In the post Covid world and in the age of decacorn startups, the shelf-life of knowledge and skills is decreasing rapidly and employee training has become an important and crucial part of sustenance for any organization. As a matter of fact, 70% of employees do not have mastery of the skills they need for their roles, and more than 50% employees acknowledge the need better upskilling to deliver better, according to a report by Gartner. 

In order for employees to gain and excel at skills that match the speed of change of competition, the corporate training model needs to change and move away from “pre-defined” or set processes and innovate to adopt personalised training process as part of a normal. In the last few years, every aspect of our thinking has changed dramatically ― how we get could get work done remotely, how we can stay in isolation – yet be sane, how we connect with people on video calls, how we shop and eat and so on. 

We are in a world of hyper personalisation and customisation ― The focus needs to be on experience, which is more contextual to the need of the consumer. 

And as such employee training too, cannot be left behind without customization.

In our recent masterclass being conducted, we found that most CXOs are concerned that their team can’t keep up with the pace of how new age tech like robotic process automation and artificial intelligence are changing businesses and ultimately, work.

In this era, we need to acknowledge that every employee is unique and has a different preferred mode of learning and processing new information.
Forcing a group of employees into a common one-size-fits-all training program is a sure shot way to fail, as there is a lack of intimacy and personalization. No to forget, but it leads to a wastage of money and leave some gaps in the employees skill renewal process. So what’s the answer gonna look like?

While yesteryear’s classroom framework had its advantage like joint work and collaboration, the disadvantage of such an approach was that it neglected the individual needs of the participants.
Contrarily, todays learning is a lifelong process.
Even companies are now realising that their current problem is not going to be solved by a prescriptive training model. We have to move away from traditional prescriptive model to an autonomous one, that evolves training to learning. The learning opportunities need to be identified and enhanced by curating experiences specific to employees’ skillsets. 

Every company today, needs to put employee in the driver’s seat and offer them a direction to follow in developing specific skills or capabilities in an area of their interest – which is key to unlocking individualised skillspace.

For this, organizations need a compilation or collection of easy-to-understand yet most-sought-after learning resources, which can be based on various learning themes centered around futuristic job descriptions.This will in-turn help employees identify the abilities that they need to boost their competencies. In short, employees need to have access to a curated set of learning resources, based on learning themes such as in-demand skills, future of work, digital technologies, technical development for managers, and so on, which will help employees to charter their own path of growth.

The ultimate aim is to demonstrate capabilities that truly change the game across strategies, design, technology and industry or functional knowledge. In today’s time crunch era, these resources for upgrading skills need to be readily available and accessible.

Whether the ideal employee training requires a knowledge platform that empowers employees to get easy access to topics or whether it requires cutting-edge technologies depends on the digital maturity of each company. However, one thing which is common is that – the model needs to augur autonomy that personalizes learning. It needs learning to be integrated with daily work, and that ensure that it happens at the point of execution of work. This way, the learning can be curated to address the specific needs of the employee.

With so many employee variables, there is simply not a “boxed” solution which can fit every organization. Hence, when developing an employee training program, managers need to be open to exploring options and create a customized training solution with the right formula that works for well your employees as well as your organization.

As we have stressed earlier, we can produce better impact if we focus on people, rather than learners – i.e focus on learning rather than just training. We need to provide more opportunities to learn, more resources, rather than just stereotypical courses.

With this as Grazing Minds framework, we have moved forward towards a more customized employee training model informed by both speed and consistency. It’s time we made learning personal by getting specific with each individual employee’s needs.

For more information about our learning programs, email us at: [email protected]

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