A well-trained workforce is more productive and adaptable to the constantly changing demands of the world. But just like one size fits all pants would be kind of… ummm… yea, we won’t go there, one size fits all training for corporate technical training is equally a bad and counterproductive idea.
Each employee has different skills, roles, goals, tasks, etc. That’s precisely why tailoring corporate technical training is essential. Imagine a world where every employee receives personalized training focusing on their needs and aspirations.
Wouldn’t that be more effective than generic training?
Yes, the answer is yes.
Tailoring corporate technical training is the key to unlocking the full potential of your workforce. Customizing the training programs based on the ways provided in this post will help personalize corporate technical training.
Nearly every training solution for your organization should be custom in some way.
But don’t limit yourself to these methods. Each organization’s corporate technical training is unique, so your ideal customization will likely differ. Working with an instructional design consultant to find the best way is always best.
These methods will work differently depending on your situation, too. Whether entry-level employees or seasoned veterans, each situation is different for onboarding or rolling out a new application.
By identifying some specific traits through a good needs analysis, you can figure out the ideal way to train employees. We’ll explore various ways you can tailor corporate technical training for your employees. We will delve into the benefits of some of these approaches and practical strategies for implementing them.
If you’re ready to revolutionize your corporate technical training initiatives and take your employees’ skills to new heights, onward. These will provide great insights into our process for some projects we’ve worked on and how we’ve unlocked employee potential and made training more efficient and effective.
Understanding the Importance of Tailoring Corporate Technical Training
Training needs to be effective and efficient, and it also needs to create value in your organization. Customizing corporate IT training will ensure employees have the knowledge and skills to excel at their jobs.
Training in the corporate world is about helping employees perform their jobs better. That’s one reason we say it’s best to ditch learning objectives for performance objectives. Assisting employees to perform better after training is essential to success.
These methods of tailoring corporate technical training can help save employees time in training, make the training more effective, and help employees understand their training better. When their training is more tailored to them, it’ll be more relevant to them. Relevance trumps all in importance when it comes to training; relevance is the king of training.
Now it’s time to jump into how you can tailor corporate technical training for employees.
The Ways You Can Tailor Corporate Technical Training
The methods below will help you tailor corporate technical training to employees’ situations. It may be about them or the unique needs of your organization. Whatever it is, these will help customize training and make it better for employees.
Each one will also cover a bit about the benefits of each one as well as how you can apply them. Let’s dig in by role first, a favorite for us since all training should be as relevant as possible, including how they’ll use it when working.
By Role
This is a popular one, probably the most popular, and we’ve used it many times before. It involves customizing the training content based on the specific needs and responsibilities of different roles within the company.
That means people who use a timekeeping system in the corporate office and are salaried would get very different training than someone in the field who is hourly and must clock in. Each role is unique, and the way they use systems is unique.
Roles in your organization are unique in the tasks they perform; shouldn’t their training be unique too?
It’s impossible to have training that covers the general aspects of an application and how to navigate it. That’s not helpful and leaves employees figuring out how it applies to their roles. Sometimes, that may not be difficult, but more often than not, it’s unreasonable to expect.
Training should show how to use a system and how to use it for specific jobs. That includes the company processes and how to do what they’re required for their role.
These are some ways that will help you tailor corporate technical training by role:
- Identify the roles: Determine the different roles that the company technology affects. This could include accountants, salespeople, customer service reps, nurses, technicians, etc.
- Conduct a needs assessment: Like with all training, a thorough needs analysis should be part of your instructional design process. Assess the knowledge and skills required for each role and what they lack. While needs analysis can’t tell you everything, it will tell you a lot. Also, identify the specific technical areas relevant to each role and the level of proficiency needed.
- Define performance objectives: Based on the needs assessment, define clear performance objectives for each role. What do employees need to do, and what do they need to do specific to each role and in general? These objectives should outline the specific skills and knowledge individuals in each role must acquire through training.
- Develop role-specific training content: Create training materials and resources that address the specific performance objectives for each role. The content should be tailored to individuals’ technical requirements, responsibilities, and challenges in each role. Including realistic scenarios and a safe place to practice will make the training significantly effective.
