Personalization in Training

In 2018, personalization is not only desirable, it’s demanded. You don’t have to try on different clothing combinations at the mall; you can get a personal stylist to ship new outfits to you. You don’t have to browse Netflix for hours to find a show to binge—Netflix’s algorithms will instantly find a likely new favorite. You don’t even have to hunt for new products and services to try when Google uses your search terms to present ads targeted directly at you.

Training is no different—personalized professional development is in high demand. It helps put the “custom” in “custom corporate training.” When an organization has a decent budget and timeframe for training, why would they choose to purchase rote, off-the-shelf solutions? They can get training created just for them and with personalization features that will draw learners in even further.

Personalization can be applied across the following employee training needs: compliance, sales enablement, onboarding, and brand. Here are some examples of what that might look like.

Personalization at Work in Corporate Training

Compliance Training

Compliance is a tough one. Nobody actually likes compliance training, and studies show that compliance training as traditionally produced is actually ineffective. How to make it more appealing through personalization? Here’s a thought: train only on what’s needed.

Obviously, you’ll have to meet some legal requirements (which will vary depending on your field). However, whenever you can skip something, do. Find or get training that addresses the compliance issues rampant in your field, industry, and organization. Don’t waste time with prepackaged training that contains hoursof scenarios your employees have never and will never experience while working with you.

Sales Enablement Training

Traveling is a huge part of many sales jobs, which means that salespeople often find themselves in and out of the office. When they’re in, it’s not unusual for them to have a ton of meetings and calls, so taking big chunks bof time to complete training isn’t practical. Enter microlearning. Microlearning feeds information to learners through many short courses instead of through a long one. It’s inherently personalized since it allows learners to take the training at their own pace, doing quick spurts of training whenever they have time. It also makes it easier for your salespeople to access the exact information they need in the moment instead of having to dig through a course to find it.

Combine that microlearning with mobile learning, and you have training that’s accessible any time and anywhere. That’s some extreme customization.

Onboarding

Not everyone at your organization has the same role, so it doesn’t make sense for everyone to take the exact same onboarding training. Oh, sure, all roles within an organization will have pieces in common—training about the employee handbook, for example, or about working with private health information. But there will be some significant differences, so why not personalize the training depending on an employee’s role? Developing different learning tracks for different roles or allowing learners to build a custom suite of courses from the options in your LMS are great ways to present information in a personalized way.

It’s also worth pointing out that high-tech courses aren’t the only way to go with personalizing onboarding. Every part of a new hire’s experience is part of their onboarding—it’s not just a one-time training event. Part of personalizing that experience means getting their office space ready, their nameplate ordered, and their login set up!

Brand Training

Brand training 101: show the learners how they impact the brand. At AllenComm, we’ve used brand training activities where learners enter personalized details about their job role, social activities, and social media reach to calculate a “brand score.” This score shows the learner how much they personally impact their organization’s brand. While something like this is currently seen as a nice-to-have, in many cases it’s more of a must-have. Employees at all levels need to know how they affect their brand.

Another great way to personalize brand training to create workbooks that employees can use to complete brand-related exercises and record their own goals for improving the way they represent the brand. These workbooks can be classy notebooks that can be slipped into a briefcase or backpack—or they can be online templates stored on your LMS, depending on the needs of your organization.

Personalization can be applied in these ways and more. If you’re in need of some personalized training for compliance, sales enablement, onboarding, or brand, contact us!