5 ways to accelerate your business skills training
January 10, 2019
Businesses are under constant pressure to adapt to new processes, legislation and markets. In this state of constant change, an organisation’s biggest asset is its people. But how do you make sure those people are equipped to deal with the demands of change? What training programmes do you need to put in place to develop, maintain, and enhance their skills?
Learning Pool’s Business Skills Training Catalogues provide a ready-made answer that relieves businesses of the burdens of organising their own in-house or outsourced training sessions, while also delivering efficient and effective training at the point of need. Learning Pool’s adaptable, flexible learning solution supports employees at work and helps them perform better.
Here are 5 ways Learning Pool’s Training Catalogues can accelerate your business skills training.
1. Cover the bases
One of the biggest problems for organisations is not just change itself, but the pace of it. So, how do you ensure that you have people with the skills to cope with changing job roles, expectations and responsibilities?
Learning Pool’s Training Catalogues provide an extensive range of Business Skills e-learning modules. Modules on Presentation Skills and Developing and Leading Teams equip managers with the key communications skills they need to lead projects and build support in their teams. The catalogues include training on Leading Innovation and Change and Managing for Efficiency and Effectiveness that prepare people to accept change, give them the tools to manage it and deliver on the benefits it offers. Other modules offer training and respond to new demands on organisations, be they legislative requirements like GDPR or in areas of employee welfare like Mental Health in the Workplace.
New Business Skills modules are being added all the time. And as they’re authored and reviewed by Subject Matter Experts you can be sure that they represent industry best practice and best-in-class training. This means you have a direct line to expertise in a range of areas that it would be difficult to match relying on in-house resources. And all are available within one suite of training and subject to continuous revisions and update to improve quality and relevance.
2. Offer Accreditation and CPD
People wanting to be recognised for their efforts and accreditation is a powerful motivating factor for people to complete training. Learning Pool’s Training Catalogues are recognised and approved by the Institute of Leadership and Management (ILM). The ILM seal of approval is further recognition of the quality, reliability and standards that Business Skills Training Catalogues offer businesses.
Research has shown that an impressive 93% of managers perform better at work after gaining an ILM qualification. So, it’s not just about receiving the certificate, the figures show that ILM-accredited training translates into better performance in the workplace, benefiting employee and employer alike.
Learning Pool’s Training Catalogues can be used as part of Continuing Professional Development (CPD). CPD recognition is increasingly a requirement of professional careers and regarded as a way of both encouraging and rewarding development of key skills. And, even where it’s not a requirement, it can provide a powerful incentive for people to keep learning and improve their fundamental Business Skills.
3. Provide training that fits
Learning Pool’s Business Skills Training Catalogues cover a huge range of areas, but the problem with training is not just the range of subjects, but where it fits in. Training is often regarded negatively: as something that takes people away from their jobs rather than making them better at what they’re doing. Training is seen as a burden, rather than a benefit. This view can apply to e-learning just as much as to classroom-based training.
The advantage that Learning Pool’s Training Catalogues brings is their great adaptability and flexibility. Firstly, that means that they can be accessed across a variety of platforms and devices. More specifically Learning Pool’s e-learning is available on mobile devices. This means you can take training with you, rather than be taken out of work to training. This ease of access to learning on tools like tablets and smartphones that we carry with us most of the time greatly improves the access and allows people to learn at the time of their choosing, where and when it suits them best.
Adaptability applies to the content itself. Training Catalogues can be easily updated so that they can easily accommodate new information or subject areas without having to re-write the whole module. Also, they can be tailored and customised to meet your organisation’s needs. This means going beyond superficial branding of e-learning modules to including an organisations processes and procedures among the digital resources and including scenarios and examples that reflect the business area in which organisations operate.
So, you have the best of both worlds: industry-approved and industry-recognised training with content that pertains to and meets the training needs of your organisation.
4. Attract learners
No matter how broad your provision of training is, it will remain ineffective if it’s not well received by its audience. It’s well known that training is swiftly forgotten, so how do training catalogues overcome this age-old problem?
Learning Pool’s Training Catalogues are designed not only with the learner in mind, but to put the learner in control. One of the key advantages of elearning is that it allows people to learn at their own pace. Combine that feature with the mobile access we’ve talked about and you put learners in charge and make them responsible for their own learning. Rather than be passive consumers of training, you’re giving learners the chance to seek information and training when they need it. It’s a demand-side approach that encourages engagement.
The content too is designed to improve learner engagement. Learning Pool’s Business Skills training suite uses tried and tested learning strategies to make training more attractive for learners. The Catalogues employ multimedia to enhance the presentation of information and to appeal to learners who are used to interactivity in the way they access information on their devices outside of work in a social setting.
Information isn’t just presented but it’s interrogated through quizzes and scenario-based activities. Gamification elements are included to make learning a challenge. This can be expanded beyond the modules with the use of leaderboards and rewarding achievement through badges, which can be tied to CPD.
Relevance is prioritised through story-based instruction. Information is related to its practical application showing learners clearly how training relates to the workplace and how it can be applied. The key promise of this training is to deliver outcomes measured in improved performance
The adaptability of Business Skills Training applies also to the way learning is deployed. As well as e-learning courses, Learning Pool’s content can be presented in a series of resources. Content can be chunked and offered in small bite-size segments. This microlearning approach makes training easier to digest and easier to access for time-stretched learners.
5. Bring training closer to work
Business Training Catalogues work hard to identify and address the training needs of a wide range of business sectors. But at Learning Pool we also believe in providing that training at the point of need. We aim to bring training closer to the workplace, not only in the direct relevance of our content but also in making it available while people are working. So rather than take people away from work to train them, we want to embed training in the workplace. We call this bringing training into the workflow, a form of Performance Support, but designed for the modern learner and the working environment of the 21st century.
Business Skills Training Catalogues can be used to get people up to speed quickly, while still working. This is particularly important in areas such as onboarding, understanding new legislation, introducing new policies or product development. The primary aim is to keep people at work and not take them away on courses that are one-off events. Instead, we’re looking at continuous learning, making training resources always accessible. This allows employees to refresh and extend their knowledge at the point of need, where they require it most.
In this sense, Learning Pool’s Business Skills Training Catalogues can be used to help build a culture of learning. Learning becomes seen as inextricably linked to the practice of working. Learning that is easy to access becomes part of an organisation’s culture, woven into the fabric of everyday working life.
Keep pace
Driven by technology, sometimes referred to as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution, the pace of change in business is unlikely to let up. As an organisation, you may not be able to manage the pace of technological change, but you can manage the pace of your response to it. Adaptable, flexible and designed for the modern learner in a modern working environment, Learning Pool’s Business Skills Training Catalogues provide a way of meeting that challenge and making sure your greatest asset, your people, are and remain up to speed.
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