How to Create a Skills-Centric Strategy to Improve Training Outcomes

Skills development is the foundation of a successful training strategy. With personalized learning experiences and integrated compliance tracking technologies, digital training has become more about developing specific, practical skills than completing a catalog of courses. Companies must embrace this skills-focused approach and deliver learning options so that their employees can hone in on the exact information they need, when and where they need it.

In today’s job market, the skills gap is creating issues for companies and employees alike. In healthcare, a highly technical field, a struggle to embrace digitalization combined with a lack of regular compliance training has negatively impacted the already overwhelming shortage of healthcare workers. In the manufacturing industry, where safety is a daily concern, the need for increased training, better communication, and administration is more prevalent than ever before.

Overall, workers need flexible, ongoing training in today’s job market. As the competition remains fierce, companies must provide workers with opportunities to grow.

So what exactly is skills-centered learning, and how can companies go about prioritizing it?

How skills-centered learning goes beyond basic training

Many companies develop training with vague, overarching goals that are not targeted to the individual learner’s experience. This doesn’t set anyone up for success—your employees or your leadership team.

Skills-centered learning takes your training and development program to the next level, upgrading your training program from basic learning to specific education on specialized, applicable skills. These skills can be targeted to match employees’ job descriptions, unique roles within your organization, and overall needs for future development. No two employees in your company have the same job, even if they have similar titles. That’s why a skills-centered approach to learning benefits each employee and your company as a whole long-term.

To be truly effective, every course or assigned training should have an end objective that is measurable and practical. Learners should understand the “why” behind their assignments, and coursework should add value to their current learning goals. This will help motivate them to keep learning and boost their overall engagement in your company’s training efforts.

How to integrate an effective skills platform

A next-generation digital LMS software expands to include skills platform functions for your organization. A skills platform enables learning on a granular level and allows learners to leave each training session with a clearly defined skill. Learning pathways are a key component of an effective training strategy within a skills platform because they establish clear directives for upskilling or for team members who are entering a new role. A skills-centric training strategy should enable your learners to excel in their fields, combining value-added courses (like those that improve the employee experience and give them opportunities to grow) with required training (like compliance courses).

A digital LMS not only enables skills-centric training—it also offers extensible apps for Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, and more, enabling your employees to seamlessly integrate their skills training into their day-to-day work.

How companies can prioritize skills training

Skills-centered training needs to be beneficial for the learner to be fully effective. So how can companies go about deploying fully effective learning strategies? By making sure their current learning and development systems are up to par.

A successful LMS training platform includes the following key elements:

1. Flexible, mobile training technology: Modern learning doesn’t exist in a siloed environment where employees have to sit in front of a desktop computer from 9-5. In our hybrid and remote working world, digital LMS platforms must reflect the “new normal.” This should include flexible learning on the go, which means employees can access their coursework anytime, from anywhere. Companies that want to prioritize skills training must invest in mobile learning to reap the full benefits.

2. Apps: Whether it’s Slack, Salesforce, or Microsoft Teams, you want to use a digital LMS platform with extensible apps that align seamlessly with your existing tech stack. A digital LMS platform will integrate easily with existing applications to make the learning process as seamless as possible.

3. Increased personalization through the power of AI: Personalization enhances and improves your employees’ learning experience. Artificial intelligence can tailor course recommendations based on job titles, interests, and based on courses peers are taking. This helps reduce the amount of coursework learners have to sift through, leaving only the courses that are relevant. While learners can still choose to sift through the larger library of course material, AI brings relevant programs to their homepage, giving them easy access.

4. Interactive elements like gamification – Gamification helps engage learners and makes the learning experience more memorable. Healthy competition can also inspire and motivate people to work harder, and it encourages collaboration and interaction among learners. LMS gamification helps promote performance, rewards learners, and motivates behaviors to drive change. Gamification can look like positive recognition through points systems or custom badges to reward and recognize positive outcomes.

5. Reporting and analytics features – LMS reporting and analytics don’t have to be complex. Comprehensive LMS platforms shouldn’t rely on expensive, third-party tools; instead, next-gen LMS offer various levels of reporting, providing data insights for the entire organization. Our LMS reporting tools generate quick, easy-to-read reports that can be exported to Excel, giving you the fastest, most accurate insights on how your employees are progressing. With the addition of our flexible, multi-use Observation Checklist feature, managers and instructors can identify learning gaps and develop better training objectives to assess employee performance through real-time data. This checklist helps you establish a baseline for your employees’ development and advancement, and it identifies those who could benefit from more training.

Skills-centered learning improves training outcomes

A good skills platform equips learners with the steps necessary to achieve a core competency. Learning pathways are key here. Unlike other training technologies, where learning is simply assigned and completed, learning pathways keep people motivated and are automated to benefit each individual user.

So what exactly is a learning pathway? Think of this as a defined route leading you to a specific goal. Unlike other, more disjointed platforms that require you to take siloed, unrelated courses, defined learning pathways within a next-generation enterprise LMS platform give the learner a set path where coursework builds upon itself over time. The end goal can look like a specific certification, valuable skill, or objective goal that maps to the employee’s role within the company—connecting their learning experience to a defined purpose within the organization. When skills management is streamlined through learning pathways, everyone benefits.

Interested in creating a skills-centric strategy with learning pathways and comprehensive reporting for your organization? We can help. Contact us today for a free demo and learn more about how we can help your business invest in skills-centered learning strategies that work.