It's no secret that social media has changed how we consume and process information. With the constant stream of notifications, updates, and distractions, it's increasingly difficult to focus on a single task or piece of content for an extended period. Decreasing attention span has been widely debated and studied in recent years, and the evidence suggests that social media may be at least partially to blame.
One of the primary reasons for decreasing attention span is the way that social media platforms are designed. Many platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, are built around the concept of "infinite scroll," which allows users to continuously scroll through their feeds without any clear end in sight. Tik Tok the most popular platform with Gen Z has also popularized short-form content. Other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube have updated their platforms to favor short-term content as well due to Tik Tok’s success.
The average member of Gen Z has an attention span of 8 seconds, four seconds shorter than their Millennial counterparts and 5 seconds shorter than Gen X or Baby Boomers. Studies also suggest that these numbers could drop further; with some researchers believing the average attention span of both Millennials and Gen Z will only be 6 seconds soon.
With both Millennials and Gen Z having significantly shorter attention spans, it is essential to make sure training is optimized to be engaging for them.
Definition: Microlearning is a training method that involves delivering small, bite-sized pieces of information or content to learners. The goal of microlearning is to make learning more efficient by focusing on a specific skill or concept, rather than overwhelming learners with large amounts of information.
Use Cases: Microlearning can take many forms, including short videos, interactive quizzes, or brief written materials. One of the key benefits of microlearning is that it allows Learners to consume and retain information more easily, as they are only presented with a small amount of content at a time. This makes it an ideal training method for learners with short attention spans or who need to learn and retain information quickly. Microlearning is also highly adaptable and can be easily customized to fit the specific needs and goals of the learner or organization.
For example, maybe your company has recently implemented a new customer relationship management (CRM) system. To help employees learn how to use the CRM effectively you might create a series of short, targeted training modules that focus on specific aspects of the CRM system, such as how to input customer information or how to create reports. Instead of expecting to learn the whole CRM in one long swoop, microlearning allows employees to learn in small, digestible chunks and allows them to learn at their own pace.
Definition: Just-in-time training (JIT) is a training method that involves delivering information or skills to learners at the exact moment that they need it. The goal of JIT training is to provide learners with the knowledge and skills they need to perform a specific task or job function, without requiring them to complete unnecessary or unrelated training.
Use Cases: JIT training is often used in fast-paced or dynamic environments, where learners must adapt and learn new skills quickly to keep up with changing demands or requirements. One of the key benefits of JIT training is that it can help to improve efficiency and productivity, as learners are only trained on the specific skills and knowledge, they need to complete their job duties. JIT training can also be highly flexible, as it can be delivered in a variety of formats, including online courses, in-person training sessions, or on-the-job coaching and mentorship.
For example, in the context of an auto manufacturing company, JIT training could be used to help train employees on new processes or equipment as they are introduced into the production line. Let's say that the auto manufacturing company has recently added a new welding machine to its production line. To ensure that employees can use the machine safely and effectively, the company might use JIT training to provide them with the necessary knowledge and skills such as how to set up the welding machine, how to adjust the settings for different materials, and how to troubleshoot common problems. By delivering the training at the moment when it is needed, JIT training can help ensure that employees are fully prepared to use the new equipment and that there are no delays in the production process. It can also help prevent accidents or errors on the production line, as employees will have just done the training in a more hands-on and applicable way.
Interactive Training
Definition: Interactive training refers to any type of training that involves active participation from the learner. Interactive training is designed to engage learners and allow them to actively apply what they are learning, rather than simply listening to a lecture or reading about the material.
Use Cases: Instead of just lecturing or presenting information, try to incorporate interactive elements into your training. This can include activities, quizzes, games, and discussions. By actively engaging your learners, you can help hold their attention and make the material more memorable. Quizzing and gamification are particularly able to help retain knowledge because it allows Learners to test their understanding of the material and identify any areas where they may need additional clarification or review. It also helps to reinforce the material in memory, as learners are actively recalling and applying what they have learned.
For example, Knowledge Anywhere offers a quizzing tool that allows users to create and assign quizzes in the Slack app. This could be helpful for a variety of use cases including:
Testing to see if your team was listening after meetings
Reminding people with a pop quiz
Onboarding new employees easily
Utilize Multimedia
Definition: Multimedia training is a type of education that uses a combination of text, audio, video, and other interactive elements to present information to learners. he goal of multimedia training is to provide learners with a more engaging and interactive learning experience and to help them retain the information they are learning.
Use Cases: Consider using videos, podcasts, infographics, and other multimedia to convey information. This can help break up the monotony and make the material more visually appealing. Every learner is different some learners may prefer visual aids like infographics or videos, while others may prefer hands-on activities or readings.
65% of all people are visual learners
30% of all people are auditory learners
5% of all people are kinesthetic learners
By offering a variety of formats, you can reach a wider audience and increase the overall effectiveness of your training.
Hiring a new employee typically costs three to four times the position's salary, according to Edie Goldberg.
Between recruitment and onboarding, most companies are eager to have the new professional dive into the role. The team has already been running short-staffed and may be growing overstressed without someone to fill the vacant position. Those assigned to train the new hire may be counting every minute away from their existing tasks, eager for their new colleague to immediately pick up the slack.
In an environment where managers are worried about budget and co-workers have no time to train, new employees are judged by their ability to sink or swim. Training is often done in passing - either quickly or with outdated materials because no one has time to make a comprehensive handbook of what they need done. It can be tempting to seemingly save the time and cost of training new employees right away. However, there are hidden costs to not training correctly - even if they don't show up for a while!
In this article, we'll go over the true cost of ignoring or undercutting employee training programs, proving how training ROI pays off in the long run.
High Turnover and Recruiting Costs
Hiring comes with a known and unpleasantly steep cost - increased turnover constantly multiplies that cost. Quality training gives each new-hire investment a chance to become a far more valuable member of the team. Most modern candidates are now "digital natives" who have been learning new software and skill sets their entire lives. Sink-or-swim hiring, however, is too rapid even for most adaptive learning curves. Each employee who "doesn't work out" without a chance to learn the new skills becomes a new re-hiring cost.
In 2021, an average of 25% of employees across all industries left their jobs voluntarily. The overall turnover rate across industries was 57.3% (HubSpot)
Between 2020 and 2021, the average increase in resignations for employees between 30 and 45 years old was 20%. (Harvard Business Review)
In November 2021, a record-breaking 4.5 million people left their jobs (S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
More than 48% of employees are already looking for a new job or will start looking for one within 90 days. (BusinessWire)
Employee turnover costs U.S. businesses $1 trillion per year. (Gallup)
In scenarios where appropriate training and onboarding is done correctly, the results are transformed. Companies that use development programs have seen increased retention, new hire success, and a 24% gain in profit margins from each hire. Training employees create engaged, problem-solving team members who are often eager to learn new skills and routines to get the job done. Most employees today expect to train and consider internal development to be a high priority.
Training Creates Engaged, Invested Employees
Professionals can become deeply invested in a new employer. According to McKinsey, one of the top reasons employees leave their workplace is because of a lack of growth and advancement.
59% of professionals confess to being self-taught, and over 70% would pursue advancement if it was offered internally by an employer. In addition, promotions and raises that do not reflect growing technical skills and responsibility are often seen as a reason to seek new employment. If your company does not have a system to handle professional development, you will see turnover. However, a system of both training and recognition of that training will allow you to nurture internal talent and reduce your turnover in the long term.
Employers who provide new skills and certifications become patrons and landmarks in each career. A good training course can become a lasting memory, echoed each time the employee uses a new foundational skill in their professional toolkit.
Training also shows employees that the company is invested in them. People tend to feel that they are just a number or temporary replacements. Training and integration with their new team can help employees to commit their best work to learning, onboarding, and then more successfully taking up the role of their predecessor.
Internal Training Unlocks Internal Hiring
Onboarding a new position takes far less time and money when you are promoting someone internally. Without internal training, you also lose the opportunity to invest in - and benefit from - your best talent. There is a popular piece of wisdom that says
"If a team runs itself for six months while you hire a manager, you should be promoting."
This needs detailed study but is likely to be essentially true. The internal team who are holding it together while you hire may have what it takes to step up or expand if they care to. They certainly have some insight into what they need from a team member, but may not have the time or temperament to provide sufficient training.
Another downside to dropping new hires directly into the job with minimal or hurried guidance is the cost of failure.
The occasional dropped palette or presentation typo is part of doing business. But lost products, broken machinery, lost clients, and botched projects take their toll. Untrained people are simply more likely to make mistakes than people who have been through engaging and completion-oriented training. In hazardous manufacturing jobs where the cost can be a finger, or an eye, safety training is no joke.
By providing sufficient training, you can avoid the often uncalculated cost of accidents and failures of untrained new hires as they become part of the turnover problem.
Expanding Your Company's Training and Development
Training is an essential part of your staff's potential. From new hires to trusted standbys, everyone is capable of learning new skills and becoming more valuable employees over time. By giving your new hires a chance to learn the ropes, they can come out of the training gates swinging and ready to impress their new teammates with the energy and skills they have been lacking.
With internal training and advancement, your best talent will often seek their own development and can be promoted internally. To further explore training and development programs for your business, consult one of our eLearning experts for free today!
Raise a Glass to Successful Training: How Training Platforms are Revolutionizing Wine & Spirits Companies
Training and development are crucial elements for success in the wine and spirits industry, but with a diverse and dispersed workforce, high turnover rates, and limited resources, it can be a challenge to provide effective training to all employees. Learning Management Systems (LMS) provide a solution to these challenges by offering centralized, customizable, and automated training that improves employee engagement and retention while also promoting brand consistency and compliance. In this article, we'll explore the benefits and best practices of using an LMS for wine and spirits companies and share a case study of a successful implementation. So, sit back, relax, and let's toast to better training.
Overview of the wine and spirits industry
The wine and spirits industry is a rapidly growing and competitive market that involves the production, distribution, and sale of alcoholic beverages. From small, independent wineries to large multinational corporations, the industry is constantly evolving and expanding to meet consumer demands and preferences. The industry encompasses a wide range of products, including wine, spirits, beer, and other alcoholic beverages, and operates globally, with regions such as Europe, North America, and Australia leading the way in production and consumption. With its unique set of challenges and opportunities, the wine and spirits industry requires effective training and development programs to maintain quality, brand consistency, and compliance. An LMS provides a centralized and efficient platform for delivering effective training to the diverse workforce within the industry.
Importance of training and development for the industry
Training and development are critical components of success for wine and spirits companies, as they help to ensure that employees are knowledgeable, skilled, and aligned with the company's goals and values. In the wine and spirits industry, it's particularly important to invest in training and development, as it directly impacts the quality of the products, customer satisfaction, and brand reputation. With a diverse and dispersed workforce, including production employees, sales representatives, and managers, it's important to provide consistent and comprehensive training to all employees, regardless of their location or role. In addition, the industry is highly regulated, and compliance with laws and regulations is essential. A well-designed training and development program, delivered through an LMS, can help to promote compliance, reduce the risk of liability, and improve overall organizational performance.
Key Challenges for Wine and Spirits Companies
High turnover rate and seasonal workers
Wine and spirits companies often struggle with high turnover rates and an influx of seasonal workers, making it difficult to maintain consistent training and brand standards. Wine and spirits companies often have a high turnover rate due to a variety of reasons including low job security, low pay, physically demanding work, and a lack of job advancement opportunities. Additionally, the industry tends to attract a younger, transient workforce who may be more likely to switch jobs. Additionally, many wine and spirit companies rely heavily on seasonal workers, who may leave once their seasonal work is over, further contributing to the high turnover rate.
A diverse and dispersed workforce
With employees spread across various locations and working multiple hours and shifts, it can be challenging for wine and spirits companies to provide effective training to a diverse and dispersed workforce.
Need for brand consistency and compliance
In order to maintain brand consistency and comply with regulations, wine and spirits companies must ensure that their employees are trained and knowledgeable about their wines, vineyards, policies, and procedures.
Limited training budget and resources
With limited training budgets and resources, wine and spirits companies may struggle to provide the training needed to maintain a skilled and knowledgeable workforce.
“With over 75 exceptional brands and more than 700 wines, we needed a way to deliver highly engaging and impactful courses to thousands of sales representatives across the country. Knowledge Anywhere provided us with a turnkey training solution that combined a robust Learning Management System with outstanding, one-of-a-kind course development at a quality level consistent with everything we do here at Terlato Wines.”
Tim Clark | National Wine Education Manager
Advantages of Using an LMS for Wine and Spirits Companies
Centralized and accessible training
An LMS provides a centralized location for all training materials, making it easy for wine and spirit companies to provide consistent and accessible training to their dispersed workforce. This ensures that all employees receive the same information and can access it at any time.
Customizable and brand-aligned courses
An LMS allows companies to tailor their training courses to their specific brand and products, ensuring that employees receive relevant and up-to-date information. This helps maintain brand consistency and ensure that employees are knowledgeable about company products and policies.
Automated compliance tracking
With an LMS, wine and spirit companies can automate the tracking of employee training and ensure that all employees are meeting compliance requirements. This helps to reduce the risk of regulatory violations and maintain a safe and compliant workplace.
Increased employee engagement and retention
By providing accessible and relevant training, an LMS can increase employee engagement and improve retention rates. This results in a more knowledgeable and motivated workforce, contributing to the overall success of the company.
Improved ROI on training investment
An LMS provides a cost-effective and efficient solution for wine and spirit companies, helping them to maximize their training investment and achieve a positive return on investment. By reducing the costs associated with traditional training methods and improving employee performance, an LMS can drive business success.
For more resources, click the links below to download a free eBook:
The wine and spirits industry is a dynamic and competitive market that requires effective training and development programs to meet its challenges and capitalize on its opportunities. An LMS provides a centralized and efficient platform for delivering high-quality training to the diverse and dispersed workforce within the industry. By improving employee engagement, retention, and knowledge, and promoting brand consistency and compliance, an LMS can help wine and spirits companies to achieve their goals and stay ahead of the competition.
Whether you're looking to improve your current training program or start from scratch, an LMS can help you to create a customized, automated, and effective training solution for your wine and spirits company. So, why wait? Book a meeting with one of our eLearning consultants here or start a free LMS trial today! With years of beverage experience under our belts and work with clients such as Terlato Wines, E&J Gallo Winery, and Remy Cointreau, we are a top training provider for the wine and spirits industry.
As a training manager, HR professional, or education administrator, you know that a Learning Management System (LMS) is a crucial tool for delivering online courses and tracking the progress of your learners. But did you know that an LMS can also be integrated with other systems to enhance its functionality and streamline your workflows?
In this blog, we'll introduce you to several integrations available for the Knowledge Anywhere LMS, including Open Sesame, LinkedIn Learning, Digital Signatures, API and Knowledge Mark, and Single Sign On (SSO), which you can find in our Administrator Marketplace within the LMS. We'll also provide demos and resources for getting started with these integrations. Whether you're looking to add new training content, enhance your learner's experience, or simplify your login process, we hope you'll find these integrations useful.
Let's get started!
Open Sesame
Great for getting professionally-created training on your platform quickly. Over 25,000 courses!
Open Sesame, a market-leading SaaS global eLearning innovator, recently announced an integration with longtime partner Knowledge Anywhere to transform existing training programs using OpenSesame’s high-quality content library for learners. The integration maximizes resources using OpenSesame content via Knowledge Anywhere’s LMS and provides learners with a range of topics and styles of content. Learning and Development teams can quickly and effectively customize training programs with high-quality content that is useful and engaging for Learners, while saving both time and money.
Great for getting professionally-created training on your platform quickly. Over 17,000 courses!
Knowledge Anywhere Learning Management System users can now access over 17,000 expert-led professional courses from LinkedIn Learning directly from their eLearning platform. This integration creates a great opportunity to jump-start a new training and development program or add additional value and flexibility to an existing one.
Opting into this integration allows administrators to select applicable courses from the vast, professional, continually growing LinkedIn Learning library and distribute those courses to selected learner groups.
xAPI bookmarklet that allows Learners to have a browser extension that records selected pages in their LMS transcript.
Knowledge Mark is an xAPI bookmarklet that allows users to track the learning they do outside of the LMS. Learners can consume a piece of material on the internet and use Knowledge Mark to easily add it to their transcript. Here is a short video explaining xAPI capabilities and Knowledge Anywhere’s new xAPI bookmarklet called Knowledge Mark. xAPI represents a significant step forward in the deployment of eLearning course offerings and assessment of learning outcomes. Although xAPI is not standardized or widely adopted quite yet, LMS professionals and LMS companies alike are excited about the possibilities it brings.
Single Sign-On (SSO) is a user authentication process that leverages a central authentication service to minimize the required use of multiple login combinations. It allows users to enter one username and password for all independent and related software systems, eliminating the need to remember separate login credentials for each program.
Knowledge Anywhere users have SSO access to Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Salesforce, Okta, and Google! These integrations allow Knowledge Anywhere LMS users to be authenticated and signed in using their Azure, Salesforce, Okta, and Google credentials.
If you’d like to learn more about Knowledge Anywhere’s integrations and apps, check out these resources below.
Zapier is a platform that allows you to connect apps you use daily to automate your work and be more efficient. With over 2,000 apps and integrations, its potential is endless! With a fast set-up and user-friendly application, it’s easier than ever to connect.
To use this integration, simply find Knowledge Anywhere LMS’s page on Zapier and connect it with another application of your choosing. With thousands of options, you’re sure to find something valuable!
Knowledge Anywhere Founder Predicts the Future: How Online Training Has Changed from 2001
In June 2001, Knowledge Anywhere Founder Charlie Gillette published an article in The Eastside Journal, entitled Tips to Setting up a Virtual Office.
This newspaper clipping, recently re-found during a move to our new Seattle office, serves as a time capsule into the past. Written 19 years before Covid-19 and the steep incline of remote work, this article will take a look at the original article and compare it to our current remote work climate to see what's changed and what hasn't.
Original Article
Knowledge Anywhere, a Bellevue online learning company, has grown significantly over the past few years. But walk into our Bellevue headquarters and you’d think we were a fledgling startup. Why? Our office is nearly empty. Most of our employees are working hard, but from somewhere else- virtually. Our core promise to clients is the delivery of custom web-based learning solutions in six to eight weeks. Pulling off this requires creativity, communication, and concentration, plus lots of long hours. We meet our goals, in part, because we let people work away from the office, where they work harder and are also happier. About three-quarters of our approximately 30 employees and contract workers have their primary office at home. They come to headquarters for weekly meetings. More frequently they communicate with their supervisor, deliver completed projects and receive new assignments via email.
Employees who prefer to work in the office take advantage of flextime, and often adjust their hours to avoid peak traffic or to meet family or personal obligations. Veronica Amucha, a product manager, provides a good example. She works from home in Bellevue two days a week, communicating in real-time with technical staff and project managers via MSN messenger. This allows her to parent her newborn daughter and 21-month-old son without extensive use of daycare. Andrea Riseden Perry, our graphic designer and marketing specialist, likes homework because of the creative space she set up at home. Not only is the ambiance conducive to concentration and innovative design, but she also has the equipment she prefers. It would be hard for us to match these features in an office. Even our executive vice president of business development, Bill Strelke, uses flex times. He can break away for his children’s school events, and activities he previously missed with work and travel.
Implementing a virtual company makes takes more than just sending everyone home and downsizing office space. It requires deliberate strategy and careful planning to avoid both financial and morale-related pitfalls. To other companies considering switching to a virtual office format, I would like to suggest the following guidelines based on our experience:
1: Hire only highly motivated people. When there’s no clock to punch and no manager walking the halls, you’ve got to be able to trust your employees to work on their own- even if the sun has come out or the ski slopes are in perfect condition. So, hire very accountable individuals and set clear goals. Ask for proof of successful independent work when recruiting and conducting new-hire interviews. If hours counting is an issue with contractors, structure compensation on a project basis, paying only for deliverables produced.
2: Access to the latest technology. Virtual workers need the basics- a PC with email and cell phone. But also consider real-time communications technology like DSL, Messenger, cellular mobiles access to data, or PDS for email and text messages. The real-time aspect is more important than you might suspect because of the sense of isolation that can impact virtual workers. Organization between the virtual team is also key. Our project managers and developers depend on version control software and a central file storage program for easy access to current projects and company documents.
3: Allow for social needs. Even the most hermit-like person needs a pat on the back, an appreciative smile and face-to-face contact every now and again. Virtual team members may not get their “social fix” very often – or at least not from co-workers. Employees should cultivate a team environment. Scheduling regular touch base meetings and encouraging collaboration will create camaraderie, and let people put faces with names on email and voices on the phone. At our company we find that weekly lunch meetings work well. Often the company provides food, and we all break bread or while discussing current goals, challenges, and progress.
4: Be generous with virtual praise. This is a corollary to the point above. If your team members feel isolated or underappreciated because of their physical distance from the office, they're not going to prioritize your work. We’ve found that virtual employees are motivated by approval and positive recognition. Taking the time to send an email or phone call when you're satisfied with someone’s work provides positive feedback and shows they are viewed as a valuable contributor to the company.
5: Become a world-class communicator. Reply quickly to each and every message you receive from virtual employees. Treat them like you would a team member at your office door asking for help. Also be sure to disseminate news to all employees, regardless of location, to avoid a perception of favoritism for in-house staff.
We adopted virtual office strategies for very practical reasons. We’re a lean company, and virtual workers have allowed to save money. Hiring and training costs typically run about 25% of a new recruit’s salary. You eliminate these outlays by retaining happy and loyal employees- in our case, by letting them work virtually. With virtual practices, we can hire the best people available no matter where they live, pay them highly competitive rates (not for time spent commuting, but for actual work done), and retain our top talent. With Seattle now having the third worst traffic in the nation. It’s a safe bet that we may soon see more companies converting to a virtual office format.
Charlie Gillette Monday June 11, 2001, Eastside Journal
What's Changed Since 2001
Quite a few things have changed since 2001, as evidenced by the Classified ads listed next to the article. $1145 for a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath in Bellevue? What a steal. But for now, let's focus on remote work and training. Here are the top differences between the original article and today:
1. The amount of workers that are or expect to be working remotely at least part-time.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey, in 2021 approximately 27.7% of the American workforce worked from home at least one day per week. Additionally, 5.2% of workers worked from home exclusively. These numbers likely reflect the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many companies have implemented remote work policies in response to the crisis.
2. The latest technology has improved and changed.
Sleek Learning Management Systems (LMS), Teams, and Slack have replaced DSL, AOL, and MSN Messenger.
What's Remained the Same
While some things could stand to be updated, the overall accuracy of this article remains eerily similar to the advice of remote work today. The core tenants of online work benefits, staying in touch through technology, and establishing accountability programs are still relevant today.
Founded in 1998, Knowledge Anywhere creates and deploys easy-to-use, performance-based eLearning tools to make the transfer of knowledge more flexible, effective, and engaging.
Our Learning Management System, Virtual Reality Training, Course Library, and Course Development services, combined with our experience and stellar customer support, enables our users to create a learning and development program that delights Learners and drives company growth.
Schedule a talk with an online training expert for free here!
With Knowledge Anywhere's LMS, you can customize user roles to fit your organization's needs. From learners to instructors and administrators, you can define each user's level of access with our easy-to-use permission settings. Find out which role suits your needs and how these permissions differ in this quick, informative article.
