Employees need to know how to use technology. No job doesn’t rely on technology in some way, so employees need to be well-trained in company technology.
If your company wants to be at the top of its game and survive in the long run, it must stay ahead of the curve. That means investing in technology as well as investing in employees to use the technology properly.
That leads us to this question that every employee in every organization should ask themselves: How can organizations effectively develop their workforce’s technology competencies to drive innovation and competitiveness in the market?
Corporate technical training, that’s how. These tips are a good framework for correctly developing employees’ technical skills. That means providing them with relevant, effective, and meaningful training to help them do their jobs better.
No assumption should be made that employees know how to use your company’s technology unless it’s part of the role (programmer, etc.). When employees are adequately trained in company tech, their work will be streamlined, productivity will be boosted, and they’ll be able to grow continuously in their roles.
Leaving employees to learn technology on the job is a mistake that your company will pay for one way or another.
Don’t assume younger generations are tech-savvy and can learn themselves. Also, don’t assume they’ll pick up good habits on the job. Training based on generations is a lousy thought trap to fall into. Quality technical training must be well thought out and executed purposefully, not informally.
Next are the tips that you should focus on to develop employee technology skills training. This ensures company technology is being used correctly, efficiently, and effectively.
Six Tips for Developing Good Employee’s Technical Skills
No matter what type of applications your company uses, if it’s not something employees use at home, they’ll need training. However, the training needs to be planned well and effectively. Otherwise, employees will be thrown into the job ill-prepared and resent their lack of training.
When training is too informal and employees are thrown into the job, they’re likely to be unhappy and likely to leave. Check out the real story we told about an employee who didn’t receive much training at all.
So check out these tips, dig deeper into them, and execute a corporate technical training plan to help your employees do their jobs better. People tend to like it when they’re trained and prepared to do their job rather than just being thrown in the fire, whether with another employee or not.
Assess Current Technology Skills Gap
Good corporate technical training, like all training, starts with a thorough needs analysis. The most essential part of that analysis is determining the general knowledge gap among employees. It’s not possible to start at the beginning, but it can also be just as harmful to begin at a too advanced stage.
Employees need to be eased into company technology at the right level. If they’re a small minority, that could mean those with more basic skills get more one-on-one coaching. It could also mean that more advanced employees can test out of required training.
Conducting a thorough skills assessment can be done through various methods such as surveys, interviews, or skill tests. By understanding the specific areas where your employees lack proficiency, you can design targeted technical training programs that address their needs directly.
Set Clear Objectives for Training Programs
Having clear objectives is essential for training development and the effectiveness of the training with employees. Yes, employees should know what they’re in for as much as what the instructional designer is designing.
Rather than starting with learning objectives, often written vaguely and with language lacking action, stick to performance objectives. We’ve proposed to ditch learning objectives for performance objectives. We believe this is the right way to focus training on actionable skills that matter.
Performance objectives will set the stage for focused training that’s effective.
Back in the days of school, basic learning objectives were found because you’re learning the framework for a productive life. But it’s all about being productive and performing a job in the workplace. Everything being learned should contribute to effective performance.
Clearly defined goals will guide your employees and help measure the effectiveness of the training initiatives. If you don’t know what employees need to do, you can determine whether they know what to do.
Leverage Online Learning Platforms and Tools
Whether employees are coming back to the office or not doesn’t matter. The expectation is that employees can still learn what they need when needed. Yes, some types of training will benefit from a hybrid model (instructor-led + digital), but digital is almost always the way to go for technical training.
The platform must meet the requirements and be easy to use, as employees need to learn effectively. If they need to learn the learning platform, then it’s a failure. If available, use the enterprise social network to take learning even further with digital skills. This can be a valuable tool for employees to share their knowledge and help each other.
Sometimes, generic off-the-shelf training can also be used in your learning platform. That can be helpful for some types of technical training that aren’t custom to your organization. Off-the-shelf training isn’t a solution that can replace custom training but can supplement generic training.
Encourage Peer-to-Peer Knowledge Sharing
This one goes hand-in-hand with the online learning platform. An enterprise social network is as much of an online learning platform as anything else. That’s why enabling employees with social learning is so powerful. You can encourage it and provide the place employees need to share their knowledge.
Yes, an enterprise social network can enhance corporate IT training.
Encourage employees to share their expertise and experiences with their colleagues to foster collaborative learning. A social community for a specific application and some strategic communications can work wonders.
Even office hours can facilitate peer-to-peer sharing. Yes, you’d have the experts on to answer questions, but enthusiastic employees will sometimes take it away with a tip or trick they learned on their own.
Provide Ongoing Support and Resources
Is there somewhere employees can go to get additional help? No matter how hard you try (you shouldn’t try hard), there’s no way to answer all questions employees might have about a system. That’s a good thing! Training that answers all possible questions will be overwhelming and borderline useless.
Too much information leads to information overload, which makes it useless. We like to end all online courses we create with information on where employees can get additional support.
Employees should always have a clear place to go to get specific questions answered.
Additional support could include job aids, help articles, contextual help, or even an email address to ask specific questions. This is also an excellent opportunity to plug a community on the enterprise social network to encourage peer-to-peer learning.
Corporate technical training should not be a one-time event. It’s an ongoing process with the potential to sharpen technical skills and improve things. No SOP (standard operating procedure) should always be set in stone, especially for technology.
By providing ongoing support, you reinforce the importance of continuous learning and create a culture that values skill development.
Incorporate Real-World Scenarios and Simulations
The more real corporate technical training is, the better. That means giving employees scenario-based learning and simulations that give them real practice. If software training is built and not fully interactive in a simulated environment, it will provide little to no value to employees.
Looking at software in a slide deck as someone explains it while clicking from screen to screen is of little help. What’s more helpful? Realistic, immersive scenarios in a software simulation that mirrors the actual application.
While videos are regularly used for software tutorials (YouTube is full of them), videos are definitely not the best way to learn software. They’re more theoretical, and switching between the task and the video is often difficult.
The more real practice and realistic scenarios employees experience, the easier they’ll apply what they learned to their work.
Software simulations allow employees to learn and practice in a safe environment with real scenarios. Yes, that also means you can’t use a quick software tutorial-creating software to click through a process and quickly produce a software simulation.
That which is quick is often not quality or effective for employees. The goal shouldn’t be to make development faster; the focus should be to make more effective training.
Employees gain real skills that they can apply immediately to their work by working in high-fidelity simulations with real scenarios. This practical approach enhances knowledge transfer from the training program to the workplace.
Wrap Up
Developing employee company technology skills requires a strategic approach that addresses your organization’s specific needs.
By assessing the current skills gap, setting clear objectives, leveraging online learning platforms, encouraging peer-to-peer knowledge sharing, providing ongoing support and resources, and incorporating real-world scenarios and simulations, you can create a transformative learning experience for employees.
Remember, the goal isn’t to create training faster; it’s to make more effective training. Speed doesn’t mean effectiveness or meaningfulness, which often wastes more time than doing things right.
By investing in employees’ technical skills, companies empower them to do their jobs better and feel more qualified. That feels pretty good and is a driving factor in keeping employees around for the long run.
So, embrace these corporate technical training tips and unlock the full potential of your workforce. Schedule a free consultation to see how we can help take your employee’s technical skills to the next level with quality digital training solutions.