In the days before digital, corporate training often conjured up images of boring one-sided presentations and disengaged audiences. Now that the digital era has arrived, trainers must learn to leverage new methods and technologies to make corporate training more effective—achieving enhanced learning outcomes by engaging and inspiring learners.
The world of corporate training is changing, just as the work environment is changing. With staff no longer situated at one location, and with an increasing dependence on online resources, companies need to adapt the way they train to meet these new challenges. Companies, such as AxEdge Consulting, are developing a range of options to provide training that works around both the needs of the employer and the needs of the employee. Flexibility is key, as everyone is an individual and every business has a different culture. Effective learning materials and hands-on exercises will provide employees with a more conducive studying environment that fits around their normal habits but, at the same time, the use of face-to-face training, drawn from the more traditional forms of instruction, will help employees to utilize their learning effectively.
Face to Face
While many things can be done virtually in the digital age, physical interaction remains one of the best ways to learn. Communicating and developing relationships through personal interaction is one of the key reasons face-to-face learning continues to be a preferred methodology. Learners gain from the depth of information and experience that is imparted to them by the tutor. Tutors will have many years of experience in their field, which will enrich their tutorials in a way online learning cannot. This personal element allows learners to ask questions and receive an immediate response in the verbal language and style that they are comfortable with, therefore avoiding any problems of miscommunication or misinterpretation.
In search of new and better training tools, many corporate trainers have turned their attention to interactivity—the dialog that takes place between humans and computer software. By merging serious game-design thinking with interactive software, trainers are now able to leverage interactivity to create immersive, engaging and highly effective learning experiences for their employees.
If you’re looking for new tools and solutions to take employee learning and training to a whole new level, consider these six benefits of integrating interactivity in a corporate training strategy.
Enhanced Learning Environment
Interactivity strategies utilize interactive training software to allow employees to explore their learning environment—in their own way and at their own pace. In this environment employees will also be shown directly how to do things, a learning tactic that brings far better results than telling employees what to do.
The most successful training companies use graphical environments that are similar to the daily life situations—office, factory, etc.—of the employee learners. They also integrate visual components that make the content more eye-catching and encourage exploration of the training module by embedding hyperlinks to other pages that learners might find interesting. The net result of this enhanced environment is a better overall learning experience.
Improved Decision-Making
Through the use of scenario questions and simulations, interactivity allows employee learners to apply knowledge and make decisions in a risk-free non-judgmental environment. By removing the fear of failure, learners are free to formulate action plans by exploring unpredictable paths that lead to unknown outcomes. This type of experiential learning can help individuals gain valuable insights, from both their successes and failures—insights that invariably lead to better on-the-job decision-making and the performance of complex tasks.
Reinforcement through Feedback
An interactive training/learning platform requires employees to respond to what they are learning. This forces them to integrate the learning content with their own unique way of thinking as they stop to reflect on the answer they should give or the path they should choose. Once the choice is made, the learner receives feedback to help them recognize what they know versus what they should know. At the same time, interactive software gives trainers the ability to assess the performance of individual learners spontaneously, and in real time.
As an employee moves through the learning process, immediate feedback reinforces what they have learned and helps to steer them toward making better choices without compelling them to do so, as is often the case with traditional training and learning techniques.
Higher Levels of Engagement
Interactivity software integrated with serious game-design thinking doesn’t just present learning content. It immerses learners in the content and gives them control over the learning process. As a result, learning experiences become more vivid, stories more powerful, and questions more provocative. That all adds up to high levels of engagement than could never be achieved in a traditional classroom setting. Better engagement translates into better learning outcomes.
Greater Retention Rates
Studies show that a higher level of engagement during training activities results in greater retention and recall of knowledge on the part of the learner. And interactivity strategies such as the use of multimedia elements, real-world scenarios, and even basic achievement levels and badges can help to transform the most mundane training modules into engaging, thought-provoking and memorable learning experiences.
Corporate Training is important for both employees as well as corporate.
Some of the benefits of corporate training are:
Improved employee performance
- The employee who undergoes the necessary training is more competent to perform in their job.
- The training will give the employees a greater understanding of their responsibilities within the corporate.
- The confidence which they will gain would enhance their overall performance which will benefit the company in the long run.
Improved employee satisfaction and morale
- The investment in training that a corporate make shows the employee that they are valued.
- Employees who feel appreciated through training opportunities may feel more satisfaction toward the jobs they are undertaking.