User/Learner
By default, all learners added to the LMS are assigned the role of user. A user is equivalent to the role of a Learner or student. Users do not have access to system data and only have access to their Learner home page, their Learning Paths, and their personal transcript, which will show scores, certificates, and badges that the individual Learner has earned. The role of a user is to complete assigned and optional course content. An administrator can also assign the role of administrator, group administrator, or instructor to a user.
Administrators
(Listed in order of most permissions to the least)
Global - formerly known as Super Admin
A super administrator has access to all levels of the LMS. This role is reserved for the main overseer of your LMS, and can do anything from managing learners, managing content, creating/scheduling reports, and personalizing the look of the learner site. It is the only role that can assign other roles and view data for the entire system. Administrators manage, direct, and deliver all learning activities. They can also manage users, upload courses, create learning paths, and generate reports to track user progress. Super Admins have the ability to edit user roles.
Note: Knowledge Anywhere typically designates administrators as part of the LMS deployment process. A set number of administrators is allowed, depending on what tier your organization is on. If you want to add additional administrators, you will be subject to an additional monthly fee.
Limited - formerly known as Group Admin
Limited Admins can view all learners and courses across all groups, and has many of the same abilities of the global admin except for:
Configuring the structure of the site (personalization, certification listings, custom fields etc)
Configuring content (e.g. updating courses, managing learning paths, SCORMs, documents, and assigning learning paths to groups)
This role is suitable for someone that deals more with learners on a day-to-day basis, such as an HR contact.
Group - formerly known as Restricted Group Admin
For only the groups that they belong to, they can view content, manage learners, view transcripts, and execute reports for their group.
Basic
The basic role can list learners and courses, and perform basic maintenance tasks in advancing a learner's journey, such as Assign Directed Learning, Mark Learners Complete, View Transcripts, and run reports.
Instructor
An instructor can manage course registration and attendance for classroom courses. Specifically, they have the ability to: manage offerings, access learner information pertaining to that classroom they're running, manage those learners' enrollment status, and run reports for that classroom.
Registrar
A registrar works alongside an instructor in helping enroll learners to an offering. The default landing page for this position is the manage courses page and they can only view users and transcripts
This grid below provides context as to what admin can do what within Knowledge Anywhere's LMS. Our Customer support and sales teams are more than happy to assist and provide further context and clarification to ensure your organization uses the LMS to its fullest extent.
eLearning to Earning; 6 Ways to Turn Training and Upskilling into Employee Compensation
We know how your business benefits from having skilled and trained employees – but if Learners fail to see the benefits for them, your beautiful training platform will go unused.
Convince them to engage by providing and communicating tangible ways their training and upskilling can result in money in their bank account.
1. Provide an Educational Fund as part of a total compensation package
While salary may be an easy way to measure compensation, the truth is that money can lie in many more places within the workplace, including employee benefits such as vacation time, paid holidays, sick or personal leave, and insurance.
Consider developing a company-wide Educational Fund, which rewards employees who complete programs. It helps to enhance the overall training across the company, and the business makes a sound investment by paying partially (or fully) for the education and training. To keep this consistent and beneficial for employers, make sure that the type of training is in line with a worker’s current or future role, and that there is a specific limit to how much they can spend monthly, quarterly, or yearly.
2. Set up employee recognition programs
Another method for your staff to gain more compensation is integration with platforms and employee recognition programs. People like to be recognized for good work. Pair that with a fun platform that allows any employee to give kudos (and points) to their co-workers and everyone feels more seen and appreciated, making them feel more invested in the business and likely to increase performance.
One example of this is Bonusly, a site where coworkers can internally create fun and easy employee rewards which can equate to monetary gains in the form of gift cards, charity donations, and more.
3. Utilize and value Badges and Certificates
Another aspect of employee recognition is having badges and certificates as rewards for training. These can be utilized in many ways. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Use a training system with a Leadership board, so Learners can compare and compete against each other to learn the most.
Initiate an “Employee of the Quarter” reward to recognize employees who earn the most badges or certificates.
Create an internal raffle drawing for each certificate or badge earned within your training system. By upskilling, employees can be recognized, get prizes, and become better at their job.
These tools show that your organization values work hard and constant self-improvement. It is key in helping provide a sense of security and motivation to continue producing great work.
4. Track and reward soft skills
Training allows us to notice, measure, and reward soft skills, which are challenging to determine effectively. However, a study by MIT Sloan discovered that soft skills training across five companies resulted in a 250% ROI in an eight month period and according to LinkedIn’s 2019 Global Talent Trends report, 89% of recruiters say when a hire doesn’t work out, it usually comes down to a lack of soft skills. This makes soft skills absolutely imperative.
Sadly, soft skills can be overlooked in the workforce since they aren’t as tangible as hard skills or advanced software skills that leadership tends to view as easier to track and reward. Performance monitoring that helps train employees in soft skills such as decision-making and problem-solving aids in ensuring more complex tasks can be handled. It also improves employee attendance and demonstrates the value of your business.
By using online training platforms, you can essentially measure and value soft skills and use them as an indicator of total job performance – even resulting in monetary gains.
5. Tie promotions to performance … and training
Employees should recognize that taking on training and upskilling will provide a pathway to promotions. According to Work Institute's 2020 Retention Report, around 40% of employee turnover occurs within the employee's first year with the organization, partially because people look for ways to move up and receive more compensation. And that’s not all! Turnover is up in recent years. To learn more, read Employee Turnover Statistics That Will Scare Your HR Team Into Action.
It should be clearly stated in your organization that if employees work to master relevant skills and participate training programs, internal promotions within the organization is more likely.
Training or upskilling employees is essential to help team members focus more on their work and ensure they are continuously being challenged. When you implement programs focused on enhancing skills, you can increase productivity and simultaneously boost morale in the workplace, shares Pathlabs Marketing, a leading media service company.
6. Make training expectations clear during Onboarding
Ongoing commitment to an employee’s education shows that your business cares. Employees starting in the workforce are more likely to invest within a company that cares about their growth and success.
Set expectations from the beginning by telling new employees that training is not in addition to their job - it IS their job! According to a recent 2022 Forbes article, 70% of people aren’t prepared for the future of work. Be ahead of the curve by demanding upskilling and training programs within job contracts and expectations, embedding it into the fabric of your organization’s culture.
6 Reasons Why the Start of the Year is the Perfect Time to Re-engage Employees
The average employee has bigger goals for their time at an organization than good pay and an attractive benefits package. The chances are if they're happy with the career they chose, they're eager to engage in training initiatives that get them closer to their goals. For HR teams, it takes more than onboarding training to keep such an employee engaged. Even when your training program is well-crafted, considerate, and helpful, there's such a thing as the ideal time to re-engage employees for training, and that's the start of the year.
Here are six reasons why the beginning of the year is more effective than any other time.
1. The Beginning of the Year Attracts the Least Resistance
Re-engaging employees for training has a nuance of change, and change is often dreadful because it disrupts what they're used to. The start of the year is a change by itself, which makes it a great place to introduce change, including re-engaging employees for training.
Further, people have a sense of life offering them a blank state to start over. Most of them are in the mood to start something, and it's likely that their new year's resolutions list involves becoming better at their job.
These facts make them more receptive to important organizational and strategic changes during this season than at other times. To reduce the chances of pushback, involve your employees in the implementation, paying close attention to their views and publicly appreciating every participant and their specific input.
2. There's A Surge in Hiring January and February
According to Career Sidekick, January and February is the best time of year to look for a job. Hiring managers have received new hiring budgets for the year, the majority of workers are back from holiday vacation, and companies also often have a backlog of hiring that they have been meaning to do but had paused during the holiday season. For these reasons, January and February are excellent months to look for jobs.
Because January and February are the most popular hiring months, Q1 is the perfect time to consider pushing for a re-engagement campaign for online employee training.
3. January is Ideal for Performance Discussions
The start of the year is also prime for face-to-face conversations about performance contracts. These discussions should define a key performance indicator that the employee should meet and can track for the rest of the year.
To improve the employee's chances of being successful, there has to be continuous dialogue between them and the manager they report to about the goal. The point is to eliminate instances where the manager decides the employee's performance level alone and instead invites their input in setting one. Next, the employee must clearly understand that the metrics accompanying the goal will be discussed first during performance reviews. Lastly, the employee has to enjoy complete control over meeting the goal to make it easier for them to satisfy the metrics.
If the discussions reveal areas the employee can improve on with training, they're more likely to accept learning in January than later in the year.
4. A New Budget Makes the Approval Process Easier
A new year usually coincides with refreshed budgeting, meaning that new programs or upgrades are more likely to be approved by managers. Because a training platform usually requires a fundamental system change within an organization, it can take a while to get approved. If money is not as much of a concern, new systems can be implemented easier than if managers are on a tight budget.
Each end year tells a story of the organization's performance for the last twelve months; down to the details of everyone's contribution and mistakes made. Beginning with discussions about performance helps the organization to rethink, reorganize, and restrategize. It's an opportune time to create new goals and set KPIs, then come up with a routine people can start practicing and follow until next year.
Support your yearly goals by setting a quarterly action plan, and focus on setting realistic goals that are easy to measure when the quarter ends. This way, you acknowledge what's achievable and set the foundation for meeting your annual goals.
6. Q1 is Ideal Time for Managing Employee Uncertainties
Some employees dread training because it means time away from their daily roles spent in a conference room to learn something they don't believe they need. These thoughts can form beliefs where employees think anything they do is for the business and never for them.
Beyond piloting, taking time early in January to ask employees' views on training can help point out beliefs you didn't know they had and explain how the training helps them.
For example, if you find out your employees feel uncomfortable with instructor-led group training, presenting an online training option eliminates the discomfort, helping them learn better.
However, don't leave out those happy to learn through face-to-face interactions. In that case, take a blended approach and allow your employees to sign up for face-to-face or online training courses.
The overlapping reason for training your employees is to meet the required skills. But if you're reintroducing it, you may have a different goal in mind – improving task management, instilling confidence, clarifying expectations, enhancing employee engagement, etc.
We recommend you make it easier on the employees by giving a specific reason for the new training. Ensure you explain how you got to the decision too. For example, support your reason with a survey's results, then explain how the training will be conducted, when, and for how long.
About Knowledge Anywhere
We are Knowledge Anywhere, a corporate online training company that provides multiple types of training. We create and deliver custom eLearning experiences, taking the best elements of classroom training and customizing them for the online world in ways that benefit all learners. We offer a beautiful training platform, a Course Library with over 50,000 professionally made courses, custom course development, VR Training, and more! Schedule a demo with us today!
The True Cost of Outdated Training: How Refreshing Skills Can Save Your Business
In today’s economy, it is more important than ever for companies to invest in their employees. One way to do this is by providing updated and relevanttraining courses.
However, during tough economic times, corporate training budgets are often the first to be slashed. What many businesses don’t realize is that cutting back on employee training can actually end up costing them more in the long run. So, how much is your outdated corporate training costing you?
This blog post will discuss the true cost of outdated corporate training and the importance of refreshing your employees’ skills.
What Is Corporate Training?
Before we dive into the cost of outdated corporate training, let’s first define what corporate training is. Corporate training is “the process of teaching employees the specific skills they need to perform their jobs effectively.” It can teach new employees the basics of their job and help existing employees learn new skills or keep their existing skills up-to-date.
Corporate training is necessary for any business that wants to ensure its employees can do their jobs effectively. In fact, 86% of employees in the world say that access to quality learning and development opportunities is a key factor in deciding whether or not to stay with their current employer.
Why Is Corporate Training Important?
Corporate training is important for several reasons.
It can help improve employee productivity. According to research, employees who receive training are more productive by 8-18% than those who don’t. This means that investing in employee training can actually help improve your bottom line and increase your ROI.
It can help improve employee retention. Employees who feel like their employer is investing in their development are more likely to stick around. In fact, one study found employees who receive training are 40% less likely to leave their jobs than those who don’t.
It can help improve employee morale. Employees who feel like their employer is investing in their development are more likely to be engaged and enthusiastic about their work.
It can help improve customer satisfaction. Employees who are better trained are more likely to provide better customer service, which can lead to improved customer satisfaction.
It can help improve company profitability. Studies show that companies that invest in employee training see a significant return on their investment.
So, as you can see, corporate training is important for various reasons. But what happens when companies fail to update their training programs?
What Is the Cost of Outdated Corporate Training?
Outdated corporate training is defined as “training that is no longer relevant or accurate.” There are several reasons why corporate training can become outdated, including changes in technology, changes in the marketplace, and changes in company procedures.
When corporate training becomes outdated, it can negatively affect companies. These consequences can be divided into two main categories.
1. Direct Costs
The first category of costs is direct costs. These are the tangible, monetary costs that companies incur due to outdated training.
Some common examples of direct costs include:
As you can see, there are several direct costs associated with outdated corporate training. These costs can have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line.
The cost of re-training employees. When training becomes outdated, companies often have to spend money to re-train their employees, which can be costly especially if the training is being delivered to many employees.
The cost of lost productivity. Outdated training can lead to decreased employee productivity. Employees who are not properly trained are less likely to be able to do their jobs effectively, which can lead to lost sales, missed deadlines, and other problems.
The cost of customer satisfaction. Outdated training can also lead to decreased customer satisfaction because employees who are not properly trained are less likely to provide good customer service.
2. Indirect Costs
The second category of costs is indirect costs. These are the intangible, non-monetary costs that companies incur due to outdated training. Some common examples of indirect costs include:
The cost of employee morale. Outdated training can lead to decreased employee morale because employees who are not properly trained are less likely to be engaged and enthusiastic about their work.
The cost of employee retention. Outdated training can also lead to decreased employee retention because employees who are not properly trained are more likely to leave their jobs.
The cost of company reputation. Outdated training can also lead to decreased company reputation due to poor customer service.
So, what is the true cost of outdated corporate training? The answer is that it depends. The cost of outdated corporate training can vary depending on the company’s size, industry, and other factors. However, one thing is certain: outdated corporate training can be very costly for companies.
While the cost of outdated corporate training can be significant, it is important to note that the cost of refreshing already existing training is often much less. In fact, in many cases, the cost of refreshing already existing training is negligible.
By refreshing already existing training, companies can avoid the direct and indirect costs associated with outdated training. In addition, it can help ensure that employees are up-to-date on the latest changes in technology, procedures, and the marketplace, which can help to improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction.
How Can Companies Refresh Their Training Programs?
If your company’s training programs are outdated, there are several things you can do to refreshthem. Here are some tips:
Update your training content. One of the easiest ways to refresh your training programs is simply updating your training content. Add new modules, update existing modules, or even create entirely new courses.
Invest in new technology. Another way to refresh your training programs is to invest in new technology such as Learning Management System and Virtual Reality Training, which can help to make your training more immersive and engaging.
Re-evaluate your training delivery methods. It is also important to re-evaluate your training delivery methods, such as switching from a traditional classroom setting to an online learning environment.
Hire a corporate training company. Hiring a reputable corporate training company can be a great way to refresh your training programs. A corporate training company can help you create custom, up-to-date, and engaging training content.
By taking these steps, you can ensure that your company’s training program is up to date and that your employees are properly trained. Doing so will help improve employee productivity, retention, customer satisfaction, and company profitability.
We have improved the primary navigation on the left side of the Administration LMS. This navigation can be easily compressed and tucked away.
Once the main menu item is selected, the secondary navigation on the top shows all secondary selections at a glance, organized by category.
When any of the navigation links are clicked, it will take you to an existing page you are already familiar with. The top dropdown menu items have also been optimized to better account for smaller screen sizes.
Custom Support/Contact Us Content Type
Admins can now personalize a microsite/site and mark the checkbox for “Enable Support Page,” then see additional content types that can be customized for the site.
Knowledge Anywhere is thrilled our hard work this year is being recognized. Keep scrolling to see the nine given awards and honors given to us in 2022.
If you'd like to increase your ROI by optimizing your online corporate training, reach out to us! One of our industry experts would be happy to get on a free phone consultation to discuss your training goals and see what we could do to add value to your organization.
A top expert in the training industry, Craig Weiss' words mean quite a lot. For this award, he acknowledges Knowledge Anywhere's system as "robust and under the radar."
"Really a wonderful system for the customer education segment. Lots of functionality and capabilities. Fair value for pricing. They know the audience size and market and excel at many levels."
Learning And Learner-Centric The platform is built around providing an intuitive user experience as well as increased responsiveness. Administrators have complete control of the system with features to improve the experience such as leaderboards, custom branding, certifications, badges etc. The platform is also offered in multiple languages. Trainers also get to benefit from advanced reporting and analytics, with data and real-time reports that help understand student/trainee performances, also the training programs being instituted, the business impact as well as the reception by the trainees.
Quick And Easy With all these advanced features, the platform remains quite easy to understand and quick to become familiar with and manage. Trainers find it easy to organize, manage as well as assign all online as well as in-person training in a single place.
Customer-Focused The company constantly works to improve its technology, and its platform to meet the ever-changing needs of its clients. It takes a customer-centric approach, closely following the feedback to make changes and add value for its clients.
Rated as 96/100 in the Top 20 list of best LMSs for the hospitality industry. One great example of this work is Extended Stay America - check out our customer quote from them below!
"Extended Stay America is proud to have partnered with Knowledge Anywhere to have created Extended Stay University, our training platform .... since creating the University, we've seen over 10,000 associates successfully trained in the system, coming out of the experience being able to excel in their positions and experience higher job satisfaction."
Mike Kuenne | VP - Operational Excellence, Extended Stay America
The public release of new AI tools this month has caused a ripple in the world, with implications for almost every industry. So what is this new disruptive technology and what does it mean for the future of training? Should you be worried about a robot replacing your job? Read on to find out.
What is Chat GPT?
In the world of corporate training, the use of technology continues to grow, and Chat GPT is one of the latest advancements. Short for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” Chat GPT is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) technology that allows users to converse with machines in a natural way. It is designed to mimic human conversation, making it an ideal tool for eLearning corporate training.
Chat GPT uses a natural language processing (NLP) system to respond to the user in a conversational format. The technology is able to understand context and is capable of learning from its interactions, which makes it highly adaptable.
What Are Some Use Cases of This Technology?
The more people seem to play around with this new technology, the quicker we realize how this could change everything. Here are some quick examples of how Chat GPT could streamline roles and fundamentally change how people create value:
Customer Support: AI-driven chatbots can provide 24/7 customer support, helping to answer customer queries quickly and effectively.
Sales and Marketing: Chatbots can help to generate leads, qualify prospects, and close deals by guiding customers through the purchase process.
Education: Chatbots can be used to teach and answer student questions in an interactive and engaging way.
Healthcare: AI-driven chatbots can provide personalized medical advice and help to diagnose health issues.
Recruitment: Chatbots can help to automate the recruitment process, saving time and resources.
Travel: AI-driven chatbots can help travelers to book flights, hotels, and more in a few clicks.
Entertainment: Chatbots can provide personalized recommendations for movies, music, and more. It can also write full scripts for movies or shows and write lyrics for songs.
Legal advice: Lawyers can use chat GPT to provide legal advice to their clients quickly and efficiently and easily search for relevant legal information and case law.
Business Intelligence: AI-driven chatbots can provide real-time insights into customer behavior, market trends, and more.
Put plainly, there are many use cases for this new technology. In the past, certain fields were seen as "future-proof," because of the level of creativity, skills, or knowledge that were needed for the position. Now, with knowledge being freely and easily accessible, sharable, and searchable, people need to re-think how to add new value to organizations that robots cannot (yet).
How Does This AI Affect Training?
Now that you've seen a few use cases, how does Chat GPT affect training employees and upskilling workers? What are ways that it could be used to upskill people and keep them relevant in the workforce?
Answer Chatbot Questions
The use of Chat GPT in eLearning corporate training will provide several benefits; the main one being interactive training. For example, companies can use the chatbot to answer employee questions about specific training materials, provide employees with quick answers to common questions, and even offer personalized training based on the employee’s individual needs, creating an individualized learning experience. It can help employees learn more quickly and easily, as they can interact with the technology in a more conversational manner than with traditional learning methods. This can help employees to become more engaged and motivated in the learning process.
Create Personalized Learner Feedback
The chatbot can also be used to track employee progress and provide feedback on their performance. This way, companies can make sure that they are providing the best possible training and that their employees are learning the right information.
Reduce Set-Up Time and Support Hours
The best part about Chat GPT is that it is highly scalable and can be deployed quickly. Companies can set up the chatbot in a matter of minutes and it can be used to help train thousands of employees at once, in real time.
With all this in mind, you may be thinking - why even upskill if a computer can do it better than I could? Despite what it may sound like, this could be a huge opportunity for workers and employees. Training will be more important than ever.
Instead of rote memorization and publically available research, training will likely shift from teaching how to do something to how can you find what you need, and how can you translate that need into value for the organization.
Another thing to consider is that this technology is not able to replace skills related to manual labor, soft skills, or relationship building and maintenance. Those skills can be learned, which means they will still need to be taught.
Conclusion
The world will continue to change, but don’t panic. Chat GPT technology is not likely to replace people’s jobs. While it is a powerful tool for automating conversations, it is still a long way from being able to replace the creative and interpersonal skills of human beings. GPT technology is best used to augment tasks, not replace them. If embraced and used correctly, it can free up more time for people to focus on higher-value tasks that require more creativity and problem-solving.
At Knowledge Anywhere, our goal is to optimize training to make your organization thrive. One of the ways Knowledge Anywhere shines is our ability to provide helpful support and free resources to those looking for corporate training - that's why we've created this free, downloadable LMS Weighted Criteria Report Card!
Choosing a training platform can be a daunting task. With over 800 Learning Management Systems on the market, there's a lot of competition between plenty of qualified providers, so it’s no wonder that organizations have a hard time narrowing down the playing field.
This resource provides a way to quantify qualitative research by assigning weighted scores to each online training platform feature, giving you a total score.
What is a Weighted Criteria Report Card?
You may know what a report card is - this is one step up! Instead of a static document, this Weighted Criteria Report Card is a sheet that allows you to make decisions and evaluates potential options against a list of weighted factors. It's an exceptionally useful tool that can come into play when you have to choose the best option and need to carefully consider a wide range of criteria.
In this case, you'll compare four LMS providers to each other to be able to see which your organization values the most.
Choose the weight of each feature. For example, if Certificates matter a lot to you, value this feature at a 10. If you think you'll never use it, value it as a 1 or 2.
Research your top eLearning competitors and assign values to each feature, as you see fit.
Customize the sheet to include your company's logos, colors, and branding.
The sheet will automatically use pre-set formulas to calculate scores, which show at the bottom of the page. Whichever company has the highest score is probably the right one for your organization!
Pro tip: If you want to share this with a team of people, and have a live version of the document, import this download into Google Sheets or Microsoft Teams for a shareable, live link that you and your team can access together.
Happy training!
What Is A Learning Path & How Does It Help Administrators and Learners?
Learning Paths (LP) help guide and structure training programs, with amazing benefits for both Administrators and Learners. In this article, we’ll go over what is a Learning Path, provide examples, and learn why Admins and Learners both benefit from utilizing them in your online training program.
What Is a Learning Path?
