4 Important Factors To Consider When Choosing the Correct Corporate Training Methods

Hiring an employee is hard work. What's harder is retaining that employee. Did you know that 88% of employees remain with an employee much longer than they plan if they're given training and development opportunities?

Corporate training is a powerful way of nurturing a future-ready workforce. In a world where new technology gets outdated within weeks (sometimes days), a skilled workforce can be the best tool in a company's repertoire.  

But the reality is that companies often go wrong in choosing the correct corporate training methods for different cadres of employees. Research indicates that out of the $130 billion+ investment in corporate training, only about 25% is spent on training that is actually effective and helpful to employees.

In this article, we take you through key steps that will help you select the right corporate training methods, ensuring you: 

• Don't waste valuable time & money.
• Skill your employees with the right T&D programs.

Choosing Corporate Training Methods: How To Do It?

Corporate training can't be successful with a "one size fits all" policy. Organizations need to take into consideration the following factors when developing their corporate training methods.

Consider the Company's Orientation and Outlook

To a large extent, a company's orientation & outlook affects its choice of corporate training methods.

Take, for example, the two biggest consulting firms – McKinsey and BCG. Both companies – while in the same niche of management consulting – have very different orientations & outlooks.

While McKinsey focuses primarily on creating partnerships with clients who are C-suite executives, BCG focuses on partnerships with clients across the organizational hierarchy. These different approaches determine what McKinsey and BCG employees are trained on and which training methods are used.   

So, it's very important to understand the culture of your company and also your primary business goal. This ensures the corporate training methods chosen help the firm align employee skilling with their business goals.

Study the Needs of The Training Recipients/audience 

Next, companies need to identify who their target audience is in terms of the training they wish to provide. Consider:

• Experience/hierarchy – entry-level, middle-management, senior management.
• Work type – team member, team leader/manager, individual contributor.
• Workplace – In-office, onsite but at a client location, fully remote, hybrid.
• Role they perform – Academic, client-facing, middle-organization, backend.

All of these can change the type of training you provide and what corporate training methods you use to offer this training.

For example, you have hired an entry-level sales executive. This executive can benefit from a mix of instructor-led and experiential training. However, depending on whether this executive works offline (Ex: retail/door-to-door) or online (Ex: E-commerce), the training methods used would be different.

Similarly, if the audience works in a hybrid or remote workplace, they may find mobile-app-based training, online quizzes, and video conference training to be helpful.

Determine the Objective of The Training Program

Another factor that determines the choice of corporate training methods is the purpose/objective of the training.

 Training can have multiple objectives:

• Upskilling employees (Ex: Training employees specializing in text-based content to create videos/images/graphics.)
• Reskilling employees (Ex: Training employees on presentation skills before they present a slide deck to a client.)
• Employee performance improvement (Ex: Re-training employees on job-specific processes.)
• Increasing employee awareness about a new topic (Ex: Training employees in the R&D team on new-to-the-market AI solutions.)
• Local/national/international regulatory fulfillment (Ex: Training employees on building safety protocols at their office – or - Training employees on GDPR).
• Empowering employees for personal support (Ex: Training employees on Prevention of Sexual Harassment at the Workplace (POSH).)

Each of these training objectives determines how the training will be imparted.

For example, when upskilling and reskilling employees, companies can choose interactive games-based training and experiential learning. But, for training on topics such as POSH or GDPR, an instructor-led classroom training session coupled with eLearning courses or webinars can be impactful.

Similarly, even if the training audience is senior management, certain departments/roles can benefit from active participation when the training objective demands it.

For example, C-level executives from the technology team can be given AR/VR simulations or in-app walkthroughs to experience a new technology that their teams may need to learn or work with in the future. There could even be a Q&A session to help cement their understanding and to facilitate further discussion.

Consider the Degree of Content Privacy and Security Required

Finally, companies need to consider the level of content/training protection and privacy they require.

While some companies outsource their training to third parties, you may choose to keep training in-house. Your team may develop the training materials, and you may want a learning management system that helps you discharge your training programs to the right people in a contained and supportive way.

In these cases, companies must think about how they can distribute their training while meeting their training objectives and audience needs.

How Kytes Can Help You Deliver the Most Effective Corporate Training Programs

Training today exceeds lecture-style sessions or whitepapers sent out via emails. Today, employees both prefer and need training modules that are dynamic and engaging, containing a mix of videos, text, active participation, gamification, and AR/VR.

Storing, distributing, and monitoring the usage of such diverse corporate training methods can be challenging if you don't have the right technology to support you. That's where Kytes comes in.  

With more than 20 years of experience in the eLearning niche, Kytes is a reputed and dynamic training management and content distribution platform. Hailing from the pedigree of Hurix Digital, Kytes has been created with the bespoke intention of supporting corporates across industries and growth stages in their varied training and development needs.

With Kytes, you can now develop, collate and secure world-class training materials in a single place. This prevents content fragmentation or dispersion across different devices, persevering its integrity.

 The Kytes platform ensures that you can:

• Logically organize your content based on various factors.
• Distribute training content to the designated recipients each time.
• Prevent unauthorized downloads, copies, or shares of your content.
• Protect your training material from edits, changes, or deletions – accidental or conscious.
• Monitor training module usage to understand audience engagement and plan for future corporate training.
• Secure your training collaterals from malicious codes and attacks through powerful encryption.
• Enable relevant training module recommendations to continue employees' education.
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Robust Digital Rights Management to Safeguard Your Intellectual Property

Your corporate training methods and modules are your prized intellectual property. With the Kytes eLearning platform and content distribution system, you can now control the reins of your corporate training methods and modules at all times.

The platform's robust digital rights management (DRM) software helps you in the following ways:

• Upload and securely distribute a variety of corporate training methods in different formats, such as:
• Documents (pdf, docx, pptx)
• Videos (mp4, mov, wmv, flv, avi, webm, mkv)
• Audio (mp3, aac, wma, wav, ogg)
• Books (epub)
• Protect usage of your content through identity-based access.
• Develop different identities for diverse audience types and offer the most relevant training.
• Encrypt content so it is readable only on the Kytes platform (Your training modules can be optimized to open on Hurix Digital's Kitaboo platform as well.)
• Authorize content creators to allow specific people to use certain training materials.

Kytes is free to use up to 1GB of data and 10 users. There are various subscription models available, along with custom pricing for enterprises.

Wrapping Up

Selecting the correct corporate training methods can make all the difference in an organization's journey toward success. By keeping the above tips in mind, your firm can make the right training method choice every time.