There are disagreements in every company. However, there is consensus on two points from the management level to the employees: Training should primarily focus on soft skills and provide online learning solutions. Trainers and human resource developers can pull together here and impress management with arguments and measures.
As part of the Workplace Learning Report 2018, 4,000 trainers, executives, and employees were surveyed on LinkedIn about their priorities in vocational training for 2018. Interestingly, it's not just the results themselves that matter, but also the differences in the weighting of individual roles. Here, trainers and human resource developers can shine and offer their superiors effective solutions for typical hurdles in companies.
Three Hurdles in Professional Education
The study shows that companies generally create three recurring barriers to successful training measures:
Lack of time
Automation
Hard boundaries in large companies
A lack of time is the most urgent and obvious barrier for employees to effectively utilize training measures. Not only have the employees themselves recognized this, but many executives have as well. In daily operations, there is very little time for upcoming tasks, and the pressure is high, especially due to absences and internal delays for many employees. When is there still time for further training sessions and workshops?
The second barrier is called automation. In Industry 4.0, people increasingly live with the fear that their labor will be partially or completely replaced by machines. New production and working methods also require new solutions in training, so that employees can feel secure and valued in the long term.
Finally, the study shows a third barrier that may not be as obvious as the other two: The larger a company is, the greater the gap often is between the top and bottom levels. Hard boundaries between management and employees hinder innovative training measures and lead to misunderstanding, as well as plain ignorance on both sides.
The Revolution: Three Solutions for Professional Education
For all three mentioned hurdles, there are solutions, as the results of the Workplace Learning Report 2018 show:
| Lack of time | → Online solutions || --------------- | --------------------------- || Automation | *→ Soft Skill Training || Hard boundaries | *→ Communication |
Online Solutions Against Lack of Time
The solution to the acute lack of time is called digitalization or online training. Even in the face of great time pressure, there are always downtime periods in daily work where employees can do nothing. Participants in digital training measures, on the other hand, can learn when and where it suits them with agile online solutions.
According to the Workplace Learning Report, 68% of all surveyed employees indicated that they prefer to learn at the workplace. Around 58% also prefer to learn at their own pace. And 40% of all respondents prefer to learn when it is most urgent. What these numbers clearly show is that people are very different regarding their learning preferences. On the one hand, there is a need to deviate from rigidly prescribed learning times. On the other hand, there is a need for more overall time to manage learning phases independently.
Most companies are already fundamentally on the right track – nearly 90% of all surveyed companies already offer online learning opportunities. However, it is not clear from this number how much these offerings meet the needs of employees. Nevertheless, a positive attitude towards online solutions is already evident.
Soft Skill Training Against the Danger of Automation
The best solution against the replacement of workers through automation is soft skill training. The explanation for this connection is quite simple: To compete against machines, we need to train our human strengths. Communication, leadership skills, or role-specific abilities are highly sought after in 2018 and are increasingly pushing hard skill training into the background.
Communication to Ease Hierarchies
In the Workplace Learning Report 2018 survey, 56% of all surveyed employees stated that they would generally learn more if they received direct requests from their supervisors. Communicative measures between the different corporate levels can yield extensive results here.
In summary: Training measures in 2018 should be structured so that self-directed learning is enabled for participants, leaders are involved, and soft skills are trained. The first two conditions are difficult to meet with conventional classroom training. On the other hand, it is precisely soft skill training that benefits from personal exchange. In a purely e-learning solution, something would be lacking.
With blended learning, the balance can nevertheless be achieved: Trainers and participants benefit from the advantages of both worlds, online and offline. How to successfully enter blended learning and what advantages you have from it will be explained in our guide.
Tips for Implementation for Trainers and Human Resource Developers
A convincing argument towards executives to invest more money in modern training and engage more with it: 94% of all employees surveyed in the Workplace Learning Report would stay longer at a company if it invested in their professional development. Resignations and recruiting new employees are certainly much more expensive than good training measures.
And here is another tip for implementing the mentioned solutions: In training, specifically refer to trends in the company to proactively close future skill gaps. This aspect was rated by executives in the Workplace Learning Report 2018 survey as much more important than respondents in other roles considered it. Trainers and human resource developers could successfully address a concern from management with this argument and thus advance their ideas.
All tips summarized once again in an overview:
A Question of the Right Online Solution
In the Workplace Learning Report 2018 survey, only 32% indicated that they observed success measurement in the form of changed behavior among participants. The previous year, this was still a method used by more than half of the respondents (54%). In contrast, the approval for the measurement method “completed online learning content” increased from 17% in 2017 to about 33% in 2018.
Online solutions not only have the advantage of minimizing the barriers and problems mentioned above. They can also be optimally utilized for success measurement. Whether a large-scale final examination or a short survey after training – with the right online tool, the successful transfer of learning content can not only be ensured but also measured.
Are you still looking for an online tool that ensures transfer and measurability? Request access to a sample blink.it course now and test the software completely free from the user's perspective!
