Covid-19 has reshaped both the way we work and the way we learn today. The remote workforce has grown rapidly in the last year and is not expected to change anytime soon. As restrictions begin to lift and new normal emerges, many enterprise organizations are planning on adopting hybrid workplace models.
Hybrid workplace environments allow employees to alternate working from home and in the office throughout the week. This shift towards digital work environments significantly impacts workplace learning.
Many businesses relied heavily on face-to-face instructor-led training in the past. These programs are no longer effective as a large portion of the current workforce is working from home. The need for employee training programs has grown.
Rapid rates of change and digital transformations have created a high demand for employee reskilling. L&D leaders are now working on developing digital learning solutions that will help employees learn the new skills they need for success.
They are investing in custom eLearning courses for high-impact areas such as employee onboarding, D&E, and leadership development. Leadership development is a high priority for organizations in nearly every industry. Many senior-level leaders in the boomer generation are retiring. High-quality leadership development programs are needed to help employees learn the skills they need to take their place.
High potential employees need to learn leadership skills to help drive collaboration, innovation, and productivity. Custom eLearning solutions can help L&D leaders boost employee engagement and help leaders develop their skills and abilities.
Utilizing Collaboration to Increase Engagement
A challenge around leadership development training includes the development of soft skills training. These can be difficult skills to learn without working in teams or groups. Collaborative tools such as gamification, social elements, and chat features can help create context in an online environment.
Collaborative tools increase learner engagement and help build a sense of connectedness. This is a valuable benefit today, where many leaders at different levels feel disconnected from their peers and team members.
Increasing Accessibility with Mobile Learning
Mobile learning content significantly increases access to opportunities for development. In-person instruction was used to limit how many employees could participate in training at a time. The training was also heavily restricted by location. Travel and venue expenses also influenced how many employees could participate.
Mobile learning can now be leveraged to scale the number of employees that can participate in your leadership development programs. Mobile learning programs can be accessed from nearly any device and from any location with internet access. This helps integrate learning into the flow of work. It also gives employees more accessibility and flexibility in and how and when they learn.
Personalizing Learning Experiences with AI
Custom eLearning programs can also help deliver more personalized and engaging experiences for leaders. Developing leaders often have different levels of experience. They have varying bases of knowledge. By focusing on individual learner’s needs, personalized learning programs can also speed up the entire training process.
Instructional designers can use AI to create training content recommendations. AI can track learner patterns and behaviors to determine which courses will be the most valuable to their personal learning journey. AI can then assign a list of content that employees may be interested in. This works much like the video recommendations that you can find on YouTube.
Blended Online Learning
Most organizations used a blended approach to training delivery before the pandemic. This strategy is still highly effective today. However, it looks different than it has in the past. A large portion of blended training programs included face-to-face instruction. That is no longer a viable training delivery option for many organizations that have growing distributed teams.
Today L&D professionals can increase engagement, participation, and knowledge retention by selecting the right blend of digital training delivery methods. Training programs that focus on compliance or the development of hard skills in self-paced digital formats. While soft skills training with smaller audiences is delivered best in collaborative online methods such as virtual instructor-led training.
Final Word
Investing in custom eLearning is one of the best ways you can strengthen your leadership development programs in 2021. Strong leadership is needed to navigate change and to drive innovation throughout your organization. Custom eLearning can help you engage developing leaders and equip them with the skills they need for success. Infopro Learning has more than 20 years of experience in developing winning learning solutions that help businesses overcome their toughest challenges. Learn more about leadership development and watch the webinar replay of The Demand for Courageous Leadership During Uncertain Times.
