How Skills-Centric Training Builds Employee Confidence

In today’s highly competitive race for talent, companies should look to add value to their employees’ work lives, meet their overall needs, and ultimately retain talent. For some, this isn’t an easy journey.

One of the biggest steps companies can (and should) take is investing in technology that supports employees throughout their work experiences, specifically in learning and development. Enhancing training efforts creates a better learning atmosphere and, ultimately, yields equipped and confident employees. So let’s look at how companies can go beyond the status quo and provide employees with what they truly need to succeed in their roles.

What exactly is skills-centric training?

Training should always be a value-add for employees, not a burden. It should help them move down learning pathways into new roles, advancement opportunities, and more. Our goal with skills-centered learning and training is to upgrade training programs from basic learning principles to more specialized, applicable skills. Each employee has a unique role in your organization; training should reflect this. A skills-centered learning program will map every course back to a unique end objective that is appropriate for and adds value to each person’s role.

Employees want to grow and thrive in their careers—nobody wants to get left behind. Skills-centric training builds employee confidence by providing clear, measurable, actionable training opportunities that equip employees to manage their assigned tasks, move to the next level of leadership, and explore new opportunities at work.

Skills-centric training combats a lack of opportunity for advancement that could factor into dissatisfaction in the workplace, a major contributor to the Great Resignation. At the end of the day, your team wants opportunities to advance and grow. This type of training helps them get there.

Make training a value add, not a burden.

Effective training is always tailored to the learner. Remember these keywords when building a learning and development strategy: actionable, measurable, and personal. If you’re missing one of these values, your training cannot be effective. These keywords can be used to judge both the overall strategy (the courses and learning pathways you offer) and the technology that you use to train.

In the realm of technology, there is no better system than an LMS platform—specifically, a digital, next-generation LMS software designed to support digital natives. Personalization through the power of artificial intelligence (AI) helps match learners with the right courses based on a variety of data points. These data points include their job description, completed courses, interests, courses their peers have taken, and more.

These tailored course recommendations help simplify the process so your employees (especially your new hires) won’t get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of options available and can pick the most beneficial learning pathways for them. These personalized learning pathways foster engagement, yield better outcomes, and further personal growth and professional advancement opportunities. And what employee wouldn’t want that? These skills platforms help training become actionable, as each course is tied to a specific, measurable skill that the learner can leave with and use immediately in their job. Once your employees see how this can positively impact their work, they’re sure to be engaged and interested in continuing their training.

How skills-centric training builds confidence

Skills-centric training on a skills platform shows employees exactly what they need to understand to succeed in their roles. The expectations are clear because learning pathways are automatically assigned based on their preferences and goals, and there’s no question whether they are completing applicable training.

Interactive elements like LMS gamification bring the experience to life. Gamification lets you reward good learning behavior with points, badges, and peer recognition. Learners can compare their performance with colleagues, which helps foster a healthy sense of competition. As the adage says, “a rising tide raises all boats,” and this sense of reward and positive competition creates an upward tick of engagement and positive outcomes—like increased confidence.

A skills platform—an expanded dimension of learning that connects training to skills-driven goals—also gives employees access to the information they need anytime, anywhere, so the learner can refer back to something on demand. A skills platform helps learners navigate large course libraries and determine which learning objectives best serve their needs, preferences, and goals. This on-the-go learning environment (versus a sit-down, classroom-style course) benefits today’s remote and hybrid workforce, making it easy for them to learn in a way that suits their lifestyle. Integrating learning into the rhythms of everyday life lets employees engage a level of confidence and control previously unheard of in the workforce.

Track, manage, and update certifications.

In today’s gig economy, employees need to be able to share certifications with hiring managers, and companies must have employee proficiencies easily on hand to win new jobs or accounts. Sharing certifications has classically been cumbersome, requiring scanning, reformatting, and sending documents that often pass between multiple sources.

So what’s needed to simplify this process and further encourage enhanced learning? A single source of record for employees (and companies alike) to store all of this information and easily share with others. An enterprise LMS or skills platform should allow learners to upload the certifications they’ve earned prior to their existing role so that they have a comprehensive record of their training history. This can be accomplished through a QR-code training tracking system, like ExpertusONE’s ONE-Profile Card. It’s a simple way for employees to access their records as needed. Learners can use this to easily show the certifications they’ve earned, their compliance data, and their verified skills. Our platform’s automated compliance tracking alerts automatically notify learners when a certification is about to lapse so they can renew.

Companies should make it easy for employees to keep transferrable records of their training, ultimately encouraging long-term participation.

Increasing knowledge retention

You might think training is beneficial for your company but wonder how much employees retain long-term. Luckily, a skills platform (or digital LMS) can connect knowledge checks to every part of the learner’s journey so that more information is retained.

It’s proven that learning becomes more engaging with polls, quizzes, and the like, which are proven to help increase long-term memory retention. Our platform includes Interaction Studio, a rapid LMS authoring tool, which combines the best of video, games, quizzes, and analytics to foster long-term learning.

Our Observation Checklist helps learners identify knowledge gaps and ensures competency, ultimately helping resolve the disconnect between online learning and real-world applications. This checklist uses digital evaluation and reporting tools to gather performance and learning data that help assess your employees’ competency and the overall success of your learning program. The skills checklist also keeps learners on track by providing insights into where they are missing information.

Overall, skills-centric training is focused on the employee experience, as well as bolstering engagement and retention. Through personalization, measurable data, and real-time application, you can create a more confident workforce and a more effective learning environment for your employees. And in today’s highly competitive race for talent, what company wouldn’t want to invest in that?