A Learning Path is a way for Admins to structure online training courses and assign training routes for Learners to progress through. Not every necessary skillset can be taught in one course - sometimes, it takes a series of courses to master a skill or gain needed knowledge. An example of a Learning Path may be “Compliance Training.” Under this Path, Admins can create an assign relevant courses, such as OSHA training, Conflict Resolution, Safety Training, and more. Within Learning Paths, Knowledge Anywhere gives Admins the option to assign Learning Paths and courses into Categories. An example of this could be an “Onboarding” Category, where Admins could place relevant onboarding content, so new Learners would know where to look first when first logging into their training system. To learn more about how we utilize Categories, click here.
Why Should Administrators Use Learning Paths?
So how do Learning Paths benefit Administrators? Learning Paths are an essential part of how companies organize content for their employees. Say you’re a Training Manager; your job is to organize and manage Learner content, with limited time on your hands. Instead of individually choosing and assigning multiple courses to an employee or partner, Learning Paths make it possible for Admins to create a set of courses in an automated workflow. Once a Learning Path is set up, Admins can simply enroll Leanrers into a path that makes sense for their role, leaving them to be self-sufficient and able to move through the path without extra guidance. You no longer need to check in on employee progress, waiting for them to finish one course before you manually assign another. This cuts down on logistical and onboarding time, since employees can move asynchronously at their own pace without having to wait for managerial approval or oversight. Another great thing about Learning Paths is that they guide Learners to a goal with a specific pathway to get there. Think of it as using bumpers on a bowling alley lane. While the Learner has to do the work to throw the ball, you’ve provided boundaries and direction to lead them to success. Without Learning Paths, Learners could easily get overwhelmed with a plethora of choices available to them and no obvious starting point to lead off on.
How Do Learning Paths Benefit Learners?
While Administrators are the decision makers in choosing a training process, Learners have their own incentives to want Learning Paths within their training program. With this structure in place, Learners can build skills in a focused, specific subject area without being overwhelmed by unlimited options. Because courses are set in sequential order, when a Path is completed, there is a huge sense of accomplishment and a sense of mastery in that area. Additionally, Learning Paths allow Learners to choose groups of courses based on their own areas of interest for their own development. If continued training is a part of company culture, employees can leverage the training to get ahead in their own career path. Here are just a few ways that quality online training benefits Learners of a system: To read more in depth about this subject, read the article Top 7 Ways Employees Can Benefit From Corporate Training.
Internal company growth and career progress
An increase in employeability
Learning a new skillset
Matching Learners with relevant industry mentors
Increase in job satisfaction
A form of empowerment and better workplace culture
Enhanced safety in the workplace
Conclusion
Learning Paths are a great tool to provide structure within a Learning Management System (LMS), whether a Learner is just starting out or wants to grow their skills. To see how Knowledge Anywhere utilizes this feature, check out the image below, sign up for a free system demo, or a free 14 day trial of our system today!
8 Reasons Why Most Online Corporate Training Fails
Corporate training programs are designed to create a difference for the employees. The programs are developed specifically to provide employees with unique skills and tools applicable in their working areas. However, most corporate training programs tend to fail.
According to the British Chamber of Commerce, 60-90% of the skills learned during training are either forgotten or never applied on the job. But what could be the cause of such failures after putting too much effort into it? We discuss 8 reasons why most corporate training fails to help you avoid those mistakes and reap success instead.
1. Poor Planning
Poor planning exposes your trainees to a high risk of losses. While training, employees suffering from poor planning strategies are likely to have low morale. Due to a lack of morale, productivity will be low. The disorganization in their programs will lead to frustration and a lack of commitment.
Therefore, the skills learned before might either be forgotten or won't be applicable in the job. There likely will be a high withdrawal from the training resulting in a low expectancy rate from the trainees.
2. Checking a Box Instead of Developing Talent
74% of surveyed employees feel they aren’t reaching their full potential at work due to a lack of development opportunities, and yet 41% of employees consider their organization’s career advancement opportunities a very important factor in their job satisfaction.
One of the top reasons employees dislike training is because it feels like a checkbox they need to add to their list instead of a legitimate way to get ahead in their career. Training should focus on the value it provides, with a heavy focus on talent and skills development.
Without a real emphasis on value, training easily becomes going through the motions and leads to a lack of motivation.
3. A Lack of Focus on Immediate Needs
Just-in-time training is the concept of supporting employees by providing avenues for immediate learning, allowing them to acquire the knowledge they need, when they need to know it. With the advancement of technology, we are now using just-in-time training in everyday life. Through tools like Google and social media, we are able to instantly gather and learn new information at the tips of our fingers. Why shouldn't our training be the same way?
Listening to videos or lectures for hours can be boring and static - getting what you need, when you need it is time well spent and ensures the job will be done because of the training provided. Click here to learn how to implement just-in-time training.
4. Irrelevant Training
Each training has its audience. When the wrong training is employed to the wrong audience, it will waste time and the organization's resources. Irrelevant activity loads the employees with irrelevant information, which, when they apply in their working fields, causes many expensive errors.
There is no point in training virtual reality by pairing it with custom course development; they both have a specific audience. Therefore, providing the right and valuable training programs to the right audience is highly needed for them to give out the required information.
The type of topic you bring before your audience matters. The kind of topic presented will determine if your audience chooses to give you their ears or if they are just there to pass the time.
Boring topics tend to diverge employees' focus to something else. At the end of the lesson, while assessing yourself, you will realize that what you presented to your audience was not pleasing. To make corporate training successful, you have to choose an exciting topic that will draw employees into grasping the content it comes with.
One quality of a good leader is always being active in any situation. However, one of the reasons that lead to failure in corporate training is poor leadership participation.
Poor leadership participation downgrades the employees' morale, leading to poor collaboration and coordination. Due to demotivation from the leaders, the rate of retention from the employees will be low, decreasing the production rate.
A hard-working leadership organization is needed to ensure that the best skills are well delivered. At Knowledge Anywhere, we have a team of well-organized leaders to provide full assistance to the training programs to ensure that the requirements are well shown to our employees.
The lack of views from leaders in any organization affects employees' production. According to HubSpot, 69% of employees claim they would put more effort at work if their actions were acknowledged. Lack of feedback lowers employees' self-esteem and confidence, resulting in poor organizational performance.
Assessing and giving input on employees' progress helps them realize where they went wrong and the fundamental areas that need improvement. Feedback also re-engages and improves the collaboration among employees; it later boosts their confidence resulting in a high productivity rate. To make a corporate training program successful, assess and give quality feedback to employees' work.
One of the most potent obstacles that cause failure is smartphone addiction. You will realize that, while training is in progress, an attendee seated at the back end is busy scrolling up and down on his phone. It is clearly stated that a brain can't multitask. If you try multitasking your brain, your brain will end up blank.
When one is inside the training room, the mind should only focus on what is being presented beforehand. Restraining from any form of distraction proves that there are a lot of expectations from within. For successful training, sessions do away with distractions.
7. Lectures Instead of Interactive Lessons
One of the biggest problems with training is the level of inactivity the Learner experiences while being taught. With icebreakers, polls, whiteboards, breakout groups, annotated notes, quizzing, and more, there's no reason online training shouldn't be interactive. This allows Learners to practice thinking skills
8. Lack of Measurable Results
According to an Economist article, data has surpassed oil in value, becoming the most precious resource in the world. Today, we live in a world controlled and analyzed by data – if you’re not using it to further your business objectives, you’re falling behind!
Your eLearning data holds invaluable insight into your organization – make sure you leverage it by knowing the worth of data, where you can find it, and how to track it. By using a training platform that values these analytics and tracks KPIs, you can create the best corporate online training possible, valuable to your employees, your trainers, and the company.
At Knowledge Anywhere, we specialize in offering high-quality online training that engages Learners and increases company ROI, without disrupting the flow of business. Through our training platform, custom course development, Course libraries, virtual reality training, and more, we implement the best strategies to minimize training failures. Contact us for more information on how to ensure the success of your corporate training.
What is QuickQuiz? As a fast recap, QuickQuiz is an eLearning tool that is accessible on Slack. It allows anyone to create, manage, and deploy quizzes quickly and easily. Now that we’ve summarized the tool, how can you actually, practically use it? Below is a step by step guide on how to get started. For up-to-date how-to articles about QuickQuiz, make sure you check our help desk here.
How to Install QuickQuiz in Slack
To install QuickQuiz on your Slack team, click here.
On the permissions page, Click Allow.
You should be redirected to your Slack workspace. You now may begin using QuickQuiz right away!
Creating A Quiz
Users who have been granted authorship in their workspace are able to create quizzes that they can assign to members of their Slack workspace. If you’re the one who installed the QuickQuiz app, you’re already an author. To start the quiz creation process, enter the command /quiz create in any channel. Enter an appropriate, short name for your new quiz. This quiz name must be unique to other quizzes in your workspace, and can’t contain quotation marks or apostrophes. Optionally, you can also define a quiz description that precedes the quiz when a user takes it. When everything looks good, click Continue. You can come back and edit this later, but only before you finish creating the quiz.
Picking Quiz Questions
This window allows you to define a quiz question, its answer choices, and the correct answer. In the first box, enter the question that you’d like to ask. This can contain emojis and links to images/videos. In the following text boxes, enter the answer choices that the user will select from. Unlike previous versions of QuickQuiz, these answer choices do not have a character limit. Below each answer choice input is a button that determines whether the answer choice is correct or not - click the button to toggle it.
Currently, you can only have one correct answer at a time, but in a future update, we plan to offer the ability to set multiple correct answer choices. Each question must have a minimum of two answer choices, and you can add additional answer choices with the Add New Answer Choice button at the bottom of the window. Clicking on the […] button on the right side of an answer choice will allow you to delete it. As with the previous step, you can go back and edit these details at any time until you complete the quiz creation process.
Click Save to continue. In the final step of the quiz-building process, the quiz is assigned to individual users and/or channels within your workspace. You can click inside one of the text boxes and start typing the user or channel you’re looking for and/or select it from the dropdown. You can click the Back button to return to the quiz overview, where you can edit quiz details before you finalize it. You can access this window at any time with the /quiz assign [quizname] command. Once you click Assign and Publish Quiz, you cannot go back and change your quiz title, description, or questions! Please make sure everything looks good before you click the green button.
QuickQuiz Slack Commands
BASIC COMMANDS
/quiz assign “Quiz Name”: Manage assigned users and channels.
/quiz authors: Opens window for managing quiz authors.
/quiz cancel: Cancels a quiz that you are currently creating.
/quiz clear “Quiz Name”: Allows all users who have completed a quiz to take it again.
/quiz create: Starts quiz creation prompt.
/quiz help: Lists all QuickQuiz commands.
/quiz list assigned: Gives a list of all quizzes that are assigned to you.
/quiz list created: Gives a list of all quizzes that you have created.
/quiz manage “Quiz Name”: Manage passing percent, completion notifications, and due date.
/quiz results “Quiz Name”: Gives scores of all users that have completed the provided quiz.
/quiz start: Starts the first quiz assigned to you.
/quiz start “Quiz Name”: Starts a specified quiz if it’s assigned to you.
PRO COMMANDS
All Basic Commands, plus:
/quiz delete “Quiz Name”: Allows you to delete or un-assign yourself from a quiz.
/quiz results “Quiz Name” @username: Gives question-by-question results for a quiz and user.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad field of computer science that uses computers and machines to simulate intelligent human behaviors such as problem-solving and decision-making. Many applications support AI, including robotic process automation, machine learning, speech recognition, machine vision, and natural language processing (NPL). Text annotation, for example, may be used to turn a text into a dataset used to train machine learning and deep learning models for a variety of Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision applications. From face detection and recognition, smart home devices, self-driving cars, smart speakers, and customer support chatbots, AI appears to be everywhere. It can also be highly effective in skills training and personal development programs. Sometimes L&D professionals offer general learning to all the employees which do not match specific needs. Here is where AI comes in, offering enduring training programs that will maximize employee performance and assist organizations in accomplishing their goals.
By incorporating new technological advancements, one may anticipate a more productive, stress-free, and straightforward learning process.
How Can AI Help the eLearning Sector?
Through personalized learning, AI can create different learning styles for different employees that best match their needs. By utilizing next-generation technology, the manual and administrative workload will significantly be lessened. AI may assist Learners in understanding areas of weaknesses and concentrate on what matters. AI-powered virtual coaches can speed up the training process by giving instant feedback and answering the employees' questions immediately.
Create Personalized Learning
An important objective that may be accomplished with AI is the personalization of the Learners’ experience. Personalized learning strategies can help the staff members choose their own Learning Paths, establish personal objectives and milestones, and improve skills thanks to data-driven feedback. Through various tests, the model can also evaluate prior knowledge of the subject, then present a method that best suits their needs. What's more, the method can continuously be modified in response to Learners' success, improving the effectiveness of the training.
Lesssen Administrative and Manual Work
Training programs that are powered by artificial intelligence can take away some of the manual tasks and increase overall efficiency. Proactive virtual coaches enabled by AI, for instance, can assist Learners at every step of the way, work inside the learning platform to suggest content, track progress, respond to inquiries about the material, and give push notifications about the material or due dates. The people in charge of these duties may be relieved of their workload so they could focus on other crucial tasks that would keep the team moving in the correct direction.
Identify Weak Spots and Fill the Gaps
AI will give the ability to more accurately identify employee skills gaps and propose practical solutions to them. Based on the learners' previous performance, machine learning algorithms can suggest individual and targeted content to learners to build knowledge that they miss. There is no denying employees have individual skill shortages and giving everyone the same material during employee training would be useless. If the material the learners are studying is new and not repetitive, it may also result in high levels of engagement and motivation. The use of AI in this industry can lead to highly effective corporate employee training programs that also save employees’ time.
Leverage Training Chatbots
Chatbots can be used to increase Learner’s involvement during the training process. Some of the applications that chatbots can be used include:
Sending constant notifications and tips that will inspire learners to be more involved in the material
Giving immediate feedback and assessment that will help them internalize the target material and remember it for a long time
Keep employees more involved in the onboarding process and regularly remind them about the training
Make Training More Adaptable
The availability of training to all employees at all times and locations is a critical component of ensuring efficiency, which can be accomplished with AI. Employees try to combine the training with their hectic schedules, so it is preferable for them to have online access to the training and go through it during their leisure. The fixed time for the training cannot ensure that students use their full potential and make the best out of it because some people may focus better in the morning or evening.
Final Thoughts
We live in a rapidly developing world, so in order to walk in tandem with new developments, corporate employee training companies need to adopt new learning methods. The effect of AI and ML in this sphere has enabled learners to have easier, smarter, and tension-free training. AI and its subfields can boost the learning process by enhancing Learners’ engagement, delivering individualized programs, providing them with relevant information, as well as giving instant answers to their questions. Unlimited access to the materials during the day can ensure that employees learn at their own pace, ensuring many benefits in the process of upskilling and reskilling the employees. The cutting-edge technologies can leave an incredible trace, greatly improving the process of L&D for both the employee and the employer.
Small and Medium sized businesses need all the free resources they can get. Luckily, Knowledge Anywhere has compiled a list of the top 10 best free online training resources to use in order to thrive on a budget. In 2022, we were given an award for the Top 10 Best LMS Software for Small and Medium Sized Businesses by SoftwareWorld, and it’s our mission to help train organizations of any size.
It meets all SCORM standards so that your content will work in any LMS
It offers responsive design so that your e-courses will look their best in any browser or device
Allows you to style your courses as you see fit via CSS and SaaS
Allows you to upload direct videos, streamed videos, PowerPoints, PDFs, documents, and more
Has an interactive quiz tool, so you can add quizzes inside of videos while making them SCORM compliant
Webinar Planning Sheet
Webinars, done effectively, can result in increased revenue, brand awareness, and engagement while establishing your organization as a leader within your industry. However, the logistics and moving parts of virtual events can be challenging to manage and maintain. That’s why we’ve created this free, downloadable Webinar Planning Sheet! Knowledge Anywhere has used this tool to clarify the marketing game plan, set timelines, assign responsibility, and act as a checklist. It may also be helpful to read Do’s and Don’ts For Leading A Webinar That Guarantees Results.
Pro tip: If you want to share this with a team of people, and have a live version of the document, import this download into Google Sheets for a shareable, live link that you and your team can access together. You can download Knowledge Anywhere’s Webinar Planning Sheet here to get started. This resource is completely editable, so you can add your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images.
This free Training SWOT Analysis Guide will help you and your team make decisions on who, what, and how to train employees in your organization. Below are a few things that this guide will teach you:
Who is this analysis for?
What is SWOT, and what does it stand for?
What is the goal of this activity
Potential business areas to question
Numbers and statistics about the eLearning industry
Your SWOT Analysis sheet
To download your free Training SWOT Analysis Guide, click here.
Training and Development Organizer Spreadsheet
Whether you’re perusing a training platform or just created great course content, this downloadable, virtual Training and Development Organizer Spreadsheet has helped many of our customers keep their training content organized and up to date. You can download Knowledge Anywhere’s Training and Development Organizer Spreadsheet here to get started. This resource is completely editable, so you can add your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images.
Virtual Training Checklist: What Users Should Do Before A Training or Meeting
It’s every host’s nightmare: right before training, scheduled webinar, or meeting, participants start asking the dreaded tech questions. “The link’s not right! How do I use Zoom? Does my camera have to be on?” In order to cut down confusion, late starts, or slow internet speeds, send out this free user checklist to all participants before your virtual event. This will ward off questions, making event planning smoother and clearer, while providing a valuable resource. You can see this checklist below as an image, as a downloadable PDF here, or as an editable template here. This way, you can add your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images.
Flashcard Templates
Whether you’re a learner trying to retain training content or a trainer looking for innovative ways to teach others, this free downloadable, virtual flashcard template can help you. Flashcards are great tools for:
Microlearning
Knowledge retention
Blended learning
Multiple styles of learning - some people learn differently
You can access Knowledge Anywhere Flashcard templates here to get started. This resource is completely editable, so you can add training relevant to your role, as well as your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images. When you go to download your training flashcards, simply download as a PDF, and print them front and back for the question and answers to line up. If you know someone in the training industry or in a Learning and Development field, send this free resource to them – it may help!
Learning Content Distribution System (LCDS)
Conveyor is a Learning Content Distribution System (LCDS), which will allow organizations to manage training content from a single, central location and easily share access to courses with third-party systems. You may want to share your learning content for others to use on their LMS, but because of versioning, licensing, tracking, and bureaucracy, it’s not always practical to do so. With Conveyor, you can share, monitor, and administer your training content in one secure, central location. This system has a free trial, so you can try it out before buying! No credit card is required.
QuickQuiz Slack Application
QuickQuiz is an eLearning tool that is accessible on Slack. It allows anyone to create, manage, and deploy quizzes quickly and easily. Now that we’ve summarized the tool, how can you actually, practically use it? Below are just a few real-world examples of how QuickQuiz can fit into your training toolkit.
Test to see if your team was listening after meetings
eBook: Free Online Training Content You Can Use Immediately
While a Learning Management System (LMS) is a great way to access all of your courses in one place, it requires some time and resources to get up and running. The world is going through rapid changes - with workers remote or long distance, it’s best to prioritize quality online training. We can help you get your instructor-led material online, as well as any other content you have, so your audience can see it from anywhere. In this free eBook, we’ll be teaching you how you can start getting your training online today, by showing you best practices so you can get the process going as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Download Certificate on Learning Path Level (User Transcript)
Administrators, when viewing a particular user’s transcript, can download their certificate if all courses within the Learning Path are completed.
Admins can also assign a certificate to a Learning Path so that the Learner can earn one once all courses within the Learning Path have been completed.
Learners can view/download certificates on the Learning Path level.
Survey Learning Path Improvements
Administrators can assign a Learning Path a survey and I mark it as required for a certificate so that when a learner completes a Learning Path, they are required to complete the survey before being allowed to download a certificate.
Ability to assign a survey to a Learning Path so that the Learner can give feedback on the Learning Path.
Can also report on it.
Learners can take a survey for the learning path so that I can download the certificate (if the admin had marked a survey as required for a certificate).
Assign Learning Paths to Individuals
Administrators have the ability to assign an entire learning path to an individual Learner (in addition to the current ability to assign a course to an individual).
Learners can now see those assigned learning paths in their LMS.
Add Filter for Learning Paths Assigned Directly to Learners
Learners can filter only the content (courses and Learning Paths) directed assigned to them.
Updated Learning Path Reporting
After the upshift, a Learning Paths report is needed. It will be made generically available to all.
Admins can see an additional report titled “Learning Paths” where everything is lifted up one level from the course. See the mockup below for reference. Simply check the reporting fields you would like to include - if some do not make sense for your reporting, you can leave them out.
Enable Companies List Page
Administrators can view a list of companies, edit their properties, and find them via search options, so that they can remove duplicates, merge with existing ones, or add new companies [if the “Enable Companies List” feature flag is turned on].
Popular Course Report Enhancements
When Custom is chosen, then individual course(s) can be selected.
When Top X is chosen, then the individual course selection is hidden, and the graph will show by most popular by completion count, in descending order.
Update Transcript Filename to include company
Learners and Admin can the company name in the downloaded transcript file name.
In this example, “Knowledge Anywhere” is the site name, “zz - KA Admin (Super)” is the company name.
OpenSesame and LinkedIn Learning: add Due Date fields
Administrators have the ability to add a due date to a LinkedIn Learning course.
Course Survey Report uses Country and Language Filters
Admins can pull survey results by country or language so they can review results filtered only for those countries or languages.
A. Adding a new Report Filter called “Countries” and “Languages.”
B. Countries filter the results by a user who took the survey’s country.
Add Enrolled Seats to Offerings
Admins can see enrolled seats in addition to max seats for any given offering. Wherever the label “Seats” appear on the admin side, change it to “Max Seats.”
Learners can see max number of seats in addition to remaining (available) seats for any given offering.
Enhancements to External Completions Course Link
Administrators are able to add a Course Link URL to a Learner’s external completion.
When navigating to Transcript > External Completion, Learners can see the Course Link label and field.
When navigating to Transcript > click “External Completions” Learning Path, then click Edit, Learners see the Course Link label and field.
Relabel "Additional Courses" to "Archived"
Click Learning Path. In the “Jump to Learning Path” filter, scroll to the last item under Electives. It should say “Archived”. Clicking on it should scroll the “Archived”Learning Path to the top of the page (as shown below). The relabeling is also done in the Transcript Detail page and the downloaded transcript, both on the Learner and Admin sites.
Transcript Download: Add Option for Completed-Only
Learners can download a transcript (on both on transcript summary level and the learning path level) that only contains completed courses.
Course Survey Report to Include Learning Path Surveys
Admins can pull Learning Path survey results so thet can review the results from surveys taken for Learning Paths.
Add Hire Date to the Bulk Import & Public API
Admins can now include Hire Dates in user bulk updates.
Admins, when using the Public API for creating or editing a Learner, have the capability to indicate a Hire Date and have it save against the Learner.
After Purchasing A Classroom Course, Prompt User to Enroll
Learners are now instructed/reminded to enroll in a classroom course after they've purchased it, so they can grab a seat and are ready to take the course when it starts.
Add Webinar Type and Link to Enrollments
Administrators can now specify if an instructor-led course (aka Classroom course) will be conducted in a webinar format, and if so, what the webinar type and links are.
