Anyone who understands some of the best business assets are the employees themselves will quickly understand that improving their skill set will only enhance their overall productivity and output.
Yet how do the employees get towards that level of continuous education?
It all comes from the overall design and strategy of the professional training platform.
What is a Professional Training Platform?
Whether it’s built by the company itself or built by external experts, the concept is the same. The professional training platform is a learning management system that is highly curated and focused on helping keep employees at the forefront of the necessary knowledge in their industry. This means being able to upskill them regularly and keep them relevant and viable assets to the company.
A professional training platform should not be obtained off the shelf and needs to have a dedicated team behind it that will help with the type of training built into it.
It Needs to be Engaging and Relevant
The first key is that while employees want to work on sharpening their skills or expanding their knowledge base, motivation still needs to be behind it. If the pieces of training are dull, overly long, or convoluted, you’ll simply get employees that will go through the motions of completing this as a task instead of finding the actual value behind the training itself.
Make sure to incorporate engaging content, as well as have it updated continuously to ensure that the knowledge is relevant to the overall company and industry.
It’s also important to ensure that the training is about the employees’ specific tasks and workload. For example, the marketing team doesn’t need to take training on updated accounting and taxation information as it’s not relevant for them to know about it, nor does it help enhance their current skill set with their existing roles.
Integrating Your Professional Training Platform with Daily Operations
Another key aspect to consider, besides the training’s content and delivery, is when the training itself happens. Employees, especially these days, can easily juggle multiple responsibilities and may not always have the right energy when it comes time to do the training. Therefore, even with mandatory deadlines and requirements, it won’t help with motivation, but in fact, cause additional burnout and stress.
Make sure that part of the overall professional development strategy and platform comes with dedicated time for employees to take those pieces of training as a part of their daily activities. This will ensure that they are not simply taking these training courses at the end of a long work day or week and will make these training pieces feel like part of their regular routine.
Also make sure that this training can be taken anywhere, when possible. Whether it’s through a desktop or mobile platform shouldn’t matter either, as you want to give complete control to employees to take the training when it’s best for them.
Don’t Build Out a Platform Once and Forget About It
Consider your professional training platform an ongoing investment and a living organism in the overall company. If it’s not appropriately updated, the relevancy of the training will be lost, and it will become an inefficient use of the employee’s time.
Companies also don’t want to lose out on their initial investment with outdated information and learning techniques, so it’s imperative to have that dedicated team build a scalable system, both from a technological point of view coupled with it being from a practical point of view ensures that everything stays within a healthy budget.
Gamification plays a big role when it comes to getting these professional training systems built right. You want to ensure that the training comes with a sense of accomplishment, whether there’s a certification provided at the end or that it is a stepping stone for those that are looking to advance in their career.
Combining your professional training platform with dedicated career tracks will go a long way in helping employees take charge of their careers and work to improve their skills as necessary. This leads to an engaged employee base that’s extremely motivated by this clarity and transparency.
