenges is the rapid pace technology is advancing. With agile software development processes comes the need to also rapidly build training resources or provide training to employees.
It’s not only about new tools being implemented daily; the tools and processes employees are used to change rapidly, too. As new tools and software emerge, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep up with the latest changes and ensure your employees are up to speed.
Technology changes as fast as it’s released. Training must keep pace.
Employees can’t be expected to simply “move with the times” and “figure things out.” IT’s job is to maintain and improve company technology and the infrastructure that runs it. But that’s not all about doing tech work; it’s also about ensuring employees are trained.
Updating training materials and ensuring they’re accurate constantly can be daunting. Every application change means hundreds of changes in a course or among performance support materials.
Outdated Training Materials
Because technology is rapidly changing, there will always be outdated training. It’s not as easy as it sounds to audit training content for accuracy and make sure there’s a plan to keep it all up-to-date.
Not only that, but it can also be challenging to figure out exactly where all the changes are in training. Making a connection between product owners and training can be difficult. Updates are made to software to improve it for employees, not making it easy to update training.
Few things are more frustrating than training content that doesn’t match the technology.
If there is printed material out there, that’s not easy to update. Even digital training is a challenge, as it is difficult to figure out exactly how each application change affects training.
Imagine if you’re taking a course and what you’re learning doesn’t match what the system looks like. You’ll get bad information that doesn’t engage you with your job. Imagine the frustration for employees who learn one thing and then have to figure out how to apply it to updated systems.
Disengaged Employees
That leads us to the final challenge: maintaining employee engagement throughout training. Taking training sometimes feels like a necessary evil. It can be boring and sometimes if the training isn’t built well it’s impossible to see how it connects to your job.
Then there’s the problem that outdated training has on employee engagement. They’re forced to take training, but the training content isn’t even up-to-date! That will immediately kill employees’ motivation, and they’re likely to tune out.
When employees tune out, you lose them, and they won’t learn anything.
Employees also get disengaged when training is long and boring or overly complex and filled with jargon. None of that is going to help employees learn company software. Corporate technology is already difficult enough; it doesn’t need complex training to make things even worse.
Employees are less likely to retain or apply information effectively in their roles when disengaged. Fear not! There are ways to overcome disengaged employees and help employees tune in and see value in their training.
Overcoming The Challenges
If you can overcome the three big challenges mentioned above, your corporate technical training will be more valuable to your organization. It’ll also help employees do their jobs better, earning them their keep in the organization.
Each one of these methods to overcome corporate technical training challenges can be applied to any of the three challenges above. I’ll help point out some of those ways and how they can minimize or remove challenges.
Let’s dig in!
Gamification
If you haven’t heard of gamification, now’s the time. While it’s not a blanket solution for disengaged employees, the right strategy can be helpful to improve employee engagement. Just please don’t start throwing badges and certificates on everything and call it gamified.
Gamification is an effective strategy for boosting employee engagement and motivation when done well. By incorporating game-like elements into technical training, such as challenges or simulations, you can create a more interactive and enjoyable learning experience.
It’s not all about making training fun, either. Employees might want to take it and pay attention when training is engaging. You know what happens when people pay attention? They probably will learn.
Personalized Learning
Every employee needs to know something slightly different for their job. When you build training broken down into small topics, employees can personalize their learning path and choose what’s relevant to them.
Also, some learning experience platforms can suggest content relevant to employees based on previous choices and other factors. Learning what’s relevant is a great way to make technical training more engaging. Relevance is king of learning, after all.
By personalizing each piece, you’re also making it easier to work around rapidly changing technology. With shorter videos and job aids for each task, it will be easier to keep that content updated.
The Potential of Microlearning
This one ties in closely to the method above, personalized learning. By breaking things down into single tasks, microlearning, you’re helping employees learn easier and get just what they need and no more. That helps them personalize their experience, and microlearning is extremely powerful, too.
There’s a reason video platforms are popular for learning: it’s easy to find a short TikTok to learn from, and YouTube videos are sometimes short, too, depending on the topic. Microlearning is an amazingly valuable strategy for corporate technical training and is a great way to overcome disengaged employees.
Microlearning is a great way to overcome corporate technical training challenges.