The Classroom Enrollment Report will be enhanced to show Webinar Type column, which will be added to the left of the Location column.
Automatically Assign Waitlist Assignments
Admins can open a classroom offering to automatically be assigned to the Learner who is first in line (i.e. the earliest waitlist date/time) on the waitlist. Learners first on the waitlist will be automatically “upgraded” to an open spot as soon as it’s available.
Privacy/EULA Content Customizations and Fixes
Administrators can now provide custom (EULA/Privacy Policy/Support/FAQ) content for users that is different based on their microsite.
The eLearning industry has been rising steadily over the past 20 years. Since 2000, it has grown by a staggering 900%, with no signs of slowing. As technology has evolved, it has also revolutionized teaching and learning.
Because it’s growing in size, you can’t be surprised to learn an onslaught of relevant acronyms daily - VLE… LMS… or what about SCORM and XAPI? Wondering what they mean, let alone how they relate to your professional growth? You’re not alone in trying to figure it all out.
In this article, we’ll discuss the features of both VLE and LMS, the similarities and advantages of each type of virtual learning, and how to decide on the correct type of virtual learning for you.
What is an LMS?
A Learning Management System (LMS) is a platform for learning or training curriculums and is best suited for corporations and businesses. Its seamless delivery of online training allows organizations across all industries to deploy virtual training to end-users, manage training materials, and track results.
Advantages of an LMS
Customizable Learning Paths - Learning Management Systems allow Administrators to create custom learning paths for different groups of Learners, so they can grow skills specific to their job roles.
Tracking and real-time reporting - LMSs track and analyze Learner performance through dashboards and reports. To learn more about the analytical capabilities of an LMS, read the free eBook Make the Most of Your LMS Data.
Integrations with content providers - Why reinvent the wheel? Knowledge Anywhere partners with some of the best training course libraries, including LinkedIn Learning, OpenSesame, ej4, and Knowbly to give our customers access to about 50,000 pre-built, professionally made courses.
Simplification of processes - Albeit necessary, administrative work and any organizational operations are tedious. An LMS can automate exhaustive work and allow Administrators to manage and track all training in one central location.
Gamification - Learners could use encouragement, and gamification elements such as badges and leadership boards encourage usage in a fun way that allows Learners to see their progress.
Interested in knowing more? Knowledge Anywhere offers many free resources to get you started on your path to implementing an LMS! Here are a few useful ones:
A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is a modern teaching method designated for online learning. It enables students and teachers to engage and interact with each other through different mediums. Because virtual learning systems add to the physical space of the learning environment, VLEs bring extra interactivity to a learner. They also offer opportunities for students to sharpen their skills as individuals.
Advantages of a VLE
An impressive feature of VLEs is their constructivist approach. When you use a VLE, it’s like you’re asking for virtual assistance and remote support:
Freedom and flexibility - Students can finish assignments, school projects, and classes almost anywhere. Sometimes, they can conduct these virtual activities at any time, too.
Personalization - A virtual classroom offers students various participation options on how they want to interact with educational materials. They allow teachers to personalize course materials and student schedules.
Open communication - A VLE lets students communicate as they see fit. Students can enjoy this privilege if they want to approach their teachers for in-depth discussions.
Analysis - Ensuring every student keeps up to date with materials and understands their work is vital in any learning environment. A VLE helps with this by displaying real-time outcomes and providing various tracking tools for teachers to monitor student data.
Content safety and security - They offer a safe place to store content and access quality VLE resources anytime.
LMS and VLE have a similar purpose. They are both tools designed to facilitate learning and provide an opportunity to grow. Here are a few features they may have in common:
Content creation features - They allow publishing of educational resources and access to tools for better learning. They can also provide links to external authoritative sources.
Interactivity - They feature interactive tools like an online whiteboard. As a result, they allow teachers to discuss subjects more effectively.
Live learning - They offer support for live virtual classes. Some teachers and students prefer live sessions. This way, they can approach their fellows more easily.
Tracked learning - LMS and VLE can host learning materials, repurpose learning assets, and foster collaborations similar to VLE.
Differences Between an LMS and a VLE
While an LMS and a VLE both have similar principles, they have different end-users in mind.
An LMS allows you to use a range of learning experiences and technology, making them uniquely suited to train and develop employees in a corporate setting. They can develop employees to achieve personal, team and organizational goals. VLEs work best for educators and schools; they provide students with a more engaging and effective learning experience.
LMS vs. VLE: Which Is Right for You?
LMS and VLE both offer you the ability to run online courses — for some, that’s all that matters. You can choose either if you’re the only entity concerned.
If you are running a business or supervising workplace training, an LMS is the best option. If your organization is geared towards education, you may want to look into a VLE more thoroughly.
So what is Knowledge Anywhere’s role? We are an online training company that helps organizations improve results without disrupting business. We achieve this by offering a training ecosystem, including an LMS, an extensive Course Library, Custom Course Development, and more. Contact us today or sign up for a free 14 day LMS trial here!
At Knowledge Anywhere, our goal is to help you achieve your training goals while making the process easy and informative.
Webinars, done effectively, can result in increased revenue, brand awareness, and engagement while establishing your organization as a leader within your industry. However, the logistics and moving parts of virtual events can be difficult to manage and maintain. That’s why we’ve created this free, downloadable Webinar Planning Sheet! Knowledge Anywhere has used this tool to clarify the marketing game plan, set timelines, assign responsibility, and act as a checklist.
Pro tip: If you want to share this with a team of people, and have a live version of the document, import this download into Google Sheets for a shareable, live link that you and your team can access together.
For just a moment I’d like you to think about how many username and password combinations you have for all the software programs, applications, and online accounts you access on a regular basis. The average person has at least 90 online accounts. Shocking? Probably, considering that many times our login credentials are the last thing on our mind when we seek to enter an application or account. That is unless we’re locked out and can’t remember what our credentials are. Suddenly then our login credentials seem to take precedence. The good news is, there is a solution that allows you to use the same login credentials across multiple software programs, applications or online accounts. It’s called Single Sign-On (SSO), and it can help your LMS users eliminate the need to remember multiple username and password combinations.
What is Single Sign-On (SSO)?
Single Sign-On (SSO) is a user authentication process that leverages a central authentication service to minimize the required use of multiple login combinations. It allows users to enter one username and password for all independent and related software systems, eliminating the need to remember separate login credentials for each program.
How does Single Sign-On Work?
Using a central authentication service (Identity Provider), like Microsoft Active Directory, a user creates a unique login combination consisting of a username and a password. With this login combination, the user is allowed access to an organization’s network. The user data stored by the Identity Provider can be leveraged to access other systems when a connection is forged between that Identity Provider and a Service Provider like Knowledge Anywhere’s LMS. When this connection is established (usually through an API), a user only has to enter their login credentials once when they log in to the network. Once their identity has been authorized by the Identity Provider and the user proceeds to navigate to the individual software program or application (like the LMS) they will be automatically logged in. This is made possible with Single Sign-On and occurs as a result of the connection forged between the Identity Provider (Microsoft Active Directory, Okta, Google, or Salesforce) and the Service Provider (Knowledge Anywhere’s LMS), where the Service Provider trusts the Identity Provider to provide the unique user credentials. In this process, the user credentials are stored and managed by the Identity Provider.
What are the benefits of Single Sign-On?
The main benefit of Single Sign-On is the ability for users within a network to access independent and related software programs without having to provide duplicate login credentials. As a result, an organization can benefit from reduced IT support for lost passwords and username combinations, less valuable employee time spent re-entering passwords and trying multiple login combinations, and improved user identity management.
Another benefit is to automate populating users and sending user profile details through SSO. This allows companies to not bother creating another process when creating Learners in the training platform, setting up profile details to assign the correct courses. For example, Administrators could send country, state, job roles, and custom data fields with the authentication process that would add Learners to groups in the LMS and automatically give them the right course assignments.
What Are Knowledge Anywhere's SSO Integrations?
Knowledge Anywhere users have SSO access to Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Salesforce, Okta, and Google! These integrations allow Knowledge Anywhere LMS users to be authenticated and signed in using their Azure, Salesforce, Okta, and Google credentials.
If you’d like to learn more about Knowledge Anywhere’s integrations and apps, check out these resources below.
Training can be tiring sometimes, and many underestimate how much mental energy it takes to be taught, especially virtually. Luckily, there are valuable tips and tricks to help this burnout, so Instructors do not need to teach to a bored audience or reinvent the re-engagement wheel. When Instructors feel the group’s energy dipping, this is a useful game to refresh the training, keeping everyone actively engaged and on their toes, while reminding them of course material that was just covered. The best times to use this game are usually mid-training right before or after a break, at the end of a session, or at the beginning of the next lesson.
Game Instructions
In order to adapt this game to our ever-changing world of online and blended learning, let’s go over how this game can be adapted to in-person and online use. This way, everyone will be able to participate, no matter the type of training program!
Instructor Led, Traditional In-Person Training
With the Instructor in full sight of all participants, highlight the fact that a lot of topics were recently covered by your training. Announce to the class that you will be randomly choosing Learners to quickly list a key learning point from the last lesson, then quickly move on to the next. Each answer should only take about 5-20 seconds. This should force all Learners to think about the lesson or check their notes, in case they are called on unexpectedly, After your announcement of the game and the purpose behind it, start calling out random Learners by pointing at them or reading random names in a Participant list. Remember to keep the energy high and move quickly! After a few have gone and all main points are covered, discuss with the class what was not talked about and why it may have been missed. Explore more when necessary.
Virtual Instructor Led Training (VILT)
Luckily, the virtual version of this energizer memory game is very similar to the in-person process. The only true difference lies in how Instructors choose which Learners to call on. Instead of pointing, we suggest putting all names in a random name generator and live-screen-sharing the results. For a free random generator tool, we recommend Wheel of Names or CommentPicker. This way, all Learners can see and hear who’s name is called. Utilizing two senses instead of just calling names cuts down on confusion in case it’s difficult to hear or see the Instructor, as well as increases the game element of this exercise. After picking a name, ask the chosen Learner to quickly list a key learning point from the last lesson, then quickly move on to the next. Each answer should only take about 5-20 seconds. This should force all Learners to think about the lesson or check their notes, in case they are called on unexpectedly, After your announcement of the game and the purpose behind it, start calling out random Learners by pointing at them or reading random names in a Participant list. Remember to keep the energy high and move quickly! After a few have gone and all main points are covered, discuss with the class what was not talked about and why it may have been missed. Explore more when necessary.
As a business owner, you can influence the success of your sales team through two things: their motivation and their skills. Luckily, both of these are possible through quality digital training. Improving the skills of your sales team is a tried and true process. You can find many articles about how to implement sales training in your organization, first evaluating team performance, comparing it with set targets, and assigning training that targets areas to improve. Increasing motivation is a bit more difficult because multiple factors affect the morale of a team and different team members require different motivation tactics or incentives. Read on to learn about six creative ways to motivate your sales team.
Provide Them With Relevant Training
There are many online training platforms today. To motivate your team, look for one that offers practical applications to the kind of tasks that the team handles. The training you choose should change the way your sales team performs while at the same time reflecting on their daily operations. Training your team means that you are dealing with people who have a lot of other responsibilities. For sales, this may mean a few things:
Implement just-in-time training, so reps can learn on the job when the need arises, not at a preset time.
Choose a program that allows for mobile learning and is accessible anywhere.
Ensure the team understands the value of the training program.
Offer incentives to team members who complete the training courses with clear paths to climbing up the career ladder.
Make a point to bring up training during performance reviews or one-on-ones.
Recognize & Reward Employees
As a business owner, you need to come up with programs that you can recognize and reward great employees for what they have done. It should never be all work all the time. To get started, make sure that you understand the team members well. You do not need to give someone something that they do not like, and the impact of personalized gifts goes much farther than generic ones. 55% of people keep personalized gifts longer than traditional ones, and 62% of Americans say they’d prefer a thoughtful gift tailored to them than money or gift cards (NY Post). Think of the best way to implement this recognition process - some members of your team might prefer some incentives over others. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Sales contests.
An MVP or employee of the month program.
A raffle ticket every time they hit their goals, giving them more chances to win a prize.
A recognition software, like Bonusly, where team members can give bonuses to their teammates to appreciate their work for that month, usually in the form of a gif, shoutout, and/or points. These points can be cashed in for gift cards once enough are collected.
Quota achievements.
Certificates that they can put on their LinkedIn or add to their portfolio.
Personalized awards at Awards.com, designed to match the tastes and preferences of each of your sales team members.
It’s important to set weekly, monthly, and/or annual goals that each of the sales team members should achieve. However, setting impossible or difficult to achieve goals is highly discouraging and leaves employees feeling underperforming and dejected. Evaluate the goals you set and make sure that they are within reach. To read a more detailed description of how to do this, make sure you check out the article How to Create & Apply SMART Employee Training Goals.
Offer Personalized Learning Paths
Learning never ends - especially for people who want a successful career. In fact, most employees do not want to be stagnant but look for opportunities for career growth, where they can do and earn more. One way to motivate them is to find ways of helping them grow and improve their performance by offering personalized Learning Paths within a Learning Management System. For example, if an employee is struggling with a specific task or skill, curate a set of courses that helps them improve those specific areas while skipping skills they may already have harnessed. Usually, if employees dislike training, it’s because the content is not relevant to them, or is highly repetitive. With Learning Paths, you can assign curated content meant for the individual.
Build Trust With Your Sales Team
Trust is very important when it comes to motivating employees. If you are managing a sales team that finds it hard to trust you, then it will be a huge mountain for you to climb when motivating the team. With an honest and open conversation about your business goals and their challenges, you can promote transparency and allow for some vulnerability.
Build A Culture
Usually, people think of onboarding new hires when they hear the words “employee training.” But just like staying active and brushing your teeth, the key to great training is consistency. Instead of a sprint, think of training as a circular timeline, creating an ongoing process that never truly ends, just waxes and wanes. The best way to keep employees constantly up to date is to find ways of embedding training into the culture of your business. Ensure that your sales team understands how continuous training can benefit them and understands your business values their participation and loyalty. Doing this will motivate the team members to keep learning, and in return, you will see a progressive improvement in their performance. In fact, every $1 spent in training usually generates an ROI of $30 back to your company, making it one of the best investments in your future business. When people feel that you care about them and are concerned about their future, it’s easier to stay at a job. The performance of your sales team is vital when it comes to the success of your business. Apart from hiring people with the right skill sets and experience, you also need to ensure that they are motivated to keep working hard for you. Following the tips discussed above, you will find it easy to motivate your sales team.
It's estimated that there are over 800 Learning Management System (LMS) providers. Since the Covid-19 global pandemic, that number may have only risen. So, with so much competition in the market, how does Knowledge Anywhere stand out and why should we be top of the list in your quest for an online training platform? We're changing the way companies manage employee training. By offering a unique eLearning ecosystem and end-to-end support at a competitive price, Knowledge Anywhere makes it possible to train employees online, so you can focus on other tasks.
A training ecosystem is all the training materials available to learners within an organization. These can come in a variety of formats but includes all learning and educational content employees are responsible for mastering. A training ecosystem represents everything within an organization dedicated to employees’ learning and growth. While many providers offer a training platform, fewer have a variety of services to suit every need. So… what makes up Knowledge Anywhere’s training ecosystem?
Our LMS is a centralized learning platform where Administrators can assign, track, and analyze training material assigned to learners. This includes Webinars, Instructor-led training, Assessments, Certifications, badges, advanced analytics, and more!
Course Development are courses designed with you in mind, whether it be a specific product, process, or organizational training. We also provide Virtual Reality (VR), for any company looking for a safe, all-encompassing, customized experience.
3. Integrations with Extensive Course Libraries
Sometimes, it's cheaper, faster, and more efficient to let professionals create courses for you. Why reinvent the wheel? Knowledge Anywhere partners with some of the best training course libraries, including LinkedIn Learning, OpenSesame, ej4, and Knowbly to give our customers access to tens of thousands of pre-built, professionally made courses. Our LinkedIn Learning integration allows your Learners to access LinkedIn Learning content via your Knowledge Anywhere LMS.
With unlimited access to over 16,700 online courses in 7 languages, your Learners can join over 27 million users and 78 Fortune 100 companies that take advantage of the LinkedIn Learning platform. OpenSesame is an amazing organization with over 150 course publishers and over 30,000 off-the-shelf online courses available. Through Knowledge Anywhere's integration with OpenSesame, our customers can easily find quality online training content for any industry on virtually any subject, available in multiple languages and accessible to learners around the world. Now, you can seamlessly access and import these courses into your Knowledge Anywhere LMS.
Scormify is a SCORM conversion tool that instantly transforms learning objects, such as documents, videos, PowerPoints, and PDFs into SCORM-compliant training materials to upload into any LMS. If you’re looking to make a training video more engaging for end-users, Scormify has an “Add A Quiz” feature, which allows you to insert quiz questions to uploaded videos at key intervals, making your videos SCORM compliant, ready to upload on any training platform, with an interactive quiz for your end learners.
QuickQuiz is a Slack application that easily and quickly allows Administrators to manage, assign, and track quizzes through Slack, for microlearning. It can be used to:
Test to see if your team was listening after meetings
Conveyor allows organizations to manage training content from a single, central location and easily share access to courses with third-party systems. You may want to share your learning content for others to use on their LMS, but because of versioning, licensing, tracking, and bureaucracy, it’s not always practical to do so. With Conveyor, you can share, monitor, and administer your training content in one secure, central location. Here are a few use cases of this tool:
A training manager wants to show off their newest course creation
An organization that uses multiple Learning Management Systems
A distrustful HR rep that wants content in multiple places
An international businessperson sending courses abroad
Luckily, all of these eLearning tools have free demos or free trials, so you can see how they work before purchasing!
End-To-End Solutions and Personal Support
We know online corporate training can be complicated - but it doesn’t have to be. Thanks to our end-to-end support, it’s easier than ever to manage and track employee training without wasting time or energy. But enough buzzwords - let’s get into the nitty-gritty of what that actually means. Below is an overview of a training timeline, from researching to optimizing an online learning system, alongside how Knowledge Anywhere will help each step of the way.
Researching eLearning and Online Training
The process of learning about eLearning can be a long one, and there are so many resources and blogs it can be difficult to tell where to start. That’s why Knowledge Anywhere writes with you in mind. Our philosophy is even if you don’t choose us to be your training vendor, we hope you leave our site with more knowledge and direction than when you came in. Here are a few free resources that answer top industry questions: Choosing A Training Platform That’s Right For Your Organization: We want to help you find a training platform that’s best for you, which is why we have multiple resources for that very purpose. Below are our top three:
When you decide to be a Knowledge Anywhere customer, you’re given a personal Account Executive, ongoing support, LMS training, and access to our Support Center. When onboarding you into the system, we provide a Getting Started LMS Guide, custom branding, and live online training on how to use the system for your business needs.
Because we pride ourselves on being customer-centric, you’ll have the name and contact of real people within our company - we do not outsource support, and aim to give you a clear path of communication between you and us. To learn more, read this free eBook: How to Implement an Engaging LMS.
Creating Content For Your Platform
Once the platform is implemented, it’s time to fill it with content. This is where panic usually sets in. Don’t have any training content? No problem. Even if you don’t have training content, you can still get a learning platform with Knowledge Anywhere. We provide custom content development, off-the-shelf courses, and an affordable SCORM conversion tool that transforms your PDFs, Documents, videos, and PowerPoints into centralized training content for your Learners. No need to worry about creating your own courses - just enjoy a modern, digital learning experience. Your Account Executive can guide you through this process, as you figure out which type of eLearning content is best for you. When you decide what you like, Support can help implement it!
Even the best training systems need re-engagement campaigns to help them move along. Knowledge Anywhere’s been in business since 1998 - you can trust our experts to help advise you on best industry practices. Want to research strategy yourself? Here are some top free resources to help you do so:
We are the best way for companies to effectively train workers. Knowledge Anywhere makes online training simple and effective with a beautifully designed centralized platform, end-to-end customer support, and accessible training content that’s easy to manage. To see how we can help your organization take employee development to the next level, contact us today!
With our new OpenSesame Integration (coming soon), Admins will be able to choose OpenSesame training courses and integrate them into their training platform.
Located in Admin LMS > Site > OpenSesame Settings
We will provide a Client Integration Key. Once that code is copy and pasted, hit save, and the system will auto-generate four tokens, which you will provide to OpenSesame support in order to get completion and user analytics on their courses. Choose the OpenSesame courses you’d like your Learners to have access to, and hit the “Send to Integration” Button, then Integrate with Knowledge Anywhere.
New Email Templates
New Email Templates are coming soon to your Administrator LMS! This allows the system to automatically send relevant emails to Learners, based on their course status. For example, there are templates for Due Soon Courses or Incomplete Courses, which encourage Learners to log into their training system and take a specific course. These templates are set as Inactive as a Default – Admins will have access to all new templates but will need to activate them before they are sent to Learners.
Located in Admin LMS > Site > Notifications.
Categories
Categories are a feature to help organize your learning paths, which you can request Knowledge Anywhere support to turn on for your site.
Learning path cards show hyperlinked Category names as follows:
If there is no category, then no hyperlink shows.
If there is one category, the hyperlink takes the Learner to the category’s summary page.
If there are multiple categories, a “VIEW CATEGORIES” link indicates the number of categories. associated. When clicked, the learner is taken to the learning paths page.
Learning path section sub-headers show hyperlinked Category names, if applicable:
Category summary page (launched from hyperlinks mentioned in both images above)
Category Filter:
Learning paths can have multiple categories.
Learning Paths Separator to include Category links.
Admins can now add multiple Categories within Learning Paths, which are now clickable to reveal a Category Summary Page, which shows all courses within a specific category.
Administration Marketplace
New Administrator Marketplace! Now, LMS Admins can link tools, integrations, and course content to their LMS, including ej4, LinkedIn Learning, OpenSesame, Conveyor, Ecommerce, Knowledge Mark, QuickQuiz, Scormify, Azure Active Directory, PandaDoc, GoogleAnalytics, Zapier, and more!
Click here for a full video walkthrough of this new feature!
Last Course Visit Date Added As A Filter
Added Last Course Visit Date as filter and results column on Course Details report
The business world sometimes plunges into uncertain times, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated. For a business to thrive, despite unexpected future events, it needs efficient digital resources that can be deployed anytime, anywhere. While some businesses are still reluctant to make a move, it’s a no-brainer that technological solutions are the way to go. Implementing a Learning Management System (LMS) is a great solution to help companies easily manage, monitor, and report training activities. The global LMS market was worth over $8 billion in 2019 and will grow to about $38 billion by 2027, indicating a steep and growing demand for the product. This post dives into what an LMS is and why your company needs to consider implementing one to streamline the training and onboarding process while decreasing costs, time, and stress.
Learning Management System in a Nutshell
A Learning Management System is an online software program that provides a vehicle for the exchange of training or learning curriculum. Its seamless delivery of online training allows organizations across all industries to deploy virtual training to end-users, which could include employees, suppliers, customers, and partners. An online training platform is made up of at least two interfaces; one for instructors, Administrators, and managers, which allows those roles to assign, track, and evaluate results of training on its end-users. The other is for your Learners, taking place on a sleek, easy-to-use platform that allows end-users to create consistency in their roles, learn new skills, and stay safe and compliant. If you’re still not convinced how an LMS solution can benefit your company, here are the top reasons you must consider installing it.