- Customize delivery methods: Consider the most effective delivery methods for each role. Most roles will benefit from hands-on practice in a realistic simulated environment, but that may not always be necessary. For a handful of executives, it may be more effective to have white-glove one-on-one training. Sometimes, it’s simply necessary for efficiency (and often it’s ideal) to use digital training solutions, though.
- Be flexible: Recognize that different individuals within the same role may have varying prior knowledge and experience, and some overlap. Provide flexibility in the training to accommodate differences.
- Offer ongoing support: Corporate technical training should not end with the completion of training. Provide ongoing support and resources, perhaps someone to contact or, even better, an internal community on your enterprise social network, a great way to provide additional training support.
- Evaluate and iterate: Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of the training program by collecting feedback from participants and assessing their performance after completing the training.
Remember that tailoring company technical training by role is an ongoing process that requires regular updates and adjustments to meet the changing needs of individuals and the organization. Not all roles fit nicely into a box, so don’t be too rigid with this method.
Another method to tailor corporate technical training is by locale.
By Locale
Customizing corporate technical training by locale can be beneficial to ensure that employees receive relevant and culturally appropriate content. Each state in the United States has different laws, so we’ve used this method to simplify employee training.
Labor laws are unique in a handful of states, which means they need unique information to understand how clocking in and out works. We’ve used options that let employees select where they primarily work to deliver specific information just to them. That saves everyone hearing about it and also makes it easier by not needing multiple courses for each state.
There are also other ways to customize corporate technical training by locale. Look at some of these localization efforts that will improve your training.
- Language Localization: Translate the training materials into the local language to ensure better understanding and engagement. Consider hiring professional translators or using translation services to maintain accuracy. Just don’t rely on AI; it’s not there yet to rely on for quality translation.
- Cultural Context: Incorporate local examples, case studies, and scenarios that are relevant to the specific locale when relevant. Sometimes, everything translates just fine, but don’t assume it will. This helps employees relate the training content to their experiences and increases engagement.
- Legal and Regulatory Compliance: Ensure the training materials comply with local laws, regulations, and industry standards. This includes addressing specific compliance requirements and incorporating relevant legal frameworks into the training content. Our example was an excellent example of this.
- Cultural Sensitivity: When designing the training, consider cultural norms, values, and sensitivities. Avoid using examples or content that may be considered offensive or inappropriate in the local culture.
- Local Experts and Trainers: While we don’t do training with instructors at all, sometimes it’s necessary. When it is, consider involving local experts or trainers who deeply understand the specific locale. They can provide valuable insights, share best practices, and facilitate discussions relevant to the local context.
- Technical Infrastructure: Consider the available technical infrastructure in the specific locale. Ensure the training materials and delivery methods work with the local technology environment. Making training available on a computer when only mobile devices are available isn’t helpful.
- Feedback and Evaluation: Collect employee feedback in the specific locale to continuously improve and refine the training content.
By considering these factors, organizations can customize corporate technical training by locale. Every circumstance is unique, and none of these are blanket statements. Knowing the best way to tailor corporate technical training without knowing the specifics is impossible.
Another way you can tailor technical training is by task, which is similar but different from doing it by role.
By Task
This one may seem similar to tailoring corporate technical training by role, but it’s not. There may be a lot of overlap between both of these. It may make more sense for your project to tailor training by task rather than role.
If each job is defined by task and sometimes there is some overlap, this could be the ideal method.
Here are some ways to customize corporate technical training by task:
- Evaluate employees’ existing knowledge and skill level to determine their starting point.
- Identify the tasks or skills employees need to perform. This could include a particular application, a certain task in an application, or even project management methodologies or processes.
- Develop a method to train employees for the tasks they lack knowledge on based on what they know vs. what they need to do.
- Provide access to learning resources that are easy to find and access. Don’t bury things in a system. Short video tutorials, online help articles, or even a community to ask questions might be helpful.
Customization is critical in corporate technical training, but sometimes you must figure out how best to customize it. Customization is a broad term that could mean something different to each person.
