When it comes to eLearning, the Web certainly has no shortage of on-demand courses, videos, tutorials, eBooks, and other materials. Nowadays, most of it is available for free, or for a very low cost or monthly subscription, so how can L&D prove the value of corporate training?
The average employee is well aware of this and spends approximately $339 per year of his or her own money on career-related training to improve skills or strengthen a professional background.
It stands to reason, then, that the average employee may not immediately seek guidance from the training department when faced with the decision to learn.
How, then, can L&D leaders prove their value and differentiate themselves to employees and teams, who are already carrying out their own training, most likely on their own time?
There are three ways that learning leaders can address this situation and achieve their goals:
Be Specific.
To make an impact, L&D leaders should instead present training that is highly specific for a particular task or on-the-job skill.
Nowadays, employees want to learn or get better at software programming, data science, marketing automation, project management, and other hands-on technical skills — these are tied to the jobs that are most in-demand in today’s economy.
While employees are interested in advancing their careers and salary levels, they are less interested in acquiring ‘managerial’ skills which offer a vague ROI. Does the training your department offers to address your employees’ needs?
Create Personal Learning Paths.
Continuing this argument, L&D leaders should get to know their employees’ training needs on a very personal level. The value of corporate training is that you are better positioned to create highly personalized learning for employees.
Avoid discussions of, ‘We want to give you skills that help you succeed,’ and instead differentiate yourself with knowledge and insight, ‘I understand that industry professionals in your identical position are known to possess skills related to X, Y, and Z.’
To do this, you will need to do a lot of homework, but this will be sure to impress employees and their managers, demonstrating that you went out of your way to look into the background needed to succeed in a particular position.
Deliver Unique Content.
Further, if the training that you’re offering can be obtained elsewhere — perhaps on an eLearning platform that the employee is already using, possibly for free — then the employee will most likely not be engaged with the offerings of your department.
Offer courses that are not available anywhere else, that would be highly valuable to the employee, and you will earn their trust.