Organized Content in a Centralized Location
If you do not have a training platform, odds are you are focusing on one of two different ways to train. In this section, we’ll look into both and see why they are inefficient and old-fashioned compared to an LMS.
Loose Documentation and DIY Process
Having an LMS system is better than staying on a decentralized platform where you need to constantly send various loose documents to Learners without the ability for feedback, reporting, certifications, gamification, or transcripts. If you’re sending PDFs, Documents, PowerPoints, and videos to employees to help them learn, a formalized platform stores all your eLearning materials in one location, minimizing the risk of losing crucial data or forgetting to assign it. An LMS platform makes it easier to create a course and eliminates the need to store content on different devices and hard drives. A centralized content storage platform makes it easier for every team member to access the information from any location, a factor that makes LMS platforms a natural fit for online collaboration. This also creates accountability for Learners, since Administrators can see details about when and how courses are completed. If you’re worried about having to implement all of your aforementioned eLearning materials into your LMS, don’t be! This is exactly why Knowledge Anywhere created Scormify - a SCORM conversion tool that instantly transforms your training into SCORM compliant materials that can be uploaded into any training platform.
Traditional In-Person Learning
If you’re looking for more flexible schedules, higher attendance, and more time and money, then a training platform outperforms traditional in-person learning. Online training means Learners do not have to adhere to strict schedules, with the added company benefit of nixing expensive flights and hotels costs. Read on for a more in-depth view of how eLearning saves time and money later in this article!
Unlimited Access to eLearning Materials
Upon uploading and publishing your eLearning course materials onto the LMS system, learning participants gain unlimited access to all required data. They can learn mobile or using just-in-time once they log in through smartphones or tablets. The added benefit of this is that they don’t have to wait until the next online learning session to perfect their work-related skills. Users can move conveniently, prioritizing their time with more efficiency, with an added bonus to global audiences operating in different time zones or shift workers with various office hours.
Keeps Organizations Updated with Compliance Regulations
An LMS platform can be an invaluable tool for organizations that must stay up-to-date with compliance regulations. Changes are inevitable and ongoing in relation to compliance with laws. Applying manual updates to a course to reflect these changes can be daunting. With a corporate Learning Management System, your company can conveniently add new compliance standards to an online training course within a few minutes. That way, corporate learners stay up-to-date with the latest regulations, protecting your business from costly non-compliance penalties. Similarly, you have the upper hand in ensuring all employees stay on the same page concerning company policies and expectations, decreasing employee turnover rates.
Easily Track Learner Progress and Performance
With the best learning software, you can easily track corporate learners’ progress. Doing so provides insights into how well they’re meeting their performance milestones and the areas that require improvement. For example, you can provide supplemental resources to boost the learning behaviors of users who cannot complete the training for various reasons. Most LMS platforms incorporate a reporting and analytics feature that enables users to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of a course. You can easily track where the learners are struggling in a specific course and make the necessary modifications.
Enhanced Learning Efficiency
An online learning system provides the benefit of complete control in functions like administration, automation, and communication with all users. Trainers, content creators, and learners can all come together for more streamlined planning and collaboration. The platform eases the management of user roles with seamless delivery of reminders, messages, and notifications. Companies don’t have to worry about scheduling a training session at a time when everyone is available, a task that can be time-consuming.
First and foremost, let’s address the obvious - no one wants to pay for a training program when you already have a free way to train new employees. While that may seem like an obvious statement, the cost of NOT implementing a training system may be higher than you realize. In fact, many companies report cost savings and increased ROI from using an LMS. Investing in a training platform means there are upfront costs. However, this is small in comparison to what in-person learning could be. According to Dave Evans, IBM saved around $200 million after switching to eLearning. So how did the switch save them? In this section, you’ll find out how eLearning can help significantly cut costs by simultaneously benefitting employees, management, and customers of your business. eLearning may not be free, but it can allow you to spend smarter, not more. Read more about How Investing in Online Training Can Cut Costs and Increase ROI in our free eBook.
Reducing travel: One huge way eLearning reduces employee costs is a reduction in travel expenses. An eLearning platform renders geographical location irrelevant for training. With online training, employees can access their courses from anywhere, eliminating the need to pay for employees to physically attend training, as well as the need to pay for a professional to travel to your offices to train employees. This cuts down on multiple associated costs, including flights, hotels, and food reimbursements.
Saving time: If time is money, online training saves employees both, compared to traditional, in-person training. Instead of wasting hours getting to and from airports, conference rooms, and planes, workers can spend that time actually learning. If there was no in-person training, human resources, management, and accounting would not need to spend time sorting out reimbursement, approval, and costs. This frees up more time, so they can focus on ways to efficiently train employees without going through all of the hassle and logistics of travel.
Smooth onboarding: One way eLearning can be thrifty for management is by smoothing the onboarding process. Onboarding new employees can be time-consuming, repetitive, and stressful for managers. Automated online onboarding keeps the manager’s role in onboarding to only the most important and needed elements of the process. This saves the organization money by helping managers stay out of the unneeded elements of onboarding.
Less legal fees: If a corporation has an automated process for which to assign necessary compliance, safety training, and necessary certifications, they can easily and effortlessly avoid possible legal fees. Late fees and court can get expensive!
Decreased turnover: Training new employees is not only a headache, it’s a huge cost. Even with better training, the time that it takes to find and vet qualified applicants, interviewing, negotiating, and getting them started is a lot more costly than simply keeping current employees. With better training comes more employee satisfaction and retention.
Reduced confusion and support hours: The faster customers can understand how to use a product, the more satisfied they will be. Providing an easily accessible library of training allows customers to quickly understand your product and how to start getting value out of it. This will start their relationship with your organization off on the right foot while reducing potentially long and frustrating customer support hours.
Business Scalability
A growing business brings happiness to the owner, but growing revenue and success can be hard to manage. Growth comes with new hires, updating products, and setting up new departments. Those changes and improvements are only possible with a proper training system to keep employees in the loop. An LMS platform enables companies to scale up their training and manage growth. It becomes easier to assign previous training materials, update current content, and add new content.
Implementing a Learning Management System
Training is a crucial process for companies of all sizes. Proper training empowers employees to become better at what they do. They acquire new skills to perform better or keep up with product features to serve customers better. Without an efficient training system, it can be challenging for a company to remain compliant or scale down its business. When choosing the best LMS solution, the options can be limitless. Knowledge Anywhere narrows down your options by providing the most reliable LMS solution to support your training and development. Contact us today or schedule a free demo to learn how it works and inquire about other eLearning resources to improve training and development.
Admin Marketplace: Tools, Integrations, and Course Content
Knowledge Anywhere has added an exciting new feature - a Learning Management System (LMS) Marketplace! Now, Admins can link tools, integrations, and course content to their LMS, including ej4, LinkedIn Learning, OpenSesame, a Learning Content Distribution System (LCDS), Ecommerce, Knowledge Mark, Slack quizzing, a SCORM conversion tool, Azure Active Directory, PandaDoc, GoogleAnalytics, Zapier, and more!
This new feature allows customers to access and link tools directly from inside their training platform.
Click here for a full video walkthrough of this new feature!
How to Check if a Website Is Safe and Legitimate: Cybersecurity Training Example
The World Wide Web provides us with an ocean of information, entertainment, and communication options. However, as with anything in life, the good most certainly comes with some bad. And when it comes to the internet, the bad can be really bad. Hackers, scammers, and other cybercriminals could be lurking behind the scenes, waiting for you to make a mistake and click the wrong thing, or worse, to trick you into providing them with sensitive information, such as bank account or credit card numbers, which they can then use to steal from you and cause you all sorts of trouble. Anti-virus programs and other cybersecurity systems make it considerably easier for you to stay safe online. But in the end, your digital security depends on you and your ability to spot a threat before it turns into something more serious and leaves you scrambling to recover from identity theft. This blog will show you why an example of why online safety and security training should be taught in every business, as well as examples of what the course may teach. One of the skills you need to learn to make sure you stay safe online is how to tell the difference between safe and legitimate sites and the malicious ones that can cause you real problems. To help you, we’ve put together a complete guide on how to check if a website is safe and legitimate.
Understanding the Threat: Online Scams
To understand why it’s important to learn how to identify and avoid bad websites, here are some stats about the threats we face when we go online:
In the US, one in ten adults will fall victim to a scam or fraud every year (FTC).
In 2019, phishing attempts grew by 65%.
1 in 10 profiles on free dating sites is a scam.
Imposter scams accounted for $488 million in losses.
Phishing accounts for 90% of data breaches.
Around 1.5 million new phishing sites are set up every month.
Now that you’re sufficiently scared, let’s talk about how you can fix it. Online training plays a highly important role in security awareness and can keep you and your company safe from attack. Every organization should have some type of online training course about safety. If you’re worried about a lack of time or expertise in creating safety training content, you’re in luck! Here’s a free Guide to Custom and Off-The-Shelf Training Content, which will teach you how to stop reinventing the wheel and gives resources to quickly add quality training to your program.
Step 1: Check the URL
There are many different ways you can tell if a website is safe and secure, but perhaps one of the easiest and most obvious is to inspect the site’s URL to see if it meets the standards of security we now have for legitimate sites. Here’s a summary of the things you should be looking for:
Is it the site you want?
Most of us end up on websites because we click on hyperlinks on sites, social media, or email. This is fine, but make sure the site you’re visiting is actually the site you planned on visiting. Inspect the URL associated with the link you want to follow. You can do this by using your mouse to hover over the hyperlinked text. The site the link will take you to should you click on it will appear on the bottom-left of your browser window. Take a look to see if the URL matches the site the link is leading to you. If it doesn’t, then this is a clear red flag. If you feel good about the way the link looks and decide to click on it, the next step is to make sure the actual URL of the page you’ve landed on is the same as the one you intended to click. When doing this, really look carefully, even if the site looks exactly how you were expecting it to look. Scammers are very good at making sites that look exactly like the real thing but with slightly different URLs. The untrained eye can be easily fooled. For example, www.amazon.com might be written as www.amazoon.com. If the site looks exactly as it should, then you might not see this difference right away.
HTTPS
The internet has been running on hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) since the 1990s when Tim Berners-Lee came up with the concept of the World Wide Web and browsers. Not much has changed since then except that many sites are now using HTTPS, with the “s” standing for secure. This protocol was first used by banking and eCommerce sites due to the fact they frequently take in people’s bank and credit card information. With HTTPS, the site encrypts the data entered into it, providing an extra layer of security and making it much harder for your personal information to fall into the wrong hands. Nowadays, almost all sites use HTTPS, largely because Google and other search engines include it in their algorithms for determining rankings. As a result, if you get sent to a site that doesn’t use HTTPS, this should be a major red flag - steer clear. To see if the site has HTTPS, just look in the URL bar of your browser. There should either be a lock or some other icon to indicate the site is secure, or it may even say “secure.” Here’s what it looks like on Chrome: Just because a site has HTTPS doesn’t automatically mean it is safe and legitimate. Bad sites can have this security protocol too, especially if they are trying to look legitimate, but this is still a good place to start. No HTTP means stay away.
URL Checkers
Another thing you can do to make sure the URL of the site you’re visiting is legitimate is to plug it into a URL checker. These tools can be accessed online for free and will run a report on the URL in question to see if there have been any issues with it before. This can be a lifesaver if the tool turns up some results. It will tell you that people on the site have experienced identity theft, or they have walked away with a virus, and this should obviously be enough to discourage you from proceeding. On the contrary, if a site has been proven to be safe and trustworthy, these tools will tell you that, too, allowing you to proceed to the URL with much more peace of mind. The downside to these tools is that they will tell you nothing if there is no information about the site in question. Don’t assume that no results mean the site is legitimate. Instead, take it for what it is: a reminder that you won’t know what’s on the site until you get there. It may be completely fine, but browse aware of the risks and ready to react should you find something suspicious when you get there.
Step 2: Check the Content
Once you’re convinced the URL is okay, it’s safe to proceed to the website. However, just because the URL looks okay doesn’t guarantee the site is safe and secure. As a result, if you’re unsure about the site, spend some time looking into the content to see if you can learn more about what you’re getting yourself into. Here are some things to look out for:
Written By Humans?
Read through some of the written content on the site, such as the About Us page and the blog. When you do this, you’re looking to see whether or not the content appears to have been generated by humans. You can usually tell based on the way it reads. Artificial intelligence is good, but you can typically spot when a site has been relying on it too much for content creation. Bogus websites will do this because they want to give the illusion of legitimacy. They want you to feel comfortable enough on the site to start clicking around and eventually land on whatever it is the bad guys have put there to either put malicious software on your computer or, worse, steal from you. If you’re not sure, take a look at the comments on the site. If they too seem automated, this is a sign the site is not driving real engagement. It might say it has thousands and thousands of followers, but if those who interact with content leave generic comments in broken English that were clearly written by a bad computer program, then it’s likely the site is not real and should be avoided.
Ads and Redirects
If you’re unsure of a site’s legitimacy, a good thing to look at is what happens on the site while you navigate around. For example, does clicking on certain parts of the site cause annoying popup ads to appear? Or does it open up new tabs or windows with garbage content? These kinds of tactics are designed to get you to click on something by accident. For example, this is where you might get a pop-up message saying that your computer has been infected and you need to download an “anti-virus software” right away. Some of the pop-ups may even have false x’s at the top of the window that looks like the way to close the pop-up but that are in reality just links to more pop-ups! It can be a never-ending cycle if you’re not careful. Another thing to look out for are redirects. These occur when clicking on a link sends you to another page that’s not the one you intended to visit. On sites run by particularly savvy cybercriminals, these other pages might look just like the one wanted to open, so make sure to double-check the URL before proceeding. In general, you will be able to tell if a site is potentially bad after having spent just a few minutes on it. Safe, professional, legitimate sites don’t have crazy pop-up ads and out-of-control redirects.
Step 3: Check the Reputation
After you’ve had a chance to check out the URL and the content, you should have a good idea as to whether or not the site is legitimate. But if you aren’t sure, then the next thing to do is to spend some time reading up on the site. The first thing you should do is simply Google it. Type in something such as “Is [website] safe?” Or “scams related to [X website].” Anything related will do, but just make sure to type it into Google and not the URL bar, as this might send you to the real site, and if it is problematic, you’ll be in real trouble. See if your search comes up in any stories or articles related to scams. Next, spend some time reading reviews about the site. If the site is a full-on scam, there will probably be several other people out there who have fallen victim to the site and reported it. This is an especially smart thing to do when you’re on an eCommerce site that doesn’t inspire you with confidence. Read up to see what experiences other people have had dealing with that company. They may have had no issues at all, which would be great news for you. But if someone did get ripped off, they’re sure to write about it somewhere, which will hopefully save you from suffering a similar fate as those before you. You could also check the Better Business Bureau to see if there have been any claims filed against the company you’re dealing with.
Step 4: Check for Contact Information
As a sort of last-ditch effort, look for the contact information on the site. It’s somewhat normal for sites to not have phone numbers or to not list their address, but they should have an email address or a contact form you can fill out. Reach out to the site before you make a purchase or give away any personal information. If the site is legitimate, you should get a response pretty quickly after sending a message. But if the site’s not safe, then the email either won’t go through or it will be left unanswered. If this happens, be thankful you tried to contact someone before doing something you could undo. If the site does list a phone number, give that a try as well to see if it’s real. For spammy sites that aren’t safe, the number will almost certainly not work. When there’s no contact information at all, take that as a sign that the site is not safe. Here are some additional things you can do to help you stay safe online:
How to Stay Safe When Browsing Online
Knowing how to spot an unsafe site before it causes you harm is an important part of staying secure while you’re browsing the internet, but it’s not the only thing you should be doing to stay safe from the various threats you can encounter online.
Safe Browsing Tools
Your browser has a variety of tools you can use to help make it less likely you’ll accidentally end up on an unsafe site. To access them, you will need to go into your browser’s settings menu, find “Advanced” or “Advanced Settings” and then find the security options. Some things you can do include blocking ads and other pop-ups, restrict potentially harmful Flash content, send Do Not Track requests that keep your browsing location hidden and secure and also limit access to your microphone, webcam, mobile phone, etc. If you’re worried about stumbling onto a bad site, or if you just want to make sure your privacy is as protected as possible, make sure your browser’s security settings are set to the highest level possible.
Anti-Virus Software
You’ll want to make sure you have some sort of anti-virus software on your computer to help keep you safe from what’s out there. Anti-virus software is helpful because it provides another layer of protection between you and the potentially harmful content on the web. It will stop files from automatically downloading onto your computer without your consent, which can be extremely helpful if you end up on a site with lots of pop-up ads and redirects, and it will also make it easier to quarantine infected files and destroy them before they wreak havoc on the rest of your system. Another advantage of anti-virus software is that it often comes with a browser extension that makes it much easier for you to determine if a site is legitimate or not. It will tell you right on the screen if it is or not, and while you can still override it and access the site if you really want, this is a great defense against spam websites that can do you harm.
When in Doubt, Don’t Click
Lastly, to stay safe online, it’s important to adopt safe browsing habits, and there’s no better way to do this than to use a “when in doubt, don’t click” approach to using the internet. You can usually tell when something at least appears suspicious, and when you get that feeling, listen to your instincts and run away. It’s much better to find out later that the site is okay thanks to some additional research than to learn the hard way that it’s not safe. Taking this approach will make it easier for you to also avoid email scams and other attempts to get your personal information off you and use it to steal from you. As a result, if you can learn how to do it when trying to decide which sites are safe to visit, you will be taking a big step towards avoiding all the different things cybercriminals can do to those who aren’t well-versed in online security.
Conclusion
It might seem like a lot to do this each time you visit a new site, but it’s important to follow a process to make sure the site you’re on truly is safe and legitimate. Plus, over time, a lot of this stuff will become second nature. You will have the tools in place and the knowledge needed to spot suspicious websites from the first moment you see them. This blog serves as a small sneak peek into what online safety and security training can do for you - make it easier to avoid online threats and explore the internet in a much more secure manner. Talk with an eLearning expert for free to learn how your organization can use online training to increase employee knowledge and skillset, keeping your business the best it can be.
Do’s and Don’ts For Leading A Webinar That Guarantees Results
Online workshops are now easier than ever to organize and attend. Since the pandemic, companies have experienced an 87% increase in webinar attendance, thanks to remote work. Webinars serve a great purpose and have incredible results when planned and executed right. Research shows the average attendance conversion rate of webinars is 55%, generating 500 to 1000 leads.
To achieve these results, it is essential to execute your webinar strategy correctly. Paying attention to top do’s and don’ts will help you lead productive webinars that help you meet your goals. This article also comes with two free, downloadable resources you can use when planning your next virtual event.
The Do’s of Creating a Successful Webinar
Choose the Right Topic and Make the Content Interesting
When planning a webinar, stick to the specific topics you are an expert in. Doing this will allow you to sell your company and provide incredible value. Remember: the goal of communicating to potential leads is not quantity, but value.
When choosing your topic, consider your goal for the webinar. Here are a few examples to choose from:
Your content should deliver on the topic you choose and help you achieve your goals. Keep your content interesting and engaging by using images, GIFs, and videos to provide the best to your attendees.
Generated leads, measured in revenue and sales meetings
Increased company engagement, measured in participation, comments, and questions
Brand awareness and establishment as a leader in the industry, measured in impressions and website sessions
Generate buzz for an upcoming product or offer
Making a plan for your webinar is essential to give a clear roadmap on how you’ll execute it. Plan your content and the exact subtopics you’ll cover in advance. When doing this, consider some of your audience’s questions and aim to cover them thoroughly.
Figure out your timelines for delivery to ensure that you consistently work on the different aspects of your webinar’s success. Then, you’ll be in a better position to delegate specific tasks and get the results you expect.
Determine the Right Webinar Format and Platform
You can hold your webinars in different formats, including Q&A, panel discussions, single-speaker presentations, and interviews. Research shows that Q&A webinars are incredibly successful in driving engagement, with an 81% score in popularity, because it answers specific questions, instead of lecturing broad facts.
When finding the correct way to present your webinar, you also need to take learner engagement into account. Using interactive virtual tools can be the difference between a valuable presentation and a muted one someone keeps on during another meeting. Here are a few tools you can use to level up your interactivity levels:
Whiteboard
Polls
Quizzes or call outs
Raised hands
Annotations
There is a massive number of webinar hosting platforms that you should consider. When choosing a platform, your main concern should be how easy it is to use and whether it can accommodate your webinar format and estimated attendees. With these aspects in check, you can then look into the prices and find alternatives that suit you.
Choose the Right Time and Day
When choosing the best time to hold your webinar, you’ll need to consider where the majority of your audience is from. Research suggests the best times are estimated to be 11 am and 2pm because most people are not commuting or at lunch during this time. It also allows for a time difference between the West and East coast of the United States.
Research also suggests Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to hold webinars. For a more in-depth look at timing preferences, determine who your ideal target audience is and research the best times of day for them to attend.
Market Your Webinar
Promoting your webinar is essential to ensure its success, and following a marketing roadmap will help you determine the proper channels to use and measure your results. Email is an incredible channel that comes with promising results to consider, which is why 65% of entrepreneurs note that email outreach is the best way to promote their webinars. However, a multi-channel approach is always a necessity when promoting an event. Below are a few ways you can advertise your upcoming webinar:
Social media channels
Email marketing
Post on your website
Affiliate marketing
Internal channels
Create a blog around the excitement
Email signature lines
Knowledge Anywhere has hosted a variety of webinars and has found a Webinar Planning Checklist to be the best tool to clarify the marketing game plan, set timelines, assign responsibility, and act as a checklist. For the first time, we’re giving this resource to you for free! Simply click here to access your Webinar Planning Checklist – no contact information or credit card is required.
The Don’ts of Creating a Successful Webinar
Don’t Make the Webinar Too Long
Your webinar should aim to provide immense value with the least time possible. Therefore, the average length should be 60 minutes, with 30 to 45 minutes covering the actual presentation, and the remaining time for Q&A to boost engagement. No one wants to take time out of their day to go to an event where the first 20 minutes are warming up the audience with generics and small talk.
Don’t Use Too Much Text
Using a lot of text in your webinar presentation will only harm its success rate. Expecting your attendees to read long chunks of text may lead them to click off. Instead, consider adding videos or pictures to communicate what you intended with text.
Reserve text for some of the critical points in your webinar. Doing this will allow your attendees to screenshot what is essential for them to refer back to the points you make easily.
Don’t Ignore Technical Issues
Technical issues make running a successful webinar more difficult. You’ll need to address any issues ahead of time to ensure that your webinar runs smoothly. If you run a pre-recorded webinar, checking for technical issues will be easier.
However, consider asking your attendees whether everything works well during the introduction when running a live webinar. If there are any issues, address them immediately to avoid losing your audience’s attention.
Sometimes, technical issues come from the side of the Audience, not the Presenter. While you can’t fix every problem your attendees may have, you can ward off a lot by providing a downloadable, Free Virtual Training Checklist, which shows what users should do before a meeting or webinar in order to avoid problems.
