Corporate Training Trends in 2013

This year, corporate training professionals and business leaders can take advantage of major corporate training trends to develop training that effectively motivates learners to make real business impact.

Let’s face it, many times training professionals get a bum rap. For us, innovation has to trickle down. Have you ever left a meeting with your IT department or boss and realized you don’t have the budget or support to create a mobile app or hire the people you need to motivate your learners? Does it get better or worse when you see the rush to mobile and marketing videos your company has created without your involvement? We at Allen love our industry. And for the first time in many years we believe that we can take advantage of the changes around us.

In 2013, these changes are converging into something that can be harnessed to create incredibly influential training and improved human performance specifically in the areas of retail training, creative compliance training and customer training. We are calling out three areas that are being driven by forces strong enough to drive innovation into the training and education functions in our respective companies.

In the next 12 months we expect to see major initiatives in retail training, compliance training and customer training driven by changes in how we educate our people and harness technology already at our fingertips and react to a new business environment that is challenging our firms.

People (learners) and their behaviors related to information retrieval and memory are shifting based on today’s fast-paced workplace and media outlets. Keeping these learners engaged and motivated in training through rich media, bite-sized content and gamification are essential for creating training that is both palatable to the learner and creates real workplace change. Ignoring the needs of our people has put our jobs at risk and left us the odd man out when looking at how our companies market and communicate internally and externally to their customers.

Technology Web-based training and mobile learning are not simply different delivery methods for the same old courses. Not envisioning the potential to create better methods of reaching our learners based on new technology can be a downfall of an organization. We have created incredible solutions for our clients based on the use of new technology and continue to strive to view new technologies as outlets for creating better training, not just simply rehashing old, unchanged content into a new device without adding innovation. For the vast majority of our clients, these technologies already exist in the workplace. We as trainers don’t need to ask for Smart Phones to be rolled out to our employees or customers. Our LMS vendors support many forms of social media and our employees and customers are accessing our content through multiple sources and content formats.

The Business Environment is always changing, but let’s face it, sometimes change is disruptive and stronger than in the past. As the economy grows stronger, competition becomes more inherently recognized. The companies we work for need to react faster and with more determination to changing market conditions. The managers we work for are no longer being measured by cost savings and efficiency. They are being asked to grow and enter new markets. At the same time, we cannot ignore that more regulation both from internal and external sources are a big part of how we run our business. Our places of work are exposed more than ever and checking the box is just not enough.

In the most positive way this is our “perfect storm.” Based on our analysis of our client base and industry research, we have defined three areas of great impact: retail, compliance and customer education.

Retail training
The customer experience is king for retail, be it online or in our store, the solutions we can offer our associates and customers are ours to use or frankly to lose. How effectively we motivate our employees, harness the technologies they are all using and make them accountable to the customer experience is our greatest task. So many retailers seek to copy their competitors and can instead use the training function as a way to build and strengthen their brand. Retail organizations are coming to the realization that if you spend more resources on employee training, you will reap the benefits.

http://business.time.com/2012/06/18/future-of-retail-companies-that-profit-by-investing-in-employees/
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-apple-trains-store-employees-2012-6

Customer Education can be ignored at your own risk. Technology has created an easier, on-demand solution for customer training online and through mobile devices. Bite size pieces of information that speaks to a disparate audience can help to create a better customer experience and better adoption of services and tools that an organization has to offer. It should come as no surprise that top training companies like Allen are helping educate consumers globally in 28 languages and multiple formats. The organizations that we work for would rather be part of how their customers acquire knowledge than just relying on the unmanageable variances of the World Wide Web. The old adage, “if your can’t beat them, join them” is so true in spreading effective training to our customers.

See examples here: /videos/ebay-shows-you-how/

Creative Compliance Training
This has been an area long ignored by our customers and the market as a whole. All around us we realize that the companies we once trusted have failed to deliver on the trust they have been given by us as their customers and partners. No one industry is being spared the scrutiny of the regulator. The leadership of the largest corporations wants to foster a better culture and work environment for their respective companies. Some of Allen’s best customers are demanding more of their compliance related training. Now more than ever before, we can develop training that enhances critical thinking related to compliance issues. New technologies have allowed us to overcome logistical needs for global compliance, while rich media has provided a hand in creating training that learners view as relevant and worthwhile, creating better performance even within the constraints of a regulated environment. One of the projects we are most proud of being asked to partake in is the award-winning courses for the Risk Management Association on ethics in lending.

http://www.rmahq.org/tools-publications/rma-university/rma-university-online/ethics-and-commercial-lending-demo

Please spend the time in exploring our future blogs on learner engagement, technology and business environment as they relate specifically to retail training, compliance training and consumer education.

Reach out to us to have a conversation. We want to share and learn from you!