Want to Up Your Corporate Training Game in 2023? Prioritize These 3 Strategies

Engineering a successful corporate training strategy involves multiple moving parts. You need the right tools to support your training initiative from the top to the bottom of the organization. You need a strategy that sets your organization up for success with measurable goals. And you need a company culture to support the overall learning goals. These things are essential in the corporate learning and development world. They’re the very basics of developing a successful corporate training strategy.

2022 was the year when companies truly settled into new working styles, adopted new strategies, and embraced new priorities. One such priority was learning and development. As leaders learned the challenges of remote and hybrid work environments, corporate learning and development became the obvious solution, and companies adopted training strategies to cover everything from onboarding to LMS for customer training. Of course, learning and development have been around for decades, but it has changed significantly in the last two years as it proved more and more essential to effective every day operations across industries.

The last year was spent on the basics of corporate learning and development strategies, acquiring the right tools, and implementing learning strategies in your remote or hybrid work environments. These steps were essential. Now that many companies have adopted digital learning strategies, it’s time to think about taking corporate training to the next level.

In 2023, we will see the optimization of learning strategies. As we move into this new year, these are terms, ideas, and learning strategies that will help companies create top-notch corporate learning environments that meet the needs of employees, partners, and customers.

Customized learning experiences

It’s a theme across industries: people want personalized experiences. That certainly applies to the world of corporate learning and development. Learners want access to courses and training materials that cater to their unique needs and interests. This is a key trend that will continue to grow in popularity in the next year. Building a customized learning experience may seem cumbersome, especially to company leaders who have hundreds or thousands of employees looking to take courses. With the right technology, a customized learning experience is easily attainable.

An LMS software that employs artificial intelligence can create customized learning experiences without any additional effort from the training manager. AI gathers information about each unique learner—from their job description to the courses they’re interested in, to compliance needs, to the classes their peers are taking. All of this information is then channeled into the creation of a customized learning experience where the learner is given personalized course recommendations based on that data.

Integration across apps, with a streamlined learning experience

Employees already have too many applications that they are required to work with on a daily basis. Many companies purchased new technological platforms and applications in order to make remote and hybrid work a more streamlined experience. While digital tools are essential, it’s important to find tools that can work together so that the user experience is simplified. LMS app integration is essential if you want to take your training experience to the next level.

Learning management systems should integrate with commonly used workplace apps so that both learners and training managers can interact with the content easily. ExpertusONE integrates with apps like Slack, Salesforce LMS, and Microsoft Teams to make learning a more streamlined experience. This way, learners can take and complete courses from the apps that they are already using.

A streamlined learning experience is essential to learner success because it minimizes the distractions from the training content itself. For example, look for LMS platforms that offer customization so that you can brand your training (and the platform itself) to look like your corporate brand identity. Additionally, a streamlined learning experience can also mean that companies should do everything they can to keep the training materials for each course within the learning application itself—instead of requiring learners to open documents, click to watch videos, or download audio content. ExpertusONE’s digital content player is integrated into the platform so that all digital assets can be explored, used, and learned from in one place.

Multimodal learning

Our world is increasingly digital, and, as a result, we have adapted how we live and work to accommodate those digital trends. However, it’s important to understand that there is a necessary convergence between the digital and physical worlds—especially in learning. Enter the concept of multimodal learning, the idea that people learn better when allowed to interact with the learning content in multiple ways. It’s a straightforward concept and one you probably experienced when you were a child in school. Most concepts are taught first by a lecture from the teacher, perhaps with a visual aid on the board, and then through learning by practice, like a worksheet or activity. This is multimodal learning, and it can be applied to digital learning experiences—it just takes a bit of creativity.

In order to boost retention and encourage engagement with learning courses, training managers should embrace the multimodal learning concept and create courses (or adjust courses) to engage the senses. This could mean courses are given additional video or audio elements or even a hands-on experience is included in the process of getting a certification. Multimodal learning can enhance the learning experience and provide a guide for training managers to build more engaging courses. When looking at a digital course through the multimodal lens, training managers can determine which elements of a course could be converted to visual content, audio content, or even kinesthetic learning.

It’s time to look forward and bring training strategies into the next era of training by embracing customized, integrated, streamlined, and multimodal learning. In order to bring a corporate learning and development strategy to the next level, it’s imperative that companies create learning experiences that start and end in the digital world. This means that courses should be optimized for digital learning while also taking into account that people need multiple opportunities to understand the lessons taught (multimodal learning). This means that training managers should strive to create all-encompassing experiences where the learner’s journey is customized as they work their way through compliance courses and extended enterprise learning opportunities.

The future of corporate learning rests on innovation, and, thankfully, digital LMS platforms are at the forefront of learning innovation. With the right tools in hand, companies can encourage their employees to re-skill, up-skill, and explore new avenues in their careers from wherever they are working. A digital enterprise LMS system empowers training managers to invest more time in the course content and less time in the cyclical management processes.

Company leaders can demonstrate their investment in employees by prioritizing engaging, interesting, personalized learning experiences. Corporate learning and development will be a major component in employee satisfaction in the next year and the years to come. Employees want to know that their company is invested in them for the long run and can explore their interests within their fields.

Ultimately, an investment in a future-oriented corporate training strategy will help companies boost employee retention, create a collaborative and interactive work environment regardless of location, and bolster the company’s overall success because employees are constantly re-skilling and up-skilling.

Interested in learning what a digital LMS platform can do for your company? Contact us for a demo.