Another year, done and dusted. Phew! As the festive period gathers momentum, everyone in the office has one eye on the holidays, except, perhaps, the top executives and human resources. For them, the end of the year is the time to review employee performance and plan for a bigger and better 2019. After all, it’s no secret your employees are your biggest asset. Investing in their development can only ever boost your business. Regardless of how well your 2018 panned out, there’s always room for improvement in the corporate world. So, how can you prepare your team for a prosperous new year? By ramping up your training with 2019’s hottest learning trends! We’ve even upgraded our system to give you an improved user experience.
There’s no denying. In a high-tech world that’s changing every second, it’s crucial to keep your training methods ahead of the curve. Nowadays, most people source their information online, making the most of present-day technology. Incorporating technology and personalised training in your skills development is the way to go to grow employee skills and engagement. Luckily, with OnRamp’s online training platform, developing your team is a piece of (Christmas) cake. Use our favourite learning trends below to set your 2019 training up for success.
At the start of each year, you have a plan for your business – your goals and growth. The same should apply to your employee training. Proper planning and commitment to staff development are necessary if you want your team and company to grow. For your team to reach its full potential, management and HR need to work together to develop an effective strategy. Not planning would be a waste of resources and opportunity. By coming together, leaders can define the practices most beneficial to the organisation’s performance. This learning trend is the first step to creating the foundation of your company’s learning culture. We’ve made it easier for you to plan your training with the introduction of templates. Simply add your content to an existing outline and send. Couldn’t be easier! And, for those who like to start from scratch, you can still build your own.
If you want your company to flourish, you need to cultivate the talent within your ranks. It’s never too early to identify future leaders and grow their skills. Design training focused on building communication and problem-solving skills targeted for leadership candidates. It’s a cinch with our platform. After you create your training, you can assign it to specific members of your team. By implementing this type of training from the moment new employees arrive, you’ll be building forward-thinking teams capable of tackling challenges head-on. Not only that, we’ve added the extra convenience of Policy Documents. These help you roll out and track your compliance training, making sure everyone knows their responsibilities from the start. As learning trends go, this one is crucial to maintaining a healthy business.
A well-rounded team is not only tech-savvy, but they also have a good repertoire of soft skills. Increasingly, the generation entering today’s workforce comes armed with technological knowledge, but lacking the level of soft skills seen in previous generations. You can boost your business in 2019 by developing your team’s social skills. It’s a valuable investment, promoting collaboration and negotiation. Not to mention, soft skill training also helps encourage employee retention and company culture. There’s a great new feature on our system to help your team communicate – Memos. Whether it’s a quick note, question or handy nugget of information, anyone using your platform can send a memo out to other users. So straightforward and effective.
Did you read the heading and picture training in the form of a video game? You wouldn’t be the first. But no, gamification does not mean you have to turn your compliance into something resembling Minecraft. It’s the term for a progressive reward system, like that of modern video games. Gamification offers an incentive for employees to strive harder and ace their online training. With OnRamp’s online tests, a reward system is easy to put in place. When a member of your team passes the test after a training manual, they get awarded a digital certificate. Even better, this happens immediately – no waiting around to get certified.
Have you’ve ever asked yourself how to make your company more attractive to new talent? The answer is training. Skills development is often a deciding factor when employees are determining whether to stay or jump ship. Individuals hold personal and professional growth to high regard across all industries. If you haven’t already done so, 2019 is the year to include training as part of your benefits package. It’s easily managed with OnRamp’s online platform. You can create, send and track all your staff training all in one place. Simple!
One of the biggest learning trends to get behind is engagement. Specific training directed towards the individuals in your team has more impact than broad-based content. You want your content to hone in on the work environment and practices. There’s no point sending the accounting team training created for the IT department. Content should also be diverse, incorporating various multi-media to maximise engagement. Videos, pictures, audio clips – make it interesting. We even give you the option to customise your platform, further enhancing user experience and involvement. Now, you can include a welcome video on your homepage, as well as a message at the bottom of the page. Welcoming, motivational, instructive – make it your own with that personal touch.
