Your Complete Guide for How to Effectively Train Employees with Technology
Did you know that 68% of workforce believes training employees and skill development is the most important benefit their workplace can offer? Here’s everything you need to know about training employees in a modern setting, along with some best practices and tips on how to use advanced technology to maximize your investment.
Training Employees : The Nitty Gritty
You probably already know that employee training and development are all the ways in which you can help your staff learn new skills, gain industry knowledge, and brush up on their techniques. But did you know that businesses who prioritized employee training saw a 24% increase in profit margins on average when compared to companies who didn’t invest in this strategy? Besides supporting bottom line objectives, consistent employee training actually improves their overall engagement, builds trust, and ultimately leads to lower turnover rates.
But in order to reap all of these rewards, employers will have to do much more than simply host a presentation or share a slide deck. These outdated formats are not only less effective, they fail to take modern team structures into account, leaving behind remote or mobile employees. A simple solution for the modern day workplace? Technology of course!
Source: Flickr
The top benefits of combining employee training with advanced technology
Besides being far more effective, the use of technology in training provides tangible benefits such as:
- Getting Millennial and Gen Z employees up to speed using tools they are already familiar with.
In recent years, studies have shown that Millennials in particular are likely to leave a position within two years if they are unsatisfied with how their skills are being developed. To put that into perspective, it can cost anywhere between $4,000 to $8,000 to hire one employee after spending roughly 42 days to do so. In order to get the most out of your investment into these resources, it’s important that you invest in training that helps make your employees more well rounded.
- Increasing overall employee engagement, which has many benefits of its own.
Humans spend a great deal of their lives at work and their level of enjoyment while there can impact their performance. Employee training helps people feel like their role is important for the bigger picture. But it can also help them bond with teammates and feel more connected to the brand’s core values. All of these factors make up a healthier office environment which leads to happier, more engaged employees.
Technology used for employee training helps standardize the process and, even if they’re not all in the same room, shared experience is psychologically proven to bring people together, giving them a common touchstone regardless of where they are located, how long they’ve been in the industry, or what position they hold. And while you can try to replicate in-person training at every office, there’s no real way to track progress or make sure the experience is uniform for each group, eliminating the shared experience factor from the dynamic.
- Aligning right-on-time training with individual employee development.
Group employee training can still have fantastic effects on individual growth. Because employee training technology is so easy to use and highly accessible, managers can provide these lessons ahead of big events, as a refresher mid-quarter, or any other time their team’s skills will be put to the test. But technology also allows managers to alter individual tracks, so when certain employees begin the training they can also receive bonus modules or quizzes on things relevant to their unique position.
Removing Barriers for Employees with Disabilities
Whether or not your employees are officially registered as disable, tools like the ones mentioned below help level the playing field and boost the success of your team as a whole. By providing these technologies, you create avenues for social good and personal fulfillment as well as improved business performance, a true win-win scenario.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
And as you can see from this image, training and workshops are a must for employees to achieve their full potential. With these major benefits in mind, let’s take a closer look at some best practices you can use to guide your next steps.
Best Practices of Training Employees
Besides integrating advanced technology into employee training you should also make sure to do the following:
- Blended learning led by individual instruction via live stream can help surpass challenges presented by teams with employees from diverse backgrounds, educations, and cultures.
- Your training method must be based on concrete and achievable goals that go beyond simply hoping your employees will learn a new skill from it.
- Present learning opportunities in a variety of ways so that employees can learn in a format that makes the most sense to them. This, of course is possible through the use of employee training technology.
- In order to host an effective training, you must understand your audience. Before you schedule the training, be sure to go through your invitation list and conduct a training audience analysis. The information you gather will help form your strategy moving forward.
- Mobile friendly training and development tools are a hot trend in this arena right now and are expected to remain one of the more popular options for a while. They help managers incorporate relevant social media features, gamify progress, and create smaller, easier to digest lessons.
Once you’ve got these modern employee training tips down, it’s time to take a closer look at ways to get the most out of you and your team’s investment.
6 Powerfully Effective Ways of Training Employees Through Technology
You can use any one of these tools to supercharge your training methods or combine them as you please.
1. VR & AR as a Training Tool
Source: AF.mil
Virtual reality employee training is now available to businesses in any industry. Big brands like Walmart have already adopted this technology and other successful companies are following suit. Research has shown that VR & AR can actually help new hires get up to speed in half as much time as it would take without using them, so it makes sense why this trend is catching on.
But VR & augmented reality training might not be for everyone. It’s worth considering the serious downsides presented by this tool, which are mostly the fact that it’s not really that scalable and some people still get motion sickness from it. Either way, virtual reality gadgets are continuing to improve with more and more companies finding creative uses for it (including nursing homes in this article that are making their residents’ lives better).
