4 Essential Training Needs Every Company Should Meet

By Mohana Radhakrishnan, COO, ExpertusONE

A quick search engine query will demonstrate just how many ways companies can approach training and development. Whether orchestrating a strategy for their employees, customers, partners, or sales teams, companies must prioritize the learner experience in order to meet training needs.

This is a unique time in the learning and development world because people across industries are leaving their professions to try something new. The Great Reshuffle has certainly shaken up how companies approach the employee experience. It has also impacted how companies relate to their customers, partners, and sales teams.

But one thing has remained the same: Training is an underlying need across industries and job descriptions, and the need is only becoming more prevalent. The digital transformation has forced companies to rapidly re-evaluate how they do business and how they communicate with team members, and each change they make requires clear communication and training. Digital tools have become more important than ever, and companies have invested in technology that supports a positive digital experience.

No matter the category of learner—an employee, partner, customer, or sales team member—each team member has the same set of basic learning needs. Companies can optimize the employee experience, improve customer relationships, empower sales teams and collaborate with partners all through engaging, proactive, and interesting training courses.

The four essential training needs a company should meet are onboarding training, compliance training, upskilling, and advanced certifications.

Comprehensive onboarding and new employee training

Onboarding is the most basic need every team member will have at the beginning of their tenure with a company. The digital transformation caused by the pandemic only made this more essential. Team members, regardless of role, need to understand everything from daily processes to more complex company expectations. This all must be communicated at the beginning of a team member’s work, but the information should remain accessible well beyond their first quarter as an employee.

To provide a comprehensive onboarding experience, companies must identify essential components of work and determine from there which courses employees should take.

But learners won’t engage with content if it’s not accessible. With a comprehensive set of courses, there is a significant amount of information that must be dispersed. Training managers must divide courses into manageable pieces so that learners can engage with content and retain that information instead of becoming overloaded with details.

One of the best ways leaders can make onboarding training accessible and manageable is by making it interactive. Use quizzes, polls, videos, and more to make content engaging. Schedule videoconferencing sessions so that learners can ask questions after they complete a course.

Compliance training for technical roles

Many industries require rigorous compliance certifications to keep companies in line with regulations related to a product or service. Healthcare providers (from nurses to hospital administrators to medical salespeople) must take compliance courses on a regular basis to ensure that they understand complex procedures and follow industry regulations.

Compliance training is an essential need that companies must meet. For many industries, compliance training is regulated by external organizations and is the make-or-break factor in whether or not a company can operate.

Compliance training is highly specialized, and training managers need to be able to monitor learner progress. Additionally, it’s essential that team members—those taking the compliance courses—have access to information when they are out on the job.

There are a few technological tools and LMS features that can help companies meet compliance training needs in an increasingly digital workplace. First, mobile and offline functionality is essential because it makes it possible for learners to take courses wherever they are located. Mobile functionality is especially useful for team members who work from various locations, like nurses who travel or healthcare providers who visit patients in their homes. Second, compliance training must be measured and monitored so that organizations can collect detailed reporting and analytics about the status of their employees. Hospitals and healthcare providers, for example, must be able to determine which of their team members have fallen out of compliance.

Upskilling and reskilling to stay competitive in your market

Upskilling and reskilling are buzzwords in the corporate world. This is due, in part, to reports showing that upskilling opportunities are critical to employee satisfaction. In this report about the Great Attrition, McKinsey said that the ability to upskill is a critical consideration for employees when they think about staying or leaving a job.

Creating an upskilling or reskilling initiative can help companies stay competitive, and it can also build morale. By providing employees, partners, sales team members, and customers with tools to help them grow in their field, a company is saying that they want to make a long-term investment in their team. Upskilling and reskilling courses can be directly related to a team member’s role—like an advanced course on using specific technologies or tools—or they can be more general courses to help team members grow. Companies can offer leadership, time management, mental health, work-life balance, and communication courses.

The ExpertusONE LMS platform is a great tool for companies looking to provide upskilling and reskilling courses because, thanks to its AI capabilities, the platform can gauge a team member’s interest in a subject and suggest courses based on that information. Instead of sifting through thousands of available courses, team members are fed courses based on their job description, interests, and the classes their peers are taking.

Bonus certifications to advance in an industry

Companies and organizations can also provide bonus certification courses so that team members can move forward in their industries and increase their competitiveness among peers. These courses can range from highly technical training to leadership-oriented classes. Either way, bonus certifications can help companies provide a clear path to promotion so that employees understand how to take advantage of opportunities and advance their careers.

Bonus certifications can also help companies gauge the interests of their employees. When numerous employees pursue a specific certification, this can shed light on an area of interest that may be worth an investment from leadership.

One key factor to consider when looking to provide bonus certifications is that learners should also be able to upload and store their certifications in one place so that they can reference that information or share it with their managers. ExpertusONE LMS platform makes this possible by keeping track of employee certifications within the system.

While different industries require different types of training, one thing is true: every organization should invest in digital training tools that support employee needs, make training accessible, and help team members advance their careers.

An enterprise LMS platform is the best way modern companies can encourage employees, partners, customers, and sales team members to reap the benefits of extended training offerings. An LMS facilitates learning in an engaging, personalized way that benefits both the learner and the company. As organizations look toward the future of digital workplaces, training will become an even more critical component of the digital experience. With the right technology in hand, companies can facilitate engagement and encourage their team members to advance their careers and excel in their industries.

ExpertusONE has the technology needed to support these essential training needs. Our digital LMS platform brings training into this new era of remote and hybrid work, and it empowers teams to thrive and excel in their industries.

Interested in learning how your company can leverage a digital LMS platform to create better learning experiences? Contact us today for a demo.