Be pro-active and flexible with your training. Finding time to fit skills development into the workday is one of the biggest challenges your team faces. But, don’t worry. There is a simple solution. Go digital. Storing and delivering your training on digital and mobile platforms makes it accessible at any time of the day. Your busy team can log in and scroll through training when it’s convenient for them – especially with OnRamp. With our platform, all your training and data sits on the cloud, making it available to your team anywhere, at any time. Convenient!
Now that you’re armed with these learning trends, you can tailor your training to make an impact. Think personal, engaging and accessible. Are you ready to make 2019 the year you boost your skills development? Get in touch to discover how OnRamp can help!
Let’s talk about the dreaded ‘C’ word – compliance. The very thought of it puts your employees to sleep within minutes. Snore! But, it’s unavoidable. Compliance training is a must for every workplace. Without it, your employees won’t know the policies and regulations that apply to their position. Unfortunately, 90% of the time, compliance training is met with a sea of unenthusiasm.
Manuals are text heavy, long-winded and complex – hardly content to get the juices flowing. And what happens when employees slug through page after page of rules and laws? Nothing. The information barely gets through the front door, and within a few weeks (possibly even hours) it’s all but forgotten. So, how do you make your content engaging and enthralling? Easy. Follow our five easy steps!
The key with any training is to keep it interesting. No member of your team wants to feel like they are back in school, slogging for exams. If you follow these five steps, your employees are sure to love your compliance training.
There’s nothing more daunting than information delivered in bulk. Providing all your training in one go, while you may think it’s saving time, ends up being counterproductive. With too much to focus on, your employees will only retain a fraction of the information. Instead, to ensure your training is easy to digest and remember, break up the content into smaller sections. Delivering small, bite-size manuals will allow your team to learn parts at a time without getting flustered. And ultimately, this will lead to better knowledge retention and understanding.
It’s no secret – people respond better to information that is relatable and relevant. When creating your compliance training, do so with each department in mind. Build and deliver training that is division specific to ensure it’s applicable to the workers reading it. If your employees are reading through information outside of their role, they are more likely to lose interest. Another sure way to make your manuals more engaging is by adding real-life examples. This way, your employees can relate and empathise with the training. After all, it’s easier to apply knowledge when you fully comprehend its importance.
Use technology to your advantage. Traditional training methods can be quite the rigmarole. Trying to align a venue, instructor and your staff is more hassle than it’s worth. Not to mention the dread your team feels when they have to put aside the task that was due five minutes ago to attend a (boring) seminar. Luckily, you can save yourself the trouble, and keep your employees happy at the same time. Two birds with one stone and all that. E-learning is the answer. Give your staff the flexibility of completing their compliance training when it suits them. So, instead of rushing through the content to get back to work, they can work through the information when they are free and relaxed. These days, they can even access the training on their mobile devices (read about the rise of mobile learning). So convenient.
There’s no way around it – rules and regulations are boring. While your employees may understand the importance of complying with compliance, the task of learning the dos and donts is less than appealing. It helps to make the content exciting. Here is where you can utilise the versatility of electronic learning. Include visuals in your compliance training. The brain retains and recalls visual information easier and for a lot longer than text. By adding pictures and videos to your manuals, you’ll not only be making your training more interesting, but easy to remember as well. Compliance? Nailed it!
Now, you may be asking yourself how you achieve the first four steps. Easy. With OnRamp, of course. Our online platform provides all the tools you need to redefine your compliance training. We’ve been cooking up an all new and improved user experience, with some exciting additional features. The NEW Policy Document feature, in particular, is ideal for rolling out company systems and procedures.
With this feature, you can add all your content into a digital policy and send through to your staff online. Videos, images, and various other forms of media are all compatible with this training – that’s right, there are no boring PDFs here! The feature also allows for a digital sign off, so your team can acknowledge they have received, understood and accepted the policy. There is also the option to add a test at the end if you want to double your employees grasped the content.
Then, upon completion, management can pull reports to keep track of who is compliant. What’s more, the documents can be amended or updated at any time, making your compliance training highly adaptable. So convenient. And, what’s even better – you can use OnRamp for ALL your staff skills development. Great!
Are you ready to take you compliance training up a notch? Get started with OnRamp today. Pop us a message, and one of our consultants will be in touch.