Microlearning is more engaging and helps you overcome outdated training material and rapidly advancing technology. Putting out a one-page job aid is much easier than building a course or creating a video. It’s also much easier to search for content if labeled correctly. That makes it easier to update it. When it’s short, it’s also easier to update.
With microlearning, employees can get what they need when needed and nothing more. Each specific topic can be searched for by employees, which makes it much more helpful for them.
Engaging And Realistic Scenarios And Practice
Sometimes it’s impossible or unnecessary to break content into small chunks to be considered microlearning. That’s perfectly okay as long as the content is engaging and meaningful.
Ideally, corporate technical training content will have realistic scenarios that make it more engaging. This also helps employees tie what they’re learning to their job. Good scenario-based learning that employees connect with helps them apply their knowledge and skills in a practical context.
This improves learning outcomes and boosts confidence and job performance while creating more value for employees.
Interactive Assessments
Traditional assessments such as multiple-choice tests may not effectively measure employees’ understanding or application of knowledge. It’s also somewhat annoying for employees who don’t perform well in abstract tests (me!).
Interactive assessments help engage employees and put them into positions where they’re using the technology (or it seems like they are). Rather than answering generic questions about using company software, why not have employees do it and get tested on specific tasks?
Meaningful assessments that show actual ability are better than basic multiple-choice questions.
There’s also an opportunity to allow employees to test out of taking training altogether. That saves them time and makes them thankful that they don’t have to take training for something they’re already knowledgeable in.
The added benefit is that these assessment methods provide a more accurate reflection of employees’ abilities. It also helps identify areas needing further improvement than traditional assessment methods.
Collaboration and Peer Learning
Most people like people and collaborating with their peers. That could mean allowing employees to create their own user-generated training content in a controlled environment.
There’s a lot of potential in using an enterprise social network (ESN) for training to encourage employees to learn from each other and ask colleagues questions. That means any answer can be provided publicly on the ESN for others to benefit from.
A good strategy around an enterprise social network can help overcome all corporate technical training challenges.
This helps your training efforts by making developing training for every possible need less costly. Now, rapidly changing technology isn’t a big deal because new content is constantly being created, and old content can be removed as needed. No more outdated training materials!
The added benefit is that creating opportunities for employees to work together, share knowledge, and learn from each other’s experiences fosters a culture of continuous learning in your organization. That’s learning gold!
It’ll enhance the training experience and promote teamwork and innovation within the organization.
Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality
This one is tricky, but it may make sense for the topic in some cases. Of course, using VR or AR for most software wouldn’t be realistic or necessary. But it may just work for technical training topics for real-world tech, such as engineering or medical technology!
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies allow employees to engage in realistic simulations or scenarios that replicate their work environment. Organizations can enhance skill development and improve employee performance by providing hands-on experience in a safe virtual setting.
I think most employees would be pretty engaged if they got to learn their work with VR or AR.
However, for most corporate technology, another method makes for excellent training when combined with some of the strategies above.
Realistic Software Simulations
This is one of our favorite methods of overcoming corporate technical training challenges. While it doesn’t help with rapidly advancing technology or outdated training material, it can help disengaged employees.
One of the main goals of training is to help employees perform better. That means they need to be engaged and interested in their training. Not only that, but they need to be able to apply what they learned directly to their job.
Realistic software simulations can put employees in the middle of the action, helping them learn better and be more engaged.
There’s no better way to help employees apply what they learn in training to their jobs than realistic software simulations. They are powerful at helping employees learn how to use company software and creating a safe space for employees to learn and fail while learning from their failures.
Practical experience and practice with software applications or systems employees will use in their roles go a long way. By offering hands-on practice opportunities, organizations can ensure that employees are confident and proficient in using the required software while keeping them engaged with training.
Wrap Up
Corporate technical training challenges are inevitable but can be overcome with good strategies and approaches. Organizations can make technical training more effective by addressing challenges such as rapidly advancing technology, outdated training materials, and disengaged employees.
Incorporating various digital learning solutions can create a more effective and efficient learning experience that helps employees perform better.
That’s what it’s all about in the end, too: better-performing employees. We’re always on a mission to help companies improve the effectiveness of their corporate technical training. Schedule a free consultation if you’d like to discuss your next technical project, and we can help you overcome any challenges that may arise.