Don’t Ignore Rehearsals
Live webinars will require you to put in some time to rehearse what you’ll cover. Doing this will allow you to accurately predict the time you’ll spend during the presentation.
If you plan to invite a presenter or a niche expert, ensure that you take the time to go through the webinar before time. Rehearsals also allow you to test for technical issues and address them before that live webinar launches.
Don’t Cover Too Much In A Limited Time
Narrow down on your topic to ensure that you cover a good chunk of content before your time is up. Running through content in a hurry will lead you to skip key points and leave your audience disappointed. Instead, cover the right amount of content in your webinar to leave your audience well-informed without taking up too much time.
How to Manage More Projects With Less Staff By Leveraging Online Training
59% of workplace employees claim that most of their skills are self-taught. While this approach may work for a few employees, it may not be the quickest or most effective way to ensure all of your employees have a broad skill set.
So, how can you manage more projects with less staff by leveraging online training? Keep reading to learn about the benefits of online training for productivity and how to implement online learning effectively.
Why eLearning Can Improve Productivity In The Workplace
Maximizing productivity in the workplace can be a pretty tricky undertaking. The goal is always to do more with less, but if you push your staff members too hard, they can become frustrated and lose job satisfaction.
Providing your employees with eLearning can improve workplace productivity through affordable and flexible courses. Some benefits of an online training program include:
Flexibility: since learning happens employees can pick up online training whenever they like, they don’t have to worry about balancing upcoming deadlines with their training. The same luxury is not afforded with in-person training, which can take up vast portions of employee time.
Enhancing employee skill sets: if employees can broaden their skill set, this will expand the range of tasks they can cover within projects, allowing workloads to be distributed more efficiently.
Employee satisfaction: employees will be grateful for the training, as it makes them more employable and gears them towards progression and promotion within your business, making employee retention more likely.
Engagement: if employees are not constantly adapting their working methods, this can cause stagnation, and they may reach a plateau in their motivation. By equipping them with new skills, you can improve your employees' engagement with their work, allowing them to revitalize their productivity and motivation.
Training ensures that your staff is getting better at their job. They will be more skilled and more knowledgable; both these contribute to better workplace performance. For example, investing in a leadership development program ensures your organization will have strong leaders. It is through these skills of managing people and delegating tasks that more gets done with less.
How To Choose and Use Training Platforms
We have seen the benefits of online training for improving staff productivity; it’s time to discuss how you can effectively implement an online training course in your business. This section will cover some of the different considerations for online learning, including the potential for a hybrid learning environment and the security considerations you must make when using a cloud-based learning platform.
When it comes to choosing the right online learning platform, it is essential to consider the computer-literacy level of your employees. To ensure employees can access and use online resources, it’s best to opt for a user-friendly platform that comes with onboarding and live customer support to help the process move along.
You must also consider whether you can offer employees the opportunity to train from home. If you are already using a hybrid work model, the training platform should be cloud-based. If you do not use a hybrid work model, you can still allow your employees to take training days remotely, which allows them to take a break from the commute to enjoy the luxuries of working from home every once in a while. It will also incentivize them to enjoy training, instead of dreading it.
Summary
Online learning is a powerful tool you can implement in your business to ensure that your employees can optimize their skillset. The more skills your employees have, the more tasks they can cover within your projects, allowing projects to be covered with fewer staff members. To implement an online learning strategy, it is essential to consider your employees' comfort, needs, and security. If you have a secure online learning platform that can be accessed from anywhere, this will facilitate learning and allow your employees to quickly pick up their training when they have the time to do so.
4 Core Management Styles: How and When to Use Them
Every leader has a unique style of overseeing and assisting their teams, and any management style a leader uses will directly impact their staff. As a leader, what about each style can help you deliver the outcome you desire? While there is no right way to manage, some styles can be more helpful in particular industries or when working with certain staff teammates. When developing great managers, online training leadership programs are immensely helpful. For now, to examine different styles and their uses, read on!
What Makes a Great Leader?
Leadership techniques and tactics change, but there are certain qualities everyone in corporate leadership should work towards. Those qualities, according to the Northeastern University graduates, consist of:
Prioritizing personal development: leaders should always be learning and find ways to adapt to changing business needs and be open to getting feedback and upgrading their management styles.
Develop others: working on themselves while consistently helping others by acting as a mentor for employee development.
Encourage innovation: create a roadmap that teams are on board with and have a hand in the decision-making.
Ensuring ethics: Being authoritative is great, but making sure leaders are following business practices and common sense is just as important. Being open and honest with teams will go a long way to gaining loyalty and trust.
Cross-functional communication: leaders know how to bridge gaps in communication across divisions and departments, keeping open lines of communication and offering help to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal.
Now that you have the skills for providing excellent leadership, you can look at these different core management approaches. Managers sometimes suffer from creative fatigue and need to reevaluate their way of leading; there is no “one size fits all” way to manage. Each of the following management styles has a specific function that will help you provide the best guidance towards your objectives. Knowing when to use them is crucial to ensure that processes improve and your organization is working at its best.
The Strategic Management Style
Focusing on strategy helps reach your goal. Creative vision is at the heart of this management style - it involves developing roadmaps to success and providing clear expectations and instructions to staff. Communication is a significant factor in ensuring that you stay connected with your team and updated on progress. Working on a strategy means understanding every player’s role and ensuring everyone has all resources necessary to fulfill their duties. As a manager, you would utilize this management style for specific projects that deal with many tasks to achieve targets. Industries that work especially well with a strategic management style include construction, manufacturing, and engineering.
The Quiet Management Style
Putting trust in your team is a management style some leaders use for a more hands-off approach; giving teams the tools they need and then allowing them to make decisions independently and complete their due diligence. Giving employees complete ownership of projects and tasks also gives them control of implementation. If you choose this approach, understand you are taking responsibility for all mistakes made by your team. Giving them the freedom to choose how to complete tasks can be very useful and give you more time as a manager to oversee more projects with less work. The quiet management style does not work well with more task-driven industries like retail or customer service. However, it can be beneficial in more creative industries when managers have highly experienced employees they trust with the ability to work freely.
The Instructive Management Style
If you’re a well-organized expert in your field, the instructor management style may be best for you. Managers who are knowledgeable in their roles and have a more hands-on approach to their work can provide coaching to assist and instruct their teams through their tasks and projects. Managers using this style are very structured, understanding that they may need to help employees, essentially holding their hands through each step. The instructive style is a traditional way to manage teams and works well when managers have less-experienced teams, such as entry-level workers.
The Experimental Management Style
Forward-thinking approaches sometimes come with experimentation. This approach works best for fast-paced, dynamic work environments where people need to take the initiative to give teams the freedom to try new things. Leaders will provide employees with resources to get started, but then allow them to hit the ground running. Then, teams will work to brainstorm ideas, develop strategies, and put them into action. As a result, they have more decision-making authority and thrive in the ability to think outside of the box. The experimentative style is beneficial in industries where managers can trust employees who have extensive knowledge in an area and can be given the freedom to experiment. Here, understanding how to manage your team’s individual talents comes into play. Industries this works best on may include technology-driven fields like design, web development, and writing, as well as creative sectors, such as film, television, and fashion.
Which Management Style is Right For You?
Tailoring your management approach is vital when determining the best possible leadership style for your team. This blog serves as a beginner introduction to management styles. However, it’s important the work doesn’t stop here. Make sure your organization has a solid leadership training program with engaging courses that shrink the management skill gap. Staying open and adaptive to your employees’ needs, understanding and developing their talents, and encouraging a positive and uplifting environment will encourage high performance. Get to know your teams and keep open-minded as you cater to your managing style to achieve your goals. You may start with one type and eventually graduate to another. There is no one way to manage, so you can try more than one to find what works best. Talk with an eLearning expert for free to learn how your organization can use online training to increase employee knowledge and skillset, keeping your business the best it can be.
Open Sesame and Knowledge Anywhere Integration Transforms and Streamlines Global Learning Platforms
Open Sesame, a market-leading SaaS global eLearning innovator, recently announced an integration with longtime partner Knowledge Anywhere to transform existing training programs using Open Sesame’s high-quality content library for learners. The integration maximizes resources using Open Sesame content via Knowledge Anywhere’s LMS and provides learners with a range of topics and styles of content. Learning and Development teams can quickly and effectively customize training programs with high-quality content that is useful and engaging for Learners, while saving both time and money.
“Knowledge Anywhere and OpenSesame has worked in close partnership for many years together. We’re thrilled that their content and our training platform are now closer than ever with this beautiful and seamless integration, allowing learners to access training easier than ever before.”
Jacqueline Holmes, Knowledge Anywhere Marketing Lead
A Learning Management System is useless without high-quality training content. Manually downloading and uploading courses makes workforce upskilling and reskilling challenging. Integrations are increasingly a must-have for customers. By leveraging leading industry technology, Open Sesame and Knowledge Anywhere can provide a new world of work strategy. The Open Sesame integration with Knowledge Anywhere provides over 30,000 high-quality courses to assist enterprises worldwide in developing more analytical and actionable learning. Using the integration, L&D admins can easily send Open Sesame content to their Knowledge Anywhere LMS – removing the administrative burden of manually downloading and uploading courses. Additionally, Open Sesame content stays fresh, as retired courses are automatically removed, and course metadata updates are available in the LMS.
Knowledge Anywhere creates and deploys easy-to-use, performance-based eLearning tools to make the transfer of knowledge more flexible, effective, and engaging across organizations large and small. Their Learning Management System, Virtual Reality Training, and Course Development services, combined with their experience and customer support, enable users to create a learning and development program that delights learners and drives company growth. Knowledge Anywhere is focused on a customer-centric approach.
Talk with an eLearning expert for free to learn how your organization can utilize off-the-shelf courses for easy access to thousands of training topics!
Potential Roles AI Could Take in Corporate Training
For the longest time, corporate training revolved around in-person training. In recent years, Learning Management Systems and online training or blended learning have taken over the L&D world, allowing workers to learn from anywhere, anytime. While current training technology is a huge shift in how things have been done in the past, we wonder what the next major shift will be within the eLearning industry. In this post, you will learn how an AI-powered LMS could take on new roles within a training system and potentially improve corporate training. People have different styles of learning and training is more effective when everyone’s preferences are taken into consideration. An AI-powered LMS can gather and analyze employee data, including skills, interests, workplace behavior, previous learning interactions, and more. This solution allows training programs to adapt to the needs of each employee. Here are the benefits of adopting AI in personalized learning.
Saves time: Employees are able to achieve their learning goals quickly since they receive information based on their objectives and preferences.
Encourages Engagement: An AI-powered learning system analyzes each employee and suggests a learning program based on their objectives and past performance.
Automated Learning Process: With AI, you can create a learning platform where all materials, data, schedules, and programs are delivered, stored, and tracked.
Growing ROI: Faster learning, paired with higher engagement, leads to better learning results, which offers a positive return on an organization’s learning investment.
Integrating Training into the Routine Workflow
Companies that use the traditional methods may fail to integrate training into the routine workflow. Learners are usually dissatisfied with the schedule of traditional training and the mode of information delivery. Thankfully, an AI-powered LMS can create programs and schedules that can run during the routine workflow. This results in benefits like saving time, improved employee engagement, and an increase in the organization’s productivity.
Reinforcing Training and Development
AI can streamline and improve the efficiency of the staff training and learning process. It can track the learners’ progress and estimate their understanding of the subject material. Even better, it revises the program when necessary to enhance training effectiveness. An AI-powered system can also provide insights into how and when employees learn effectively, enabling companies to design the best training programs. Finally, this system can diagnose issues. For example, when there is a poor completion rate of a course organization-wide, it can provide recommendations to avoid future repetition of the problem.
Providing a Remedy for Skill Gaps
A quality AI-powered LMS can quickly identify a company’s skill gaps by analyzing employee data such as behavior, interactions, skills, and job role. It can trigger an automated learning enrollment and identify and recommend a reskilling pathway for employees. This reduces the risk of losing their jobs to skilled individuals while cutting out managerial oversight.
Reducing Administrative Burden with Virtual Coaches
An AI chatbot can handle a lot of work done by managers today. The chatbot effectively functions as a proactive virtual coach, answering all questions in real-time. It also monitors progress, suggests the best course of action, and sends push notifications regarding content and deadlines. Where necessary, the bot recommends the most relevant content. As a result, employees are able to learn at their own style and pace without compromising productivity. Remember, employees aren’t always rational - they may hesitate to work on areas where they are weak to avoid exposing those skills gaps to their bosses. An AI-powered LMS enables them to tackle their weak areas without humiliation, intimidation, or embarrassment.
Providing Intelligent Search and Auto-tagging
When you upload new content to your LMS, AI analyses the content immediately. It identifies critical phrases and creates tags to make the content easy to find with the search function. An AI-powered system is also able to facilitate intelligent search engines that deliver more akin details to the search experience. It will scan across all the company’s federated data silos to develop informative data and suggest relevant experts available for micro-learning opportunities. From this, learners will be able to personalize their learning journeys in a way that meets their needs and interests. Furthermore, the system will continue to learn as it is fed with more content, easily identifying learners who will find the information most useful. As such, employees using the search engine will find different content suggestions.
Evaluating and Expanding Learning Content
AI can identify and flag underperforming learning content, as well as hide the underperforming training assets until they are revised. The system can source new content automatically from external and internal sources to help an organization meet its demand for new and engaging content.
Eliminating Employee Assessment Bias
No matter how careful we are, our biased views will inevitably creep into the assessment. Biases can make managers fail to identify and promote talent effectively or miscalculate or overlook flight rates with the organization. In a recent study, IBM officials claimed that an AI can predict which employees are likely to quit their job with 95% accuracy. With the help of an AI-powered LMS system, learning evaluation can be solely based on robust data analytics. That way, organizations can achieve data-driven identification of traits that could render an employee a potential future leader.
Final Thought
A good AI-powered system can provide numerous benefits for your business. However, it can be challenging to select the best system for your unique organization and successfully implement it. If you do not have the skills to accomplish this, it is vital to find support from a qualified partner with the knowledge and experience to help you succeed. Knowledge Anywhere is a corporate online training company that provides multiple types of training. These include custom course development, a Learning Management System (LMS), Virtual Reality Training, and more. Our training platform and a team of professionals will help you build the training and development program of your dream. Please talk with us now and allow us to take your corporate training to the next level.
Launching An Online Training System: Your First 60 Days
Just like a president’s first 100 days in office are imperative to their goals, so are the first 60 days after launching a Learning Management System (LMS). In this blog, you’ll read a timeline of what training Administrators need to do in the time leading up to, during, and post-launch, as this is a highly important time for the future success of your corporate training. By following this timeline’s recommendations, you’ll be set!
For a downloadable PDF of this checklist, click here.
30 Days Prior To Launch
Finalize Name and Tagline for Learning System
Establish SMART goals (ex: 1,000 new users by March 25; 5,000 users by April 20, and 3,000 completed courses by July 20).
Begin creating/ordering printed material (collateral, table tents, etc.)
Begin building introduction external communication (if the system is customer-facing)
Did you know that personal finance is the leading cause of stress in the United States? Providing your employees with resources, such as financial wellness programs, can help reduce stress and increase productivity. As an employer, what can you do to support your employees so that they can see a future with your company? Here are some tips to help your employees feel secure in their career paths through financial training.
How Financial Stress Affects Your Business
Stress can have a large impact on the overall productivity of your business. Some challenges include increased absenteeism, a higher rate of staff turnover, a decrease in the quality of work, and a negative impact on co-worker relationships. Remote work can also be to blame for causing additional challenges for employers. Balancing your employees’ needs and wants has become more important than ever.
Stress affects everyone differently. In 2021, 65% of employees reported that financial stress caused them to have a lower productivity rate. This results in lower performance from employees which can ultimately alter overall business growth. Time and resources that are spent on employees who may not be performing up to the company standards, could be contributing to a steady decrease in profit over time. Helping employees manage their financial obstacles while prioritizing their overall wellbeing could result in saving a significant amount of money each year.
Maintaining Physical and Mental Health in the Workplace
Mental and physical health issues can also become underlying reasons as to why your employees are not meeting the productivity goals set by your organization. By reassuring your employees that they have the resources available to them to help meet their mental and physical needs, they can feel a bit more at ease.
One way to do so is by offering an Employee Assistance Program at a reduced cost to employees. Providing these resources can help prevent burnout and improve employee retention. Consider hosting a virtual educational session where employees can have an open discussion. Use this time to answer any questions that your employees may have. Topics to include may range from general budgeting, how much to contribute to your 401K, debt management skills and tips to stay productive and motivated while working from home.
Employee Retention
In the midst of the Great Resignation, it is more important than ever to have an open line of communication with your employees. To support them beyond a typical benefits package, consider additional incentives. For example, if you require in-office attendance, you might offer relocation packages as part of an employee’s benefits. Moving is notoriously stressful. So, whether you’re promoting an employee, they are requesting to relocate or you are hiring someone new, providing your employees with financial resources such as how to get preapproved for a mortgage can help relieve some of that stress.
Growing companies need to bring together qualified teams and workers. Competitive benefits such as career development opportunities, and financial wellness packages can further incentivize prospective employees by acknowledging their personal and financial goals. Financial stress can impact every employee, and therefore will have a direct impact on how your business operates as a whole. Being able to provide your employees with valuable resources in order to help lessen their stress not only financially but in various aspects of their lives can help improve their productivity and your overall success.
New Features Take Scormify’s Conversion Tool to the Next Level
Training platforms are a necessity for every modern training program. However, a system is only as good as the content you place in it. While some Learning Management Systems have a built-in authoring tool, others have a more creative approach. Scormify allows you to transform any PowerPoint, PDF, Word Doc, or video into SCORM compliant content that you can upload into any training platform. This allows you to create content in a variety of engaging formats, without having all of your content tied to only one system.
We are constantly updating and improving Scormify so it makes the most sense for your training content. In this blog, we’ll go over the latest and greatest 2022 features - if you’re interested in learning more, you can always sign up for a free Scormify trial or research more about Scormify in our Support Center.
Ability to Directly Upload A Video
In previous versions of Scormify, videos needed to have been streamed on a public platform, such as YouTube or Vimeo. While the conversion tool still can pull from either of those sites, we’ve now added the ability to directly upload videos from your computer.
Ability to Scormify An Interactive Video Quiz
Watch How To Add An Interactive Quiz To Videos in Scormify; a walkthrough demo video about Scormify’s exciting new feature, which allows users to directly upload a video file and insert quiz questions to uploaded videos at key intervals, making your videos SCORM compliant, ready to upload on any training platform, and an interactive quiz for your end learners.
Bulk Upload Feature
To learn How to Bulk Upload Training Content on Scormify, watch this demo video. This new feature allows users to upload multiple types of training content at once, making the change management process easy if you need to fill your training system with content quickly.
Ability to Scormify A PowerPoint
Since most internal training outside of LMSs are done through presentations, we’ve added the ability to transform PowerPoints to SCORM compliant eLearning courses. For a step-by-step walkthrough of this process, watch this video: How to Create A SCORM Compliant PowerPoint Using Scormify
The LMS Learner interface is fully updated with a new and improved experience; users have a whole new interface to better see where they stand with courses. We have also improved customized photos, text, and notifications for administrators. For a quick and easy walk-through of Knowledge Anywhere’s LMS user experience, check out this demo video, guided by Knowledge Anywhere Founder Charlie Gillette. For a written explanation of all changes, please read this article.
New Homepage Action Buttons
We have added what we call “Action Buttons” to the home screen to help users better understand and act on their learning journey. Users will now be able to see what their current progress is at a glance and know exactly where they stand and what items require them to take near-term or immediate action, such as “past due” courses (and provide quick links to do so).
Learning Path and Transcript Improvements
Users will have a better understanding of what learning paths they are assigned through the new visual card-style presentation and will have a clearer insight of statues with the colored visual progress reports. The progress graphs will show percentages of course completions, courses in progress, and un-started courses.
Messages and notifications will now appear alongside learning paths on the homepage.
New Learning Path Filters
Users have tools to filter down courses by assignment, course types, status, and more from the Learning Paths Page.
Added Message Center
We now have a new dedicated message center that allows users will see when admins send messages to them and it’s all in one place.
Categories
Administrators can now assign Categories to Learning Paths and Courses. An example of this would be “Onboarding,” where Admins could place relevant training content under, so new Learners would know where to look first.
Admins can find this new feature under Content > Categories.
Updated Registrar Role
A logged-in Administrator with a registrar role can do the following:
After logging in as a user with Registrar admin role, the default landing page is the manage courses page
View Users and Transcripts
Group Assignment of Learning Paths based on Hire Date
Admins now have the option to do Group Assignment of Learning Paths based on Learner Hire Dates. A range is chosen and if a learner’s hire date is within that date range, they get assigned the learning path.
Support Up to 10 Custom User Text Fields and 10 Custom Dropdown Fields
In Site > Custom Field Labels page, Admins will be able to see, edit, and save 10 text and 10 dropdowns.
Our team has ensured these custom fields dynamically show up in Site > Personalization > Fields page, in the Dropdown custom fields, in the Group Edit page under Users > Manager Users > Edit page, and on the Learner site.
eSignatures Tool
This tool, allowing Learners to sign digital signatures within the LMS, gives legal validity of Learners completing their courses. Learners can sign electronically using one of three ways:
1. Type your digital signature
2. Draw your signature digitally
3. Upload files of your signature
Admins will be able to see which courses Learners have signed through PandaDoc.
Employee Turnover Statistics That Will Scare Your HR Team Into Action
The Turnover Tsunami, The Great Resignation, The Big Quit … whatever you want to call it, employee turnover in the COVID-19 world is gaining serious momentum. The talent shortage, coupled with the gradual exit of Baby Boomers is turning hiring into a challenge. Many companies are working hard to hold on to the talent they already have while making themselves appealing to new employees. Great benefits and high salaries are no longer the highlights of your job listings. To secure top talent, you have to go the extra mile. One significant part of it is high-quality training.
Eye-Opening 2021 Employee Turnover Stats
It’s no secret that U.S. businesses are struggling to retain and attract talent. Statistics make the problem highly visible.
In 2021, an average of 25% of employees across all industries left their jobs voluntarily. The overall turnover rate across industries was 57.3% (HubSpot)
Between 2020 and 2021, the average increase in resignation for employees between 30 and 45 years old was 20%. (Harvard Business Review)
Over 20 million Americans quit their jobs in the second half of 2021. (CBS)
The gap between labor demand and labor supply is quickly widening in Healthcare, Leisure and Hospitality, and Retail Industries (The Guardian)
The number of American employees quitting has been exceeding pre-pandemic rates for eight months in a row. (Statista)
More than 48% of employees are already looking for a new job or will start looking for one within 90 days. (BusinessWire)
Employee turnover costs U.S. businesses $1 trillion per year. (Gallup)
Becoming an employer of choice during the Turnover Tsunami can be tricky. By digging deeper into the reasons, it’s possible to gain insight into your further actions.
The Real Costs of Employee Turnover
To calculate the real costs of turnover for your company, consider implementing a cost tracking system. The results may surprise you. Employee turnover takes a serious toll on any company’s budget. The costs include:
Recruiting: advertising, screening, interviewing, and analyzing takes time and money, especially if you don’t have a sizable HR team.
Onboarding: depending on the position, onboarding can involve time-consuming training and management time.
