Nothing changes more in a company than technology. If the organization isn’t prepared for technical change, it risks stagnation and eventual failure. With technological advancements happening at breakneck speeds, employees need to be able to adjust to changes and navigate the transition to new skills and platforms.
Corporate technical training is a powerful tool for helping employees adapt and usher them through the change process. Communication is at the core of change management, but communication can only do so much to help employees navigate technical changes without training. By providing the right technical training, organizations ensure their employees are equipped with the necessary tools and knowledge to handle the challenges of changing technology and IT innovations.
Technical training provides employees with the necessary skills to help them transition from one system to another. When done right, it gives them the skills needed to apply directly to their work rather than figuring out how to translate what they learned into their work. There’s a hidden cost of inadequate software training.
Providing employees training for technical changes proves to employees that you care about their professional development.
Good corporate IT training allows employees to transition quickly and effectively to new systems and technologies without disrupting daily tasks and operations. Good training with custom eLearning can also minimize the time it takes to learn new skills and offer a level of realistic practice that doesn’t exist in instructor-led training. That’s one reason we don’t create instructor-led training for technical topics.
When a company invests in quality technical training, it can rest assured that its employees are knowledgeable, highly skilled, and ready to tackle any technical change. Quality training makes the difference between good and bad employees.
How does technical training pave the way for smoother transitions during technical change?
To answer this question, this post explores the importance of technical training, its role in the technology change process, and how it can be used to create a more effective and efficient transition. With the help of technical training, organizations can easily ensure their teams are properly equipped and prepared for any technical changes they may face.
The Benefits of Corporate Technical Training
Corporate technical training is essential for organizations undergoing technical changes—so, all of them. By investing in the right technical training, companies invest in their employees to ensure they have the skills and knowledge to navigate the transition process and how it affects their jobs.
There are many benefits associated with technical training.
Technical training can help employees become more comfortable with a new platform, software, or system at work. It is invaluable for gaining a deeper understanding of new processes, how they work, and how to perform them in relation to their job. Employees who are better equipped to use the new system and the right processes can do their jobs more effectively and efficiently.
Technical training ensures employees have the skills to use new tools in the context of their work.
You’ll also find that adequately trained employees help organizations prepare for the challenges of switching to a new system. Employees who know what they’re doing are more likely to see a problem when (and they will arise) it happens and can identify potential issues. If they can’t solve the issue, they’re more likely to report it so it can be resolved.
When properly trained, employees are more resilient to all organizational changes. Adaptability is a considerable strength in today’s ever-changing workplace. If an organization provides excellent employee training, it’s a less scary process, and people will be more open to change. Heck, they may even get excited about it someday!
Employees trained in technology will be able to do their jobs, and organizations will reduce their risk of disruption. It all comes down to happier, more resilient employees who can do their job better.
Types of Corporate Technical Training
Organizations can utilize various types of training when preparing for a technical change. Many traditional organizations opt for classroom-style training, which is fine for some types of training but not the best option for technical training.
There are many better types of training to provide employees with technical skills, which is why we specialize in these digital training solutions, including:
- eLearning (with software simulations, etc.)
- Videos
- Contextual Help (typically using a digital adoption platform such as WalkMe or Pendo)
- Performance Support
- Microlearning (in the form of performance support, videos, or whatever)
For smaller organizations, instructor-led training might be a viable option, or even 1:1 coaching. However, these methods of training don’t scale well for large companies.
Regardless of the type of technical training chosen, the goal should be to equip employees with the necessary skills and knowledge to transition to working with the new system and applying newly learned skills to their jobs. By investing in the right technical training, organizations can ensure their employees are prepared to handle the challenges associated with technical change.
The Technical Transition Process
Before beginning the technical transition process, organizations must understand the process and ensure that their employees are adequately equipped to make the transition. To ensure a successful transition, organizations should develop a plan that outlines the necessary steps and timeline for the transition process.
This plan should include a timeline for testing, implementation, and training the new system. One risk we often see is that training is done too early. While training should be planned early in a technical change, employees shouldn’t be trained until as close to the transition as possible. That means training employees as close to the time of need as possible.
A thorough process ensures you’re training to the right needs as well as doing it thoroughly without too much unnecessary info.
Project managers typically account for everything in the technical transition process, often including a list of tasks required to complete the transition. This plan should also include how employees will transition, including communication and training. That’s one reason a project manager must bring training professionals into a project as soon as possible.
Monitoring the progress of the transition process and adjusting the plan accordingly will increase its success. Evaluation can’t be forgotten as part of the transition process either. It’s essential to understand what worked and what did not.
Preparing for Corporate Technical Changes
Once the technical transition plan is in place, organizations can begin preparing for technical changes. They must communicate the changes to employees and ensure they’re adequately prepared for the transition.
Often, that involves having change champions and working with front-line managers who directly connect with employees and can prepare them for change. Communication and training are the two most essential parts of preparing for technical change.
