Hybrid Workplaces Are Here: It's Time to Adopt Ongoing Digital Training For Your Team

For most people, businesses, and industries, 2020 was an awakening. Companies who had made a digital transformation prior to the pandemic doubled down on their investments in productivity and collaboration tools, while others were left scrambling to rebuild their programs and tech stacks from the ground up. In 2020, 68% of organizations turned to eLearning as a sustainable alternative to face-to-face learning. In fact, research shows that 82% of organizations plan to start producing more digital learning in 2021.

When we talk about digital training, we aren’t talking about exhausting Zoom calls where a trainer is droning on while a group of disengaged employees attends the session. 

‍

Digital training is the use of mediums that carry out training courses in a dynamic and engaging way.

There’s a key difference there - “in a dynamic and engaging way.” This doesn't mean using a traditional learning management system, but instead, more agile tools that can supplement or in some cases replace the need for an LMS. These range from content authoring technologies to microlearning, adaptive training, and social learning tools.

Making Digital Training Dynamic and Engaging

Relevancy. It’s a simple word that carries a lot of power when it comes to workplace training. The quickest way to disengage a learner is by training them on a topic without making it relevant to them. Digital training tools that leverage adaptive training and agile-self-service administrator tools tackle this in two ways:

• Making training relevant to each person by only engaging them when necessary
• Empowering leaders to quickly and easily deploy new training, making it more relevant and capturing their attention “in-the-moment” 

With more and more communication being delivered through asynchronous channels, and leaders leveraging quick video messaging tools like Panopto, Loom, and Vidyard, your training technologies need to incorporate these critical learning moments. It’s not enough to simply deploy these “in-the-moment” training events alongside your LMS though. The rapid pace at which processes, products, and people change within an organization means your people are better served by tools that help them navigate these constant changes. 

Whether it’s a knowledge base, or better yet, enabling your employees to commit their training to memory, digital ongoing training is critical to maintaining balance and equity in training in hybrid work environments. 

What are the Key Elements of Digital Training?

Digital training is constantly evolving as new advances in technology will continue to shape what’s possible. Digital training allows us to personalize the learning experience based on learner needs and timing. Like a lot of things digital, digital learning is full of fancy words and unique terminology. Here are a few you’ll hear:

Adaptive Training: The delivery of custom learning experiences to address the unique needs of an individual. This is all about making training personal. 

Badging/Rewards-Based Learning: A visible display of accomplishment, skill, or something earned in a learning environment. Digital trophy cases are always updated, portable, and stay dust-free! 

Blended Learning: A blend of online learning and in-person learning.

Learning Analytics: The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of data about learners to understand and optimize learning content and environments.

Mobile Learning: Mobile learning or m-learning is learning across multiple devices through social and content interactions using personal electronic devices.

For a full glossary of training terms, read our post here.

4 Tips to Get Started with Digital Training

Now that you understand the benefits and basics of digital training, it’s time to start thinking about how to deploy it at your organization. Here are 4 tips to get you started:

1. Deploy courses in bite-sized pieces (microlearning) - Instead of dumping the entire course load on an individual which will ultimately overwhelm them and lead to burnout, deploy your content in chunks where the individual can consume it at their own pace. By organizing the content into categories they’ll also gain a better understanding of key concepts before they move on to the next course.
2. Use gamification - By making training more fun, you’ll increase your learner engagement, which leads to better retention of information and the willingness to continue learning. Add competitions, points, badges, and other gameplay elements. Teachers have used gamification for decades to motivate students, L&D professionals are now adopting the method for workforce training as well.
3. Map out your planned and “in-the-moment” learning opportunities: Pull out your calendar where all of your planned training programs are scheduled out. Now think about each function, team, or division - what key goals, initiatives, or changes do they have coming up in the next 2 quarters. How are your learning initiatives and tools supporting them in making sure that the training is effective, measured, and applied? 
4. Measure the results - What isn’t measured can’t be improved. If you aren’t monitoring the progress of your learners through the learning experience you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to gain valuable insight into how well they’re doing, along with how to optimize your training content for the future.

Digital training is no longer the future of learning, it is the present, and if you haven’t added it to your current training programs it’s time to catch up. 

Trivie makes it easy to get started with digital training and deploy it to thousands of learners in minutes! Chat with one of our knowledge experts and we’ll help you map out a plan.