Lost productivity: no matter how good the new employee is, it can take them months to reach the productivity levels of the predecessor.
Low employee morale: high turnover rates hurt employee morale and lead to a quitting pattern.
Replacing one employee can cost between 30% and 100% of their annual salary. Besides factoring in the costs of recruiting and onboarding, you need to consider the time you lose while looking for a new employee and how it affects business operations. Meanwhile, your existing staff will need to work harder to fill the gap, thus bringing satisfaction levels down. It can take up to six months for the company to get a reasonable ROI on a new hire. By that time, some of these employees may decide to leave.
Main Reasons for the Great Resignation
Many employers blame COVID-19 for the Great Resignation. The key pandemic-related reasons include:
Burnout. Many employees are overwhelmed with the extra work and long hours they had to put in during the pandemic. As companies were trying to save money and laying off their workforce, the remaining employees had to literally pull double shifts.
Flexibility. The pandemic showed employees that flexible work hours are possible. They don’t want to come back to the 9-to-5 routine. Many people are looking for flexible work opportunities to gain time to spend with their families and nurture the work-life balance.
Pent-up demand. Many employees put quitting off due to the pandemic since they were afraid of losing a source of income. Once the world learned how to live in the new normal, employees became more willing to let go.
Available opportunities. With more and more job slots opening up, employees are taking chances and looking for better employment opportunities.
While the pandemic fueled the Turnover Tsunami, it’s hardly the only reason why the turnover rates are at their all-time high. The common reasons for quitting are still here:
Lack of internal growth
Poor career opportunities
Lack of recognition
Unappealing company culture
Poor learning and development opportunities
Additionally, the 2021 – 2022 turnover spike is fueled by the talent gap. In 2020, 40% of Baby Boomers left the workforce. Meanwhile, other generations are having a hard time filling their roles.
You Need Them More Than They Need You
Amidst the Great Resignation, employers often lose track of an important concept. They need employees more than employees need them. This creates a competitive hiring environment among companies, but attractions and retention tactics don’t evolve. It’s up to the company to create an appealing environment that makes top talent value the employment opportunity. One of the approaches is proper training. In-house training allows employees to: When done right, high-quality training keeps your existing workforce satisfied with their employment options. Meanwhile, it creates an appealing environment for potential candidates, making you an employer of choice.
Grow within the company
Take advantage of internal opportunities
Hone skills
Feel needed in the workplace
Reinforce their purpose in the workplace
The bottom line is simple: Employees are valuable to your company. Let them know through actions.
The Takeaway
High turnover rates are affecting all American industries. In the race for better talent, companies often overlook the importance of streamlining retention strategies. As your competition is offering better benefits, higher salaries, and other perks, you may want to invest in less obvious tactics like top-notch training that help employees feel their value. At Knowledge Anywhere, we can help you adjust your hiring and retention strategies by providing the right tools for a comprehensive training system. Learn more about gaining an upper hand amidst the Turnover Tsunami today and contact us today to talk to an eLearning professional for free!
6 Key Tactics to Improve Your Company’s Employee Development Programs
Statistics show that companies with employee development programs have better retention rates. Despite this, only 38% of HR managers believe they are doing a good job, leaving 62% looking for ways to improve their company’s employee development program.
Employee Development Program: Why is it Important?
Employee development is when you support employees to pursue learning opportunities, as it provides many benefits for the company, as well as the employees themselves. Below are a few ways programs like these are great for employers
:
Increase in Profit
According to a 2018 Association for Talent Development study, companies with a comprehensive employee development program gain 218% more income per employee. It is like paying your employee $100 and getting $218 profit in return!
Improvement in Productivity
The reason companies with comprehensive staff development programs enjoy an increase in profit is because of productivity improvement. Training and skills upgrades equip people to do their jobs better. This can lead to efficiency and better output.
Better Employee Retention
As mentioned earlier, companies that invest in professional development have a better employee retention rate. In fact, 7 out of 10 employees will choose to stay at their job if they are given work-related training. That’s because skills upgrade allows these people to reach their full potential.
More Engaged Employees
Employee development fosters commitment and loyalty amongst workers. While employee engagement does not necessarily mean satisfaction or happiness, an engaged employee is more productive and much more likely to care about their job and the company.
6 Tips to Improve Your Company’s Employee Development Program
Having a comprehensive personal development plan for your employees can benefit your company. That said, we have listed six tactics that can help you improve your existing program.
Make Learning Part of Your Onboarding Process
If you want to foster an attitude of learning among your employees, ensure that it is part of their journey from day one. This means including employee development in your onboarding process. These are three things you must do to make it happen:
Provide online learning resources
Make these learning resources accessible in one platform
Assign relevant learning content
Let Managers Lead by Example
Aside from incorporating employee development into the onboarding process, it is also ideal to make your managers embrace the habit of learning. Doing so allows them to lead by example, and this habit can trickle down to their team.
If you want to improve your company’s employee development program, we suggest that you ask your managers for input. Ask what they are most worried about when leading a team and what things they want to learn. From there, you can map a personal development plan that you can monitor.
Encourage managers to make constant learning a part of their management strategy. This includes sharing their learning insights with their teams and assigning relevant resource materials throughout the year, not only in the first couple weeks.
Mobilize Learning from the Top
The best way to build a thriving learning culture in your company is to get the executives involved. After all, an employee development program will not materialize without their approval.
This can be an excellent opportunity for them to lead by example. Doing so can encourage managers to prioritize learning as part of enhancing their teams’ performance.
However, you must do the following to get buy-in from your executives.
Showcase how employee development can impact the company’s bottom line. As executives, they will be more than interested to know whether a program can provide ROI.
Present the data. This is an excellent way to prove that staff development can benefit the company.
Start small. You can gain support from executives, but it will be for nothing if you do not have the resources. It would be ideal to do some research about how to choose a superior training system and conduct demos before launching head-first into a new program.
Shift Learning From Requirement to Opportunity
There is a stigma that performance is a top-down process. To shift that belief, we suggest making learning an opportunity instead of a requirement.
If an employee wants to be promoted, incorporate employee development as a part of a performance review. For them to be qualified for the promotion, they can opt to take relevant training.
Doing so makes the culture of learning employee-driven.
Show the Impact of Employee Development
Here’s the thing: Your executives and managers are more likely to promote a learning culture in your company if they have seen results. This is where pilot testing and an internal study can be helpful.
You’ll need to collaborate with different teams to make this happen.
You can survey and identify teams who would like to see internal improvement. Do their superiors believe that skills upgrades can help them perform better? If that’s the case, you have found a partner who gets the importance of employee development.
Next is to identify and measure key performance indicators that matter. The key here is to consult with your pilot team. They will know the ins and outs of their internal process and can identify what metrics to measure, making the best use of your training data.
From there, you can conduct your study and track the results. Highlight any early success you see. This includes employees who are showing performance improvement.
Turning Employees Into Learners
Having a thriving learning culture in your company does not happen overnight. That’s because it requires support from your executives, strategic engagement initiatives, and a suitable learning platform.
Nonetheless, this should not impede your desire to improve your company’s employee development program. Remember: Empowered employees are beneficial for your company.
If you’re looking for a training provider to help you set up a talent development program, reach out to Knowledge Anywhere or book a free consultation with an eLearning expert today!
The Ultimate eLearning Definitions Dictionary: All The Terms You Need To Know
There are a lot of industry terms in the eLearning sphere, which can make choosing the right training system confusing for those who have not navigated the space before. That’s why Knowledge Anywhere has created this no-nonsense eLearning definitions dictionary, for you to reference when you need it.
Adaptive eLearning: A type of eLearning with the learner’s flexibility as its focal point. Here, all learning materials are designed to fit your learning preferences. This pays attention to aspects such as skills, abilities, and individual performance. Using such factors to tailor your learning needs means that you can switch things up whenever you feel like you are lagging behind, or change based on your course completion goals. Adaptive eLearning works well where learners prefer to study at their own pace. You, however, need to be highly disciplined to stick to your pace in adaptive eLearning. To read about the pros and cons of this type of training, read A Guide to The Different Types of eLearning.
Asynchronous Learning: When presentations are pre-recorded and digital materials are delivered via email, discussion boards, social networking, and collaborative documents. Commonly used delivery methods include recorded audio, video presentations, and discussion tools. This type of eLearning offers greater flexibility for learners.
Certification: A digital proof of completion for an online course. Certifications in eLearning can be highly customized with client colors, logos, and text and can be given to Learners for earning skills, completing courses, or passing exams.
CEUs: Continuing Education Units (CEUs) are a nationally recognized standard for documenting the completion of non-credit programs and courses intended to improve the knowledge and skills of working adults.
Elective Course: A course that a Learner has access to within a training system and is optional to complete.
Extended Enterprise: A term for when eLearning is extended past internal employees to business partners or customers.
Fixed eLearning: Refers to a learning process that uses a traditional structure of passing down information to students. All learners receive the same type of information as determined by the instructors. Since the learning materials rely on the instructors, fixed eLearning is rigid and does not adapt to the students’ preferences. Such a type is best suited to environments where learners have similar schedules and skills. Traditional grade school classes in need of eLearning can, for instance, adapt this type of structure. To read about the pros and cons of this type of training, read A Guide to The Different Types of eLearning.
Instructor-Led Training (ILT): True to the name, ILT is when an instructor teaches a live course in front of students. This can happen face-to-face or online, although the latter may be referred to as Virtual Instructor-Led Training (ILT). Examples of ILT are webinars, lectures, and workshops.
Just in Time Training: The concept of supporting employees by providing avenues for immediate learning, allowing them to acquire the knowledge they need when they need to know it. To learn more about just-in-time training, read Just-In-Time Training: How to Implement It Into Your eLearning Program.
Learning Management System (LMS): An online software program that provides a vehicle for the exchange of training or learning curriculum. Its seamless delivery of online training allows organizations across all industries to deploy virtual training to end-users (employees, suppliers, customers, partners, etc.), manage training materials, track, and evaluate results aimed to improve end-user performance. To learn more about LMSs, read What is an LMS?
Learning Record Store (LRS): A storage system that functions as a depository for learning records collected from connected systems where eLearning is conducted. An LRS is the focal point of your eLearning ecosystem and brings together data from your learning systems and applications. It is responsible for receiving, storing, and providing access to all eLearning records. The LRS is uniquely designed to help systems store and retrieve xAPI statements and other forms of xAPI metadata from other systems. To learn more about just-in-time training, read Learning Record Store (LRS) Guide: Basics You Need to Know.
Learning in the Flow of Work: When learners are able to extract the information they need, when they need it, without having to interrupt their process. Ideally, this would mean learners could be on the job, learn a skill they need, use that skill quickly, and then move on to their work as before. This involves microlearning, which allows learning in multiple, short forms, improving memory and employee engagement. Instead of formally training workers for hours in a lecture hall, learning in the flow of work uses design and strategy to meet learners where they are in a digital platform. By feeding employees information naturally throughout the workday when they need it or have time, this process has the potential to increase efficiency, and cut down on time, while shrinking the skills gap. See real-world examples of learning in the flow of work here.
Learning Content Distribution System (LCDS): A system allowing organizations to manage training content from a single, central location and easily share access to courses with third parties. You may want to share your learning content with others to use on their LMS, but because of versioning, licensing, tracking, and bureaucracy, it’s not always practical. With LCDS tools like Conveyor, you can easily share, monitor, and administer your training content in one secure location.
Learning Experience Platform (LXP): Manages online learning experiences for employees, primarily at large corporations, and can provide learning resources that encourage employees to invest in the learning culture of the business. An LXP is ideal for online learning environments designed to facilitate employee choice, collaboration, and promotions within your organization. To learn more, read Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) vs. Learning Management Systems (LMS).
Learning Paths: A selection of courses within an online training system, organized by Administrators in a way that forms a route for learners to take on particular subjects. For example, when first starting a new job, a worker may be assigned multiple courses under an “Onboarding” Learning Path.
Microlearning: The practice of providing instruction in smaller, manageable portions as opposed to longer lessons. It’s a format particularly well-suited for employees that telecommute and matches today’s fast-paced world where people are extremely busy and have short attention spans. To learn more, read How Microlearning Benefits Your Online Employee Training.
mLearning: This term stands for Mobile Learning, and refers to when Learners take courses from phones or tablets. Since many professionals are mobile, it’s important that any training platform’s design can be adapted to multiple screens and devices.
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC): A course offered online with no class size limit or prerequisites. This type of course, allows flexible, global learning, without strict rules or penalties for uncompleted courses.
Off The Shelf Courses: Off-the-shelf refers to content that is pre-made by professionals, which organizations can pay for and receive immediately. Think of it as your online bookshop or library, where you can search amongst the courses to find the topic you want to take home before purchasing it. To learn more about Off The Shelf Content, download a free eBook about it here.
Required Course: A course that is assigned from an Administrator to a Learner that is mandatory to complete.
SCORM: SCORM stands for “Shareable Content Object Reference Model.” It is technically not a single set of standards; SCORM is a collection of standards and specifications for eLearning technology and serves as a guideline or reference point for how developers can successfully use different standards in combination with one another. Moreover, SCORM defines both communication methods between client-side content and the LMS’ host system, as well as how content is packaged into ZIP files known as “Package Interchange Formats.” To learn more about SCORM, read What Is SCORM and Why Is It Important?
Single Sign On (SSO, aka SAML): An authentication method that allows learners to securely access multiple applications—such as your LMS—from multiple devices—such as your laptop, tablet, or mobile phone—using a single set of credentials—such as your email address and password. To learn more about SSO and how it relates to LMSs, check out Knowledge Anywhere’s Help Desk articles on that subject here.
Synchronous Learning: When training occurs at specific times for the group to participate in, led by a professional online instructor. This type of eLearning offers instantaneous feedback, real-time questions, and classroom collaboration. To learn more about these two types of training, read Asynchronous or Synchronous: A Guide To eLearning Approaches.
Tactic Knowledge: A type of knowledge or skillset one acquires by lived experiences, also referred to as “know-how.” Often times, this knowledge or skillset is picked up without actively trying, and its origins can be difficult to place.
Talent Management: Talent Management is the combined organizational effort to attract, develop, and retain employees. Effective talent management solutions are manifested in an organization’s ability to obtain and retain a range of individuals with different abilities and skill sets that are paramount to the innovation, development, promotion, and sale of an organization’s products or services to the market. When an organization is successful at managing its talent, the organization often meets the strategic goals and objectives essential to achieving a competitive advantage. To learn more about Talent Management, read What is Talent Management?
xAPI: xAPI allows for deeper tracking of learning. This application is able to track the information learners seek whether that be through the eLearning content provided by a company or outside information on the internet. xAPI also makes it easy for learning and development teams to see self-directed learning in action. The “x” in xAPI stands for experience and represents this software’s ability to capture learning experiences. “API” is short for application programming interface which indicates that xAPI will seamlessly integrate with your learning management system. To learn more about xAPI, read What is XAPI And How Should You Use It?
At Knowledge Anywhere, our goal is to help you achieve your training goals. The first step in that process is defining them! This free Training SWOT Analysis Guide will help you and your team make decisions on who, what, and how to train employees in your organization. Below are a few things that this guide will teach you:
Who is this analysis for?
What is SWOT, and what does it stand for?
What is the goal of this activity
Potential business areas to question
Numbers and statistics about the eLearning industry
Many business owners make the mistake of always opting to recruit professionals rather than train their own employees to become the professionals they would need. Usually, employees who do not feel they are growing within their career will look for somewhere else where they can grow. Recruiting is not a bad idea, but is not cost-effective. To increase ROI, spend some of that budget on making current employees happy through training and development programs. This takes time, but with careful planning and significant investment, it is a great long-term strategy. Below are some ways that online training can help with talent management.
Employees encounter real-world experiences
Experiencing real-world problems without any risk of mistakes or high-pressure situations is one advantage of online training. Employees can take an active part in job simulations and interactive activities from anywhere in the world, allowing them to see what works and how mistakes happen. One great example of this is Virtual Reality Training, which is an immersive training content tool wiht the ability to “transport” learners into a simulated environment. During these lessons, employees can identify personal areas for improvement and continually develop their talents.
Retain top talent with personalized training resources
Employees would be elated at an opportunity to develop new skill sets that help them at work while padding their resume. When the company is able to make the employee happy and provide a path for personal growth, it is much easier to retain staff. A one-size-fits-all training doesn’t work in the competitive world these days. Most companies lose top talents to fierce competitors, simply because of this. Your top performers should have constant access to online training tools and resources that they would need from time to time.
Easily add more talent to your team
There are many online review sites, such as Glassdoor, that track a company’s staff welfare, and most top-class prospective employees are always on the lookout for companies with great employee reviews. For example, a prospective employee with extraordinary soft skills and the desire to become a professional project manager would be glad to join a program that organizes PMP training and a path for professional growth. This is because training improves leadership skills and gives employees the knowledge to manage teams on particular projects. These individuals can be costly, so it is an employee advantage to gain access for free. When a company is known for training employees on high-profile courses, it is easier for them to bring other intelligent prospects in, furthering talent management within the company.
Maintain consistency and standardization
A topic can be taught in different ways, at different times, depending on how your training is set up, whether that be instructor-led, off-the-shelf, custom-made, or a blended model. While this allows for options, it also creates difficulty for consistency over the years. Online training can help fix this need for consistency and standardization, in a way that is easy to maintain and optimize. Once you have put in the work to create an eLearning course, you can be sure all enrolled employees would get the same high-quality training, leading to consistent real-world application within their roles. This consistency will help with your organization’s talent management and create a standard that is easier to enforce. For example, if someone becomes sick or is absent, standardization allows other employees with the same training to easily cover for another, without a large disruption to the workplace.
Immediate feedback from employees
Training platforms run 24/7 and are always available. Because of this, employees can get any online training material they need to improve productivity at any time and can provide immediate personalized feedback after any training. If training was run only through a physical instructor, this process would require one-on-one feedback with every learner trained, at strict and inflexible times, creating challenging logistic barriers.
Conclusion
There are several advantages of online training - improved productivity, decreased turnover, increased ROI, happier employee satisfaction, and more! Whatever your training goals, creating a personal development plan will always be welcomed. To talk with an eLearning expert for free about your organization’s training, schedule a meeting here.
Knowledge Anywhere is Ranked Online Degree’s Top 10 LMS in 2022
Knowledge Anywhere is pleased to report that our Learning Management System was included in the “Best LMS for 2022” list published annually by the leading consumer education website, OnlineDegree.com.
This year’s focus was on “Ease of Use,” which is a huge testament to the work done by the Knowledge Anywhere team to address the most problematic issues that users typically face when utilizing an LMS. The end result is a product that is more intuitive and user-friendly to drive better utilization at organizations across the country.
We’re excited to be recognized, especially since our product development team has been hard at work with our newest Learner update. It’s nice to see it paying off! We’re proud to continually be innovating and upgrading, making our system the best it can be, so we can help organizations and workers around the world.
Charlie Gillette, Knowledge Anywhere Founder and President
OnlineDegree.com is an educational platform founded by edtech startup veterans and academics in higher education. The site has appeared in hundreds of media outlets and publications for its work to educate working adults and administrators on various ways to improve the affordability and accessibility of higher education.
Inclusion in the first inaugural Best LMS for 2022 list is a big honor for Knowledge Anywhere and is a great start to 2022.
The Importance of eLearning in the Technology Sector
The past two decades have seen an explosion of new technological concepts. The technology industry is just as dynamic and highly competitive, and staying up to date with new developments (or one step ahead of the competition) is necessary to survive. Your success in the tech industry hinges on several factors, including employees’ talents and skills. Any tech company’s most valuable asset is its employees, as they are responsible for driving innovation and managing the products. Therefore, it is important to invest in employees through online training, in order to challenge and enhance their skills. Here is an overview of the importance and benefits of eLearning in the technology sector, including a guide on how tech firms can leverage these benefits via effective eLearning solutions.
The Importance & Benefits of eLearning in the Technology Sector
The greatest importance of eLearning is keeping your employees’ skills and talents fresh and up to date. This is crucial for your firm’s competitiveness and can mean the difference between becoming irrelevant or a pace-setter. Online learning also has many other benefits for tech companies, including:
Easy & Customizable Learning
Different people have different learning styles and preferences. Some learn better alone, and others prefer a classroom setting. ELearning is highly flexible and versatile, with Instructor Led Training (ILT), blended learning, just-in-time training, asynchronous training, and microlearning. By choosing a type of learning that fits its end-users, training feels much less like an obligation, and more of a gift to benefit employees.
Long-Term Retention of Information
The Research Institute of America reports that eLearning increases information retention by up to 60%. This is because employees can learn at their own pace, and revisit the learning materials whenever necessary. This will maximize the benefits of your eLearning program and the employees’ growth. By leveraging the science of knowledge retention, your organization can channel efficient learning into your online training.
Saves Time & Money
Online learning programs run on Learning Management software. The software doesn’t charge per hour, like a human trainer. Additionally, employees can access the software from anywhere, at any time without the need for travel. This saves massive amounts of time and money, while simultaneously increasing employees’ value and the company’s ROI.
Constructive Feedback
Training software solutions are designed to monitor learners’ progress and gather feedback based on their performance. This constructive feedback will enable you to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities, consequently enabling you to nurture employees’ skills and talents in the best way possible.
Privacy
The theft of data and technology IP is rife in the tech industry. Working with outside trainers can increase the risk of data loss or theft.
Worldwide spending on information security products and services exceeded $114 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.4% from the year before, according to Gartner, Inc. By 2022, they forecast the market to grow to $170.4 billion.
However, an in-house eLearning system accessible only by employees and authorized people greatly improves privacy and reduces security risks.
How to Create the Ideal Online Training Program For Technology Companies
The quality of your employees’ online learning experience will depend on the quality of your training system. Your LMS should be personalized to your company’s needs and preferences. Including the following components will increase your eLearning system’s efficiency:
Demos & Simulators
Technology is partly theoretical and partly practical. Learning the theoretical part helps lay the groundwork. However, doing it in practice helps cement skills and inspire innovation. As such, it is highly advisable to use demos and simulators in the eLearning system. Demos and simulators will enable your employees to try all of their ideas without the fear of failing. This is especially helpful for employees developing apps, programs, and related devices.
Real-Life Examples
The goal of nurturing your employees’ talent and skills is to spark innovation and inspire confidence. As such, your courses should transfer knowledge and ideas into real-life, applicable solutions. You can gauge learner ability to do that by using real-life examples, which have the happy coincidence of making learning more engaging.
Varying Instructional Approaches
Different people have varying learning styles and preferences, as mentioned. For example, some employees prefer learning from an instructor, while others prefer digging out the information themselves. It is recommendable to include different instructional approaches, including videos, audio, tutorials, instructors, demos, and real-world scenarios.
Necessary eLearning Tools & Resources
Besides a Learning Management System, eLearning also requires a range of other tools and resources, such as devices to access the training. Employees also need time (and incentive) to study, on top of their work schedule. To ensure the best results, prioritize providing all of the necessary tools and resources to your learners before launching their training program. Find out which role you play before, during, and after launch in order to best support the process.