Training should help employees understand the new technology and how it’s used in their jobs. In other words, it should be performance-focused rather than knowledge or expertise-based.
Preparation for training should happen at the same time as the change is being planned for, well before launch.
Never forget that employees don’t need to know everything. Sometimes, only a few tasks must be known, and other tasks can be provided through performance support, the often forgotten yet highly effective form of training. Don’t bother with user guides and other technical documentation; for the most part, those will rarely be used by employees and best serve the help desk or developer.
Not every question asked should be trained on. Sometimes, it’s best to leave those for the help desk or the experts. You have to strategically focus on the most needed-to-know information and leave the rest for other methods of helping employees. Effective technical training comes down to the fact that nothing is important if everything is important.
Ensure there’s some support in the transition period, either a phone number or email address, where specific questions can be asked.
Organizations can ensure that employees can better handle the technical changes by providing support.
Utilizing Corporate Technical Training During Change
Once the transition process has begun, organizations should use technical training to help their employees handle the changes. Working with a skilled instructional design consultant can help make the process go smoothly.
Here are a few steps to make the most of technical training during periods of change and transition in technology. This process follows closely to the popular (and for good reason) ADDIE model that ensures a proper framework for creating the right training that’s also effective for the problems or changes at hand.
That means you should cover all the steps to create effective training. Don’t risk jumping into any tool and throwing something together that’s overwhelming and unnecessary. This is a great way to end up with too much information and create ineffective training.
The ADDIE model is an excellent process for creating effective technical training during technical changes.
You can see how we use the ADDIE model to design effective training that creates value rather than wastes time.
Always spend the most time on the minimum necessary analysis and design. These are the most critical steps. If you spend most of your time on analysis and design, the rest of your project should go smoothly. Development, implementation, and evaluation will come together if you get the first two phases right.
We’ll spend a bit more time on evaluation next.
Measurement and Evaluation of Corporate Technical Training
All good things come to an end. But they shouldn’t simply end without reflection or lessons learned. Measuring and evaluating the success of corporate technical training efforts is essential.
The success of corporate technical training can be measured in many different ways. Those metrics should have been determined when preparing for technical changes. What are the success metrics of the overall change as decided by stakeholders and leaders at the beginning of the project?
Improvements can be made to technical training if you know how successful they were.
While feedback can’t provide concrete evidence of success, it’s a good measuring stick for how employees feel after the transition. Knowing if they feel like the organization supports them can be helpful. This information is extremely valuable because it ultimately determines whether employees see the organization as valuing their professional growth.
By measuring and evaluating the success of the training provided, organizations can ensure that their employees are adequately prepared to handle technical changes.
A thorough evaluation can help organizations gain insight into their technical training program and identify areas for improvement. Investing in the right technical training can ensure a smoother transition to the new system, and evaluation can help organizations determine whether that smooth transition happened.
Challenges of Technical Training
Nothing is perfect, including corporate technical training as a solution for technical change in an organization. Although technical training can be an effective tool for navigating technical changes, it can also present some challenges.
One of the biggest challenges associated with corporate technical training is ensuring that employees are adequately prepared for the technology transition at work.
As you may know, applications develop quickly and may change before training can be delivered. Furthermore, it can be challenging to update training as the application changes. Corporate technical training is often a moving target.
Technical changes are tricky because they themselves are always changing. That means training to the change must keep up with what’s changing.
Another challenge associated with corporate technical training is ensuring employees take it seriously. Training will not be considered relevant if it is boring or not adequately tailored to employees’ jobs. Irrelevant training will not be taken seriously and will likely either not be taken or be taken as quickly as possible to get it done (compliance training, anyone?).
Boring page-turners are often clicked through quickly to finish them. Another considerable risk is having too much information. If the training is too long and provides too much information, people won’t learn important information or may tune out entirely.
There’s nothing worse than making employees spend hours in training, getting train brain, and not learning anything. Effectiveness is essential, and there’s a considerable risk of creating ineffective training without proper analysis and design.
Wrap Up
Technical training is crucial for employees to adapt and navigate technical changes at work. It provides employees with the necessary skills to handle challenges that come with changing technology and IT innovations.
Investing in quality corporate technical training results in a highly skilled workforce ready to tackle any technical change. Technical training facilitates smoother transitions during otherwise stressful work situations. It’s essential for organizations undergoing technical changes to ensure that employees can navigate the transition process and understand its impact on their jobs.
Different types of technical training can be utilized to prepare for technical changes, with digital training solutions being particularly effective. Regardless of the chosen training method, the goal is always to make it easy for employees to transition to new technology.
Working with the right corporate technical training company is your first step in ensuring employees are well-supported with effective training for technical changes. If your company is rolling out new technology, schedule a free consultation so we can learn more about it and see if we’re a good fit to help employees navigate the change with effective corporate technical training.