What Should We Expect For The Future of Corporate Training?
Corey Bleich
🍿 4 min. read
It seems that new corporate training trends are embracing technology now more than ever, but what does the future of employee training look like for your business?
What are some of the emerging corporate training trends?
At EdgePoint Learning, we believe the biggest shift in the future of eLearning is going to be training that occurs seamlessly in the flow of work. Compartmentalized trainings (i.e., on Thursday morning you go to a training, then you put that manual back on the shelf and keep working in the afternoon) are being phased out as on-the-job training with immediate application emerges as a major trend.
And this only makes sense with the way your employees are living out in the world.
With everyone connected through smartphones and devices, the various aspects of our lives are now more integrated than ever. Just as push notifications alert you to sales and specials when you walk into a store, so too will future corporate training initiatives drive more holistic and integrated training opportunities, with microlearning leading the way.
10 trends in the future of corporate training
There is a lot of training noise out there – buy this software, implement this training, go to this conference. To help you cut through the static, here are ten emerging trends that are the future of corporate training.
1. Geofencing
Geofencing is one of the most convenient emerging trends in training and development. Using your smartphone or other device, geofencing delivers bits of job-related training and development just when you need it.
Walking onto a jobsite Monday morning? Geofencing alerts you to any changes in regulations that occurred over the weekend. Cellphone technology uses your location to give you only the information you need to get the job done.
2. Individualized training
There is no longer an adequate one-size-fits-all approach that works (if there ever was!). Your employees are coming to you with specific and varied training needs.
One of the biggest future of corporate training trends is a more individualized approach to training that allows employees more choices in how they approach their own learning. A good LMS that offers a menu of trainings for employees to choose from is a must for this approach.
3. Adaptive content delivery
Artificially intelligent content delivery that adapts to your employees’ corporate training needs is also emerging as a way to personalize and individualize training.
This type of training (gamification being a good example of adaptive content delivery) predicts learner behavior to keep training relevant, interesting, and fresh.
4. Soft skills training
Maybe you've scoffed at the idea that focused training for soft skills is imperative to the success of your business, but it’s time to reexamine that belief.
The Stanford Research Institute International and the Carnegie Mellon Foundation found that 75% of long-term job success depends upon soft skills mastery and only 25% on technical skills.
Other research from LinkedIn identified soft skills as the number one training priority among CEOs. Soft skills are going to be the future of workplace training.
5. Virtual and augmented reality
Virtual and augmented reality is truly the future of corporate training. Long a training staple in certain industries (e.g., pilot training and other simulators), VR is now expanding to more areas as a way to practice a skill before it actually needs to be applied. Augmented reality offers benefits from customer service to healthcare and beyond.
Would you want to be a neurosurgeon’s very first patient? Probably not. VR allows employees to test-drive important skills with minimal risk. Read our full write-up of AR corporate training trends and predictions here.
6. Virtual mentorship programs
You may be hiring employees fresh out of college who have never had a job before. Why? The competitive job market has sent many millennials and Gen Z students into college in order to compete. However, the resulting college graduates have great technical skills but little understanding of how to apply them.
Online mentorship programs, either through your own company or outside of it, can help coach these inexperienced workers to increase their productivity, longevity, and chances of success.
7. Improvised instruction
While careful planning of employee training is important, one of the corporate training trends to watch is the rise of improvisation in instructional design. This uses only materials readily available in a given space to design instruction and can go far beyond just teaching skills or facts.
Improvisational design also teaches problem solving and teamwork, two of the all-important soft skills mentioned above.
8. Data analytics to capture ROI of learning initiatives
You need to make every dollar you spend on training count.
Using data analytic tools to capture the actual ROI of your company’s learning initiatives helps you plan strategically to get the most bang from your training buck. It's not the newest trend when it comes to the future of corporate learning, but it continues to be vital with new tools out constantly to help you streamline your reporting process.
9. Repositioning training as a benefit (not a burden)
You have probably heard groans when announcing the next wave of training to employees, but what if you position employee training as part of the benefits package instead of something to be endured?
While much of this has to do with the quality and relevance of the training itself, on-the-job training can help employees improve their skills and advance their careers, all on company time and without paying a dime.
Packaging this as the holistic development of your employees as people (instead of cogs performing one function over and over) is more in line with the expressed values of the younger generations of workers.
10. Microlearning
Microlearning continues to play a huge part in the future of corporate training, providing employees with easily-digested bites of information or instruction that can be immediately applied to a task or project.
This trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down or going anywhere any time soon.
Keep up with corporate training trends
Still stuck on how to manage and adapt to the future of corporate training in your company? Reach out to the EdgePoint Learning team. We can help you learn more about the unique training trends that directly impact your industry or region.