Tailoring the training to specific tasks employees perform can maximize their learning outcomes and contribute to their professional growth. It will also save them a lot of time because they won’t have to sift through things that aren’t helpful to them. The more training that’s irrelevant to them, the less they will benefit from it.
By Skill-Level
Every employee comes to new technical training with a different level of knowledge. It’s impossible to know their background and skills. Even skill levels mean different things to everyone, so an expert for one person might mean a beginner to the next.
These are some helpful ways to customize corporate technical training by skill level:
- Assess the Skill Levels: Begin by assessing your employees’ skill levels. This can be done through surveys (not that great), interviews (a little better), or, ideally, skill assessments. Identify the specific technical skills that need to be improved based on their current proficiency.
- Define Skill Levels: This one is important because skill level is relative. Create a framework or a set of skill levels that align with your organization’s technical training program. For example, you can have beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. You must define the skills and knowledge required for each level, or else they’re useless.
- Test out: Allowing teammates to test out who might be skilled is a great way to tailor corporate technical training. That way, employees who know the content don’t have to waste time in training, whereas those who do can learn what they need to know.
- Dynamic Training Modules: If it’s easy for employees to self-identify their skill level, then you can give them the option of doing just that. Each training module could have a different skill level, and employees could start at their skill level.
- Adapt Training Materials: Customize the training materials to ensure employees at different skill levels have the necessary resources. A place where less skilled employees can ask questions is helpful. Offering them more resources in a resource center or possibly even contextual help by providing employees with in-app help that shows them specific processes is also beneficial.
- Provide Individual Support: Offer individual support and mentoring to employees based on their skill levels. This can be through one-on-one coaching sessions, dedicated Q&A sessions (aka office hours), or access to subject matter experts who can address specific questions or challenges.
Skill level is a great way to customize corporate technical training in many circumstances. Every employee is unique in their knowledge, regardless of role, task, and locale. By customizing corporate technical training based on skill levels, you can ensure that employees receive targeted and relevant training that addresses their specific needs and helps them improve their technical proficiency.
The last method of customization we have is by objectives. Let’s take a look before we wrap things up.
By Objectives
Our last method of tailoring corporate technical training is by breaking things into clear objectives. How is this tailoring training? Because it makes things more approachable and allows employees to choose what’s right for them. We laid this out in more detail because this form of training customization is considered microlearning, a valuable strategy for corporate technical training.
If technical training is broken down into specific objectives, it’ll be easier for employees to find exactly what they need. Not only will it be easier for them to find what they need, it’ll also be easier for them to learn only what they need.
Breaking training content down into small tasks is a great way to make it more applicable and easier to find.
Employees don’t need to be burdened with everything about a new application. They need to know just what they need to get their job done and nothing more. They might not learn anything if you burden them with too much training.
We also say that nothing is important if everything is important. Trying to train on everything is a considerable risk. Tailoring training down to the objective level based on performance is ideal. That means employees can find what they need, only what they need, and know how to perform it in their jobs.
Assess Employees’ Needs to Help Determine How to Customize Training
Before I wrap things up, I want to reiterate the importance of a thorough needs analysis before customizing corporate technical training. You won’t get it right if you don’t know your audience well.
Analysis is one of the most critical steps of the training design process.
If you don’t know your audience and the project needs very deeply, including exact performance objectives, then customizing training will be futile. It’s not helpful to base how you break up and tailor training based on your knowledge.
Even if you feel you’re a veteran at your organization and know employees’ needs, reevaluate that thought. Nobody knows as well as the employees doing the work daily.
Wrap Up
Tailoring corporate technical training is a powerful strategy that allows organizations to maximize employees’ potential for learning new company technology. Companies can ensure their employees have the knowledge and skills necessary for success by customizing training programs based on individual roles and needs.
Whether it’s role or by locale, there are various ways to tailor corporate technical training. The key is understanding that one size does not fit all regarding employee development. By investing in personalized training initiatives, companies can create a better-skilled workforce ready to tackle any challenge and feel more comfortable in their job.
If you’re ready to take your organization’s training initiatives to new heights and unlock the full potential of your workforce through tailored corporate technical training, start implementing these strategies. If you need help or would like to talk it through with an expert, schedule a free consultation so we can learn more about your project and needs.