The new economic environment characterised by global competition has influenced modern corporations in three game-changing ways. 

Firstly, organisations are expected to accomplish higher productivity and effectiveness standards to survive in the new business environment. 

Secondly, companies must flexibly adapt their business strategies to account for the new realities of intense global and domestic competition. 

Finally, corporate cultures must be retooled for the uncertainties of a new competitive environment. 

In this context, corporate training and development is more valuable than ever as a potential competitive tool for organisations.

In this article, we’ll discuss how organisations can effectively exploit corporate training programs, either by using technology or traditional methods.

What is corporate training?

Training is a systematic process of acquiring, modifying, and iteratively developing knowledge, skills, and capabilities. 

That being said, corporate training is a process of providing knowledge, skills and attitude to employees in order to enable them to perform their jobs more effectively. It is an investment in the continual development of the company’s human resources.

employee training programs
Photo by Kampus Production

Principally, corporate training encompasses a range of topics and improvement areas, from soft skilling, and re-skilling, to role-specific competencies like:

  • Specialised training programs that are designed for specific functions or departments within a business organisation (such as sales, finance and human resources).
  • Skill development programs that provide instruction on how to use new technology or tools. 

What is the importance of corporate training and development?

In the corporate context, training is a short-term process that involves iterative instruction to solve technical job-related problems. On the other hand, development is a long-term process, where employees proactively seek competencies and knowledge to resolve eventual future organisational problems.

For the most part, corporate training and development are beneficial to organisations in different ways, for example:

  • Employee development: Corporate training reduces workforce skill gaps and identifies new potential leaders that can meet evolving business demands.
  • Motivation and engagement: These programs can generate employee motivation, satisfaction and engagement, leading to better business outcomes.
  • Organisational agility: Corporate training enhances employee soft skills, enabling them to better cope under dynamic business pressure and adapt quickly to situations. 
  • Reduced employee turnover: Training and development programs can help organisations better retain talented staff, lessening the cost of hiring new staff. 
  • Employee efficiency and productivity: Employee retention is often linked with employee satisfaction, which, in turn, leads to higher productivity, efficiency and profitability for your business. So, corporate training may improve employee performance, directly affecting a company’s bottom line.

Corporate training programs examples

Corporate training and development programs are a set of planned and methodical activities designed to facilitate the acquisition of knowledge, attitudes, skills, behaviours, and competencies that benefit companies and their members. Here are some examples: 

Compliance training programs

This is a formal program that is typically part of employee onboarding that focuses on familiarising new employees with the company’s policies and rules.

sales training programs
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For example, health and safety, a code of conduct, diversity training, data protection, workplace harassment policy, and privacy protection. This training may prevent employee issues in the workplace whilst offering the company legal protection in case of any challenges.

Leadership training programs

Leadership development programs aim to enhance management skills within a workforce through various systematic processes. For example, via mentorship programs or sending them for off-site seminars or conferences to augment their leadership capabilities.

Additionally, leadership training seeks to ensure an organisation has ready-made replacements in case key staff members retire or leave. 

General employee development

Employee development programs focus on expanding staff capabilities to better optimise operations and assist the staff in their personal development.

Skill-based training programs

These programs focus on reskilling (training employees for new roles) and upskilling (developing new skills for an employee’s already existing position).

skill & product training
Photo by Ketut Subiyanto

Both reskilling and upskilling are currently seeing significant interest with the influx of new technology as they allow employees to retrain at an uncertain time when technology is making many roles obsolete.

Product knowledge training

This type of training equips employees with deep knowledge of the goods or services the company provides. For instance, to attract future customers and help them with any issues. Or to talk confidently about a product, and what it can and cannot do. 

Also read: 

How to organise corporate training?

There are different ways to execute corporate training, such as:

Traditional classroom settings

This approach revolves around instructor-led and in-person training that is easily customisable with various types of assessments. However, it’s not easily scalable as space may limit the number of learners that can fit into a physical classroom. 