2. iPad & Tablet Based Training
Source: Twitter
Your employees probably have these types of devices at home for personal use, so the learning curve on this technology is practically nonexistent in this day and age. Even today’s schools are finding ways to help educate their students through iPads. Apple products in particular are helpful for employee training because they can easily sync up with other brand devices like computers and phones. So no matter where employees are in their training, they can just pick back up on another platform without missing a beat.
If you’re going to use tablets of any kind in employee training, keep these tips in mind:
- Pair a Learning Management System with your device. Make sure it has a responsive design, especially if you expect employees to transition unfinished training to their home environment after work or when they’re on the go.
- For this type of device, eLearning modules are your best bet. They enhance learner engagement and can make use of re purposed training content (like videos) to deliver bite-sized, easier to absorb lessons.
- If your team has mostly of non-desk employees, you should definitely be using these tools. Retailers of all kinds are finding that iPads and tablets used for employee training work best in this type of environment.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
3. Desktop Computer & Laptop Training
Whether you use an app, a native program, or a cloud-based software, employee training through these desktop computers and laptops have a lot of benefits. And while these tools aren’t exactly new (personal home computers have been around a little over 40 years now) not every office can buy enough computers or laptops to offer each employee their own device for training, which is why technology rental is an attractive option for any budget.
4. Mobile Phones as a tool for Training Employees
If employees are reimbursed for using their own mobile phones during training, you can implement a BYOD (bring your own device) policy for these sessions. Otherwise if data security is a concern or if not everyone on your staff has access to market-leading mobile phones, it’s worth investing in some rental equipment for this particular tool.
There are some really awesome ways to use mobile phones for employee training. From on-boarding to soft skills to compliance, the options are endless. Because mobile phones are a highly portable solution, you can either use them as your sole training device or combine them with desktop or laptop computers so employees can learn on whatever is most comfortable for them. But mobility is especially important for traveling sales teams or any profession where companies train employees in the field.
5. Software Based Training
It’s affordable, convenient, and engaging. No matter what training software you use, you’ll still need to use one or more devices to help facilitate the use of it. One of the major advantages of using software based training in addition to videos or eBooks is the ability to measure and track progress. Some programs are injected with AI, which means they can do things like create individual lesson tracks as the user progresses through the course.
AI can also help gather information to create reports on overall team progress. Managers can then assess this data and look for trends, weaknesses, and patterns to better inform future lessons, creating a constant cycle of improvement that will both future-proof the businesses themselves and improve the baseline performance quality of teams as a whole.
6. Using Video Walls in Training Seminars
Source: Twitter
Experts predict that video walls will become a more integral component of office settings both in terms of customer interaction and internal procedures. In addition to impressively filling lobby spaces with targeted marketing content, there are lots of other creative uses for this technology.
Video walls can support your business goals in a variety of ways and employee training is certainly one of them. Besides cutting down on physical handouts, video walls can show info in real time, simultaneously display different information across multiple screens. And it can provide touchscreen options for presenters. Furthermore, video chat technology allows instructors to control the video wall remotely.
Audiovisual Training Using Interactive Screens
Audiovisual technology is a proven tool for increasing workplace productivity in the modern office. Not only is it cost effective, it can also help make employee training gain 24/7 access to materials, walk through product demos, and work as a team with remote staff. The reason why interactivity is so important in employee training is because it introduces flexibility to the process.
With audiovisual employee training tactics using interactive screens, managers can effectively:
- Provide learning simulations in which knowledge is absorbed but also directly applied. This helps with deep learning, also known as someone’s ability to retain, apply, and improve on knowledge held long term.
- Implement pop quizzes as needed, measuring comprehension in real time. If you find that employees just aren’t getting it, you can maximize training ROI by altering the lesson as you go or postponing the module until they’ve mastered this subsection.2. Projector and Video Conferencing Presentation for Employee Training
Projectors are practically synonymous with education. But today’s advancements in projector technology is worlds ahead of where it was a decade or two ago. In fact, projectors are now considered one of the cornerstones of office equipment that are absolutely essential for employee training.
Beyond common sense benefits (larger, more visible screens and affordable equipment) projectors are also critical for another tool we’ve briefly touched on: video conferencing. Whether you’re training office teams across the country or saving on travel expenses, video conferencing offer budget-friendly effective methods for employee training.
Now you’re ready for some practical application!
Once you’ve mastered your employee training strategy with some help from advanced technology, be sure to catch up on other tech trends you might be missing out on. And don’t worry if you don’t own any of the tools mentioned above. You can always rent them through RentiPads. Our helpful team of professionals can help guide you through the process and help you determine the best tech for your employee training needs.
Acknowledgement: This blog is contributed by Maria Waida and edited by Jim Jain
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