Online training programs

In contrast to a traditional classroom setting, online training programs are more scalable. Online training programs deliver learning resources in real-time, for example, lectures, quizzes, games, discussion boards, and assessments — all via video technology tools to serve the users at the point of need.

Virtual training programs

Virtual training programs are usually delivered as prerecorded sessions to be viewed by future learners. These are extremely immersive training solutions and provide a real-world experience of different situations to the employees. They fundamentally offer a way for employees to continually learn without interruption, at the office or at home. 

virtual training
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Hybrid/blended learning programs

Hybrid programs reconcile classroom-based and online learning, taking the best of each approach. This approach is highly scalable, accessible and flexible enough to meet the needs of diverse students. However, it requires learners to be comfortable with technology.

Also read: Corporate Training: Organising Successfully

How to create a corporate training program?

To create an in-house corporate training program, there are three main steps you can follow:

  • Define the problem: Before you design any in-house corporate program, it is important to define what your company needs. This will help you determine whether your corporate training program should be focused on improving employees’ health and safety or simply making them more productive at work.
  • Set goals: Once you’ve identified what kind of improvement your company wants to see, make sure that everyone involved understands how they can achieve those results using technology (e-learning). Next, set specific goals related to each aspect of the overall goal—and keep them realistic.
  • Create a plan: When you know what you want to achieve with your proposed corporate training program, put together a plan of action. This may involve setting up an infrastructure for delivering e-learning content through your intranet or another web portal. 

What makes a successful corporate training program?

When choosing a corporate program to adopt in your organisation, here are some considerations to keep in mind: 

  • Content relevance: It’s imperative to understand where your organisation needs to develop. This can consequently help you to tailor content directly and get you started on the right foot.
  • Employee bandwidth: Be mindful of employees’ time and schedules in terms of attendance and engagement. Therefore, carefully consider how long the program takes and how its modules are designed.  
  • Measure success:  Ensure that the program can be tracked via quantifiable metrics. Measuring the success of your corporate training program using interviews or surveys can enable you to valuable gain insights before and after the training. 
  • Goal alignment: The corporate training should be aligned with your organisational objectives.
  • Learning styles: Ensure that the program provides different learning approaches. For example, using kinaesthetics, written, pictorial and auditory content throughout the training to keep members easily engaged.
  • Continuity: Your chosen corporate program should be maintainable and not a one-time thing. It should be continual with mechanisms to check in with attendees and incrementally build upon the skills they are developing between training.

How to choose the correct type of corporate training and development program for your organisation?

A successful corporate training program aligns the goals of training with the business objectives. At the same time, it must be interactive, engaging and meet employees’ needs. 

To identify a program that meets this criterion, here are some pointers an organisation should consider:

  • Perform a needs analysis: A skills gap analysis helps you define the skillsets most valuable to your organisation. 
  • Consider employee preferences: Consider your employees’ thoughts, ideas and preferences in terms of types and modes of training or even scheduling.
  • Consider your organisation’s constraints: Consider your budget and resources to decide on the type of training to offer. For example, a small budget might limit you from hiring an external facilitator. Thus, dictating an in-house instructor.
  • Get feedback: Ensure that your chosen program enables you to measure results and get feedback from employees. This enables you to justify the investment and quantify the return on investment (ROI).

Conclusion

According to LinkedIn, approximately 94% of employees want to work for companies that invest in their professional development. 

Furthermore, corporate training is an important part of any company’s culture and business strategy. It helps employees learn new skills, improve their performance and build relationships with colleagues.

All things considered, corporate training and development programs keep employees and managers aligned on company goals, positioning them for growth to feed to the organisation. In addition to upskilling, corporate training equips them with clarity and vision to enhance company motivation, creativity, collaboration, and employee retention.

This consequently improves overall employee performance and productivity, promotes healthy competitiveness and decreases absenteeism whilst also improving client satisfaction.

Also, check out our leadership training program to become a more effective leader in your team.

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