Developing an Ideal Support System
Your employees may have questions or concerns about the eLearning system and the different courses offered, alongside suggestions on how to improve the system. They will need a support system to relay these questions and concerns, in a channel that they know about. A robust support system should include FAQs, videos, articles, demos/tutorials, and social media groups where employees can collaborate. It should also offer human support from employers or technicians behind the system and courses.
Tips to Implement Your eLearning Program
Getting your employees on board with the eLearning system will require an efficient implementation plan. Here are four tips to get you started:
Some of the common goals of eLearning are improving employees’ productivity and boosting the company’s growth. Identify and highlight these goals so that employees will be more motivated to work towards achieving them.
2. Develop a Team Mentorship Program
Working and learning as a team motivates employees to excel. Additionally, developing team mentorship programs eases the management’s work in implementing the program.
The ideal LMS should meet all of your requirements, including any personalized needs and preferences. The employees’ learning experience will depend on the quality of the training platform.
4. Track & Measure Progress
Training doesn’t mean much, unless you can identify Key Progress Indicators (KPIs) and establish meaningful ways to analyze training data. Is the training program efficient? How close are the employees to achieving the set goals, and what can be done to improve their performance? Tracking and measuring employees’ progress will provide answers to these and other important questions.
Knowledge Anywhere – Your Online Training Solution
Your eLearning program’s success depends on the quality of your Learning Management System, as well as the courses within it. Knowledge Anywhere offers robust LMS platforms that are easily manageable to suit your needs and preferences. Schedule a free meeting today with an eLearning expert to learn more and try our free demo.
Recruit Better Talent with These Simple eLearning Tools
Learning Management Systems (LMS) are often helpful for staff training and career development. However, fewer are aware that eLearning tools can prove beneficial in your recruitment efforts, helping you choose the right person for new roles, and speeding up the onboarding process before it even begins.
Why Use an LMS During Recruitment?
Online learning platforms are valuable training tools for current employees in the organization. If you introduce LMS as part of the onboarding process, it will update the candidates with the company’s rules and policies. As an employer, you can include in the LMS the things you’re looking for in a new employee, including:
Required skills
Relevant experience
Job description and criteria
With a tried and tested system in place, your HR team will be able to evaluate and select the suitable ones quickly from a large number of candidates. With the answers provided by the applicants within the LMS, your team can quickly see which candidates have the appropriate skills and expertise for the position. This means you’ll have the means to consider a potential hire’s performance before such an individual comes for an interview. An excellent online training system should enable you to track and monitor the following:Course completions
Course hours completed
Time spent per course
Geo-location of users
Certificate or badges reports
Popularity of learning materials
Amount of users
Inactive vs. active users
New users
Due dates for courses
For a more comprehensive look about how to correctly track and evaluate your LMS data, try Knowledge Anywhere’s free eBook, Make The Most of Your LMS Data.
Using an LMS During Job Interviews
A training platform combined with relevant content and simulations is an amazing and underutilized method for pre-assessing candidates and selecting the best individuals, while preemptively familiarizing them with a learning platform they will be using for training, if hired. During the hiring process, some large corporations have hundreds or even thousands of applicants. This can cost HR reps time and resources to sort through. In the first few stages of interviews, companies can use online training to narrow focus and save time and money. Experts often reference that roleplaying or online simulations can accurately reflect real-world situations. That makes them ideal recruitment tools, since you can test the practical knowledge and experience of a candidate without wasting recruitment time with an in-person trainer or recruiter. You can also evaluate their comfort with a training platform, before they use it as an employee. The simulations can be specifically designed to discover a potential candidate’s knowledge about the job offer and requirements. With custom course development, you can use the training simulation to ensure the potential hire possesses the know-how required for the job, such as industry knowledge and specific, relevant skills. Here are a few ways your LMS can be used during a job interview process:
Evaluating technical skills, such as language requirements, programming, or industry-specific compliance standards.
Have the candidates answer questions and submit through the digital platform.
Create various scenarios for testing skills, including communications or decision making.
Can an LMS Improve Recruitment SEO?
Online recruitment strategies are highly reliant on search engine optimization. According to Recruitment Traffic, you’re likely to compete with other organizations in obtaining the best candidates. Since most of your potential hires are using Google to find jobs, it’s imperative that your company ranks high on the search engines. Your LMS can help you achieve an edge in the rankings.
Save Time and Effort Onboarding
After selecting the likely candidates, you can use your eLearning platform for onboarding. This will help them go through the induction and orientation process much more quickly. Besides an LMS, another eLearning tool you can use during recruitment and onboarding is QuickQuiz! This microlearning Slack application can evaluate serious candidates, with questions about how they would approach situations, company histories and policies, or use it to automate boring but necessary legal questions, such as citizenship, work permits, necessary certifications, or mandatory language requirements. This tool can also be used during onboarding, when new hires need to learn and retain new information quickly.
Online Training IQ
Your online training IQ is more important than ever. Studies show 75% of hiring managers are more likely to accept and hire applicants with an online education, compared to pre-2020. Covid-19 has made organizations rethink the way that we work, and traditional, face-to-face classes have been replaced with video calls and meetings. Even hiring is now being conducted remotely. It’s the new normal, meaning both employers and employees must adapt to the new digital practice. Meanwhile, hiring managers notice many valued traits in employees who invest in online learning to advance their careers. These include:
Working independently
Familiarity with technology and online platforms
Can stay on task
Able to learn at their own pace or timeline
More autonomous in their actions
Better technical and problem-solving skills
Quickly Establish Your Organization Values Learning
One advantage of eLearning is that you can continue to gain more knowledge and skills. Employees will also have the flexibility to work around their schedules. Those who continue to pursue online education are more likely to enjoy the following:
Better job offers or promotion
Pay rise
Leadership positions
More responsibilities
With these advantages, it pays for companies to encourage their employees to pursue online education. Better still, employers should have an LMS that can provide their people with the education and technical skills needed by the organization. This proves to employees that their skills and career progression is important to you, and workers can be grateful for these values upon learning the Top 7 Ways Employees Can Benefit From Corporate Training.
Conclusion
Learning Management Systems are now being used by many companies in their recruitment drive. This online platform can help streamline your recruitment, interview, assessment, and onboarding process. Once you obtain the best hires, you can encourage them to engage in online learning using smart technology. This will enable them to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to excel in their role, while advancing their career. If your organization doesn’t have an online education platform, it’s time to start investing in one. Reach out to an eLearning expert for free today!
As an immersive technology, Virtual Reality (VR) has not only made its mark in entertainment, but has proven to be a beneficial platform for the training and preparation for jobs across several sectors. From transportation to medicine, companies are using VR as a tool for personnel to explore their job roles in a risk-free environment. This is especially the case for industries where hazardous physical conditions are the norm, such as construction, manufacturing, and oil and gas. The following case studies represent successful outcomes from using VR as part of a comprehensive training program.
United Parcel Service (UPS) prepares drivers for road hazards
Newly hired UPS drivers must pass a comprehensive training program with an emphasis on road hazard identification. In response to this requirement, the company’s IT staff created a VR program using the HTC Vive platform to simulate real-life encounters with pedestrians, parked cars, and oncoming traffic. UPS’s VR program enabled the company to create a mobile training academy that brings the classroom to UPS students at other facilities. UPS is also using VR technology to train staff to recognize and remove packages that can’t be sorted automatically. The trainee is scored on their efforts as proper handling techniques are reinforced. John Bowers, Director of Learning Technologies at UPS, states that the program allows them to teach trainees valuable lessons before they are placed in the package sorting operations area.
Volkswagen Group’s auto assembly and logistics training
Training in a controlled environment is essential for automobile assembly workers. With the help of VR, participants can take virtual tours inside car engines for greater insight into how they function. Volkswagen Group’s VR platform uses HTC Vive headsets and Group VR applications that allow employees from all over the world to interact with one another and share knowledge to help upgrade their skills. Audi also adopted the VR training approach for their packing logistics division. Employees virtually prepare boxes, pack items, and apply labels using required hand movements. The approach consists of various levels of difficulty, allowing the employee to advance their skillset at each level of achievement. Trainers follow their progress on a tablet through a connected app, using analytics and data to evaluate success level of the program. Since the training can be done anywhere, the company is realizing a substantial cost and time savings.
Baker Hughes’ risk-free oil and gas industry training
Procedural training in the oil and gas industry can be logistically challenging, due to the handling of flammable and sometimes poisonous materials. Thanks to the development of VR training, these risks are eliminated when preparing trainees for interactions with hazardous substances. Baker Hughes uses VR training to access and explore installation layouts, assist trainees in learning equipment components, and practice critical maintenance procedures. The VR training program is customized by technical experts to target learning requirements and replicate true ergonomics and positions of the work environment. Chevron’s El Segundo refinery in California also uses VR to simulate equipment to train technicians to identify and resolve problems more efficiently. This reduces equipment downtime in the field, resulting in substantial cost savings.
Duke Energy’s “Virtual Crew”
Duke Energy, one of America’s largest energy holding companies, uses VR for customized simulated field service training for their technicians. The program, “Virtual Crew,” includes virtual training modules on natural gas leak detection, line purging, and electric substation inspections. The original program was introduced in Duke’s natural gas unit in 2020 and was expanded to include the company’s electric employees. The company states that their VR-trained technicians were able to perform their tasks three times faster than those who received only classroom training. Duke is also offering the program to other energy companies, as well as companies across the country.
Reinforcing medical PPE procedures
Preventing the spread of infection is a number one priority in all clinical settings. As a result, medical staff must follow strict protocol for donning and removing their personal protection equipment (PPE). However, a recent study revealed that 90% of the time, staff fail to follow proper procedures when removing their PPE, putting others around them at risk for contagious diseases. In response to this issue, Dr. Farrukh Jafri, Assistant Director of Simulation and Education at White Plains Hospital, developed a VR program for medical staff to repeatedly practice donning and removing masks, shields, gloves, and gowns to reinforce the PPE protocol. Within the VR simulation, physicians and nurses are placed inside a virtual exam room to view a tutorial, practice putting on and taking off the PPE, and then are tested on how well they followed the procedure. Participating in the virtual training allows the staff to repeatedly practice the simulation without using the facility’s physical PPE supplies, which are often difficult to resupply.
Surgeons train in simulated operating rooms
In another medical application of VR, surgeons are now learning and practicing procedures in a simulated operating room. The results of a randomized, double-blind study done at the Yale University School of Medicine Department of Surgery concluded that residents who used VR for surgical simulations had significant improvement in their performance in the operating room. Surgeons trained on VR performed 29% faster and made six times fewer errors than those who were trained in other methods.
We often get a lot of inquires from individuals, not organizations, wondering about how to kickstart their own personal professional training. While we commend workers for stepping up their skills via online courses, we specialize in corporate training. However, it’s Knowledge Anywhere’s goal to be an eLearning expert and helpful advisor, even if you’re not a customer! That’s why we’ve compiled a list of resources you can use to find individual online training.
Udemy is a great resource for individuals to learn about a variety of topics only. With 155,000 online video courses with new additions published every month and content taught by real-world experts, you can learn at your own pace, with lifetime access on mobile and desktop. Courses start at $14.99! Top categories include Design, Development, Marketing, IT and Software, Personal Development, Business, Photography, and Music.
Build a personalized learning plan on LinkedIn Learning’s on-demand video learning platform to help you develop and enhance skills. This service offers over 16,000+ courses taught by accomplished instructors and recognized industry experts. With new videos added weekly at beginner, intermediate, and advanced level videos, you’re sure to find something that works for you. LinkedIn also provides availability in 7 languages! Here are a few ways you can use these cool resources:
Brush up on skills you might be asked about in an interview
Learn new skills to make you more competitive for jobs that interest you
Watch videos to help you more fully understand topics taught in your courses
Prepare for professional certification exams and earn CEUs
Content categories include Project Management, Marketing, Finance, Data Science, Web Development, Product and Manufacturing, Video, Graphic Design, and User Experience. To learn more, take this free quiz, which will help personalize your learning experience.
Gain the skills you need while learning at your own pace, with flexible and personalized training courses designed to teach. The majority of courses are free and are approved by industry experts, top entrepreneurs, and some of the world’s leading employers, so you can learn up-to-date, real-world skills that help you reach your personal and professional goals. They also offer certifications that are easy to put on resumes! Top categories include Data and Tech, Digital Marketing, and Career Development.
Coursera offers over 4,000 courses and collaborates with over 200 leading universities and companies to provide content. You’ll need no prior experience necessary to get started, and there is a large range of certificates, courses, and even online degrees to explore! Top categories include Data Science, Business, Computer Science, Health, Social Sciences, Personal Development, Arts and Humanities, Physical Science, Language, IT, and Math.
Skillshare is an online learning community with thousands of classes for creative and curious people, on topics including illustration, design, photography, video, freelancing, and more. On Skillshare, millions of members come together to find inspiration and take the next step in their creative journey. With so much to explore, real projects to create, and the support of fellow-creatives, Skillshare’s online learning platform empowers you to learn new skills and accomplish real growth. The best part? You can get started for free today! Top categories include Art, Animation, Creative Writing, Film & Video. Graphic Design, Web Development, Business Analytics, Freelance & Entrepreneurship, Leadership & Management, and Marketing.
What DO We Do?
Now that we’ve gone over who aren’t, let’s take a look at what Knowledge Anywhere does best. Knowledge Anywhere is a corporate training company. This means that we provide training for organizations, who provide training to their end-users, which could include internal employees, external users, partners, or third parties. We are an eLearning company powering the future of online training. With over two decades in the industry, we offer comprehensive solutions that can power your business forward, helping to increase ROI, improve employee satisfaction, reduce turnover, quicken onboarding times, and make your learning process engaging. We’re an award-winning, affordable LMS - the training software trusted by millions around the world. Even in an ever-changing world, Knowledge Anywhere remains committed to delivering the best customer service and tech solutions, making knowledge available anytime, anywhere. We pride ourselves on focusing on relationships. We want to be your learning partner - if we don’t have the answer, we’ll help you find it. We offer many products, which can help you reach your goals.
Our Learning Management System (LMS) is a centralized learning platform where Administrators can assign, track, and analyze training material assigned to learners. This includes Webinars, Instructor-led training, Assessments, Certifications, badges, and more!
Course Development are courses designed with you in mind, whether that be off the shelf or custom made. We partner with many training content specialists, to give you just what you need! We also provide Virtual Reality (VR), for any company looking for a safe, all-encompassing experience.
Scormify is our own SCORM conversion tool, which instantly transforms learning objects, such as documents, videos, or PDFs, into SCORM-compliant training materials.
QuickQuiz is a Slack application that easily and quickly allows Administrators to manage, assign, and track quizzes through Slack, for microlearning.
Conveyor is a smarter Learning Content Distribution System (LCDS). This tool allows organizations to manage training content from a single, central location and easily share access to courses with third parties.
To talk with a professional about all things eLearning or to get a free demo of our solutions, schedule a free meeting here!
Free Virtual Training Resource: Flashcard Template
At Knowledge Anywhere, our goal is to help you achieve your training goals while making the process easy and informative. Whether you’re a learner trying to retain training content or a trainer looking for innovative ways to teach others, this free downloadable, virtual flashcard template can help you. Flashcards are great tools for:
Microlearning
Knowledge retention
Blended learning
Multiple styles of learning - some people learn differently
You can access Knowledge Anywhere Flashcard templates here to get started. This resource is completely editable, so you can add training relevant to your role, as well as your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images. Below, you can see examples of this template, including the front and back of each card. When you go to download your training flashcards, simply download as a PDF, and print front and back for the question and answers to line up. If you know someone in the training industry or in a Learning and Development field, send this free resource to them – it may help! Knowledge Anywhere could create these resources for your team, alongside our custom course development.
Working from home, an arrangement that was once a luxury for just a select few individuals has become a necessity for millions as the Covid-19 pandemic rages through 2020 and continues to force us all to rearrange our lives. For many, this meant turning kitchen tables, dining rooms, and other common spaces into offices. For others, it has meant converting a space reserved for something else into some sort of an office; adapting anyway we can. This has been an adjustment. But many are finding that this crisis has pointed out just how many of us really can do our jobs from home, and as a result, around one quarter of companies plan to keep their pandemic-induced work-from-home policies in place even after this public health emergency comes to an end. In general, this is great news. But working from home – whether in a home office or at the kitchen table – comes with threats that many of us have never considered, and it’s important to address these to keep you and your company safe. Below we’ve identified the major threats out there, as well as strategies you can use to protect yourself.
Some Cybersecurity Stats to Consider When Working From Home
For you to understand why the security measures we’re going to suggest you implement are necessary, it’s important to first understand what threats you actually face while working from home. In general, these dangers are avoidable, but assessing the risk is important to any mitigation strategy, so here are the things you need to watch out for and defend against:
Data Theft
Almost all of our valuable information – personal, financial, legal, etc. – is stored in a variety of digital formats, and because it’s valuable, it’s only natural that there are people out there who are looking to steal it. To get it, cybercriminals need to “hack” into whatever system that has the information they want, which is tech-speak for gaining access to something they don’t have permission to access. As a result, preventing data theft and hacking means making sure that all the systems you use that store valuable information are properly guarded. And when you’re working from home, this is especially important because one misstep could provide hackers with access to information that would compromise not only your company but also your customers, which can have devastating effects. One thing to point out is that hackers no longer only target large companies. Yes, big corporations do have more data, but they also have more resources to protect it, so they are tougher to hack. As a result, hackers are increasingly targeting smaller companies because while they have less data, it’s easier to access. For you working from home, all this means is that you need to be vigilant no matter what type of company employs you. The risk is always there and you need to make sure you’re properly protected against them.
Identity Theft
Identity theft has been a risk we all face. However, with more of our lives online than ever before, it’s become easier for someone to assume our identities and act on our behalf, potentially wrecking our personal and financial lives in the process. When you begin working from home more often, the potential consequences of identity theft become even more severe since allowing someone to gain access to your personal information could lead them right into company systems, which could lead to more data/identity theft and put your company’s survival in jeopardy. As a result, while this is always a concern when working from home, it’s especially important you take all possible precautions to keep your identity safe.
Viruses, Malware, Ransomware
Another major cybersecurity threat to consider are those from the many different types of malicious software out there. These programs “infect” your computer and either hold it hostage until you turn over money or information (ransomware), record or track your movements (spyware), or just straight-up steal your data (virus and other malware.) Unfortunately, the ubiquity of malware and other types of destructive programs means they have become a fact of life, and while installing malware on your personal computer won’t always result in a catastrophe, doing so on a computer you use for work is much more likely to do so. It’s therefore essential that you learn as much as possible about detecting malware so that you can spot it and prevent it from ever reaching your hard drive.
Cyberbullying
One threat we don’t consider too often but that is becoming more and more real every day is that posed by cyberbullying, which is essentially the same as the bullying we all know and recognize but that takes place in a digital setting. Many think this threat is something reserved just for children, but a considerable amount of adults have either experienced or witnessed cyberbullying when online. Working from home requires to you interact in far more digital spaces, and inappropriate or offensive comments can lead to much more dramatic consequences since many workplaces have little to zero tolerance for things such as cyberbullying. Protecting yourself from both engaging in and falling victim to cyberbullying requires you to understand what it is and also implement some common sense tactics to ensure that the online environments in which you operate are entirely safe and secure.
Physical Theft
When we think about protecting our home offices, the first thing we tend to think of is protecting it from the many online threats that are out there. However, we must not forget to pay attention to the physical security in our offices. Letting your computer and phone in your home office can have devastating effects for both you and your company. In most cases, preventing such things requires little more than making sure the office and your devices are properly locked up, but in some situations, you may need to do more. As you can see, there are many different threats out there that could turn your home office into a liability. However, we don’t want this to scare you, for there are things you can do. All we want is for you to see just how serious the threat is so that you can take action. Assuming you’ve done this, here are some ways you can keep your home office safe and secure.
Tips for Maintaining a Secure Home Office
As you can see, there are many different threats out there that could turn your home office into a liability. However, we don’t want this to scare you, for there are things you can do. All we want is for you to see just how serious the threat is so that you can take action. Assuming you’ve done this, here are some ways you can keep your home office safe and secure.
Start By Learning Your Company’s Work From Home Policy
It’s important to remember that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If your company is having you work from home, it’s very likely that they have thought through some of the potential dangers of such an arrangement and provided you with strategies you can implement that will help address the specific security needs at your company. Things to look for in remote work policy (that you should ask about if they’re left out of the document) include:
Guidelines about passwords and other login information
Protocols for data sharing
Rules and regulations regarding access to certain systems
Authentication procedures
Resources to help you be more secure
Contact information for people who can help you should there be an issue
Tips on what is acceptable communication and what is not (so as to prevent potential cyberbullying issues)
In the event your company doesn’t have such a policy, or you find that it inadequately addresses the issues at hand, then you should reach out to a supervisor or other colleague and initiate the conversation, for it’s very likely you are not the only person with concerns related to cybersecurity and working from home. Plus, doing this could save your company a tremendous headache down the road. After all, the majority of cybersecurity issues companies face stem from employee mistakes.
Practice Good Password Habits
A good, strong password is your primary and often most effective defense against the cybersecurity threats we’ve mentioned are lurking in the shadows of your digital work environment. However, many people don’t recognize this and don’t take the time to make sure their passwords are able to keep them as safe as they possibly can. The first thing you should do is make sure all your devices are password protected and that changes cannot be made to the system without administrative approval, meaning you need to enter your password to do so. This puts up a solid line of defense should anyone or anything (think malware) get into your computer and attempt to access data or make changes that could lead to a hack or something worse. In addition, make sure that all of your accounts are secured with good passwords. These days, this is required in most cases, but it’s smart, especially when you’re working from home, to go the extra mile and make sure that your passwords are extra strong. A strong password includes:
Difficult to guess letter/number combinations. This means not using birthdays, addresses, names, etc., and it also means not using things such as “123456” or something similar.
Numbers and symbols. Throw in an @ sign instead of an “O”, or an exclamation point instead of an “I.” These simple tricks make your password infinitely more difficult to guess, helping to keep your accounts and devices secure.
At least 8 characters so that, once again, it’s difficult for someone else to guess.
Other things to keep in mind include making sure you change your passwords once every six months or so to prevent anyone who might get a hold of them from accessing the accounts they’re meant to protect. Make sure you NEVER share your password with anyone. One thing you can do is to use auto-generated passwords. These are usually long and impossible to guess, making them the most secure. You won’t be able to remember these on your own, so make sure to use a password manager such as Last Pass that will save and encrypt your passwords.
Build the Habit of Locking Computers
If you have ever worked in an office, you are likely used to the habit of locking your computer using “CTL + ALT + Delete” when you’re away from your desk. We recommend you continue this habit even when you’re working from home. This way, when you step away from your computer, the various files and databases you have open remain protected. For some, this might seem like an unnecessary step, but it’s important to get into the mindset of constant vigilance, which is what will ultimately keep you and your office safe.
Establish Good Physical Security
We mentioned earlier how it’s important that you don’t allow your focus on protecting against cybersecurity threats to blind you to the other threats that exist, such as that of a break-in. However, protecting against this is pretty simple. Just make sure that you secure your devices in a room that locks, or a drawer that you can lock, when you’re not using them. For those who have extra sensitive information on their computers/phones, it might not be the worst idea to set up some sort of alarm system that allows you to further protect the space you use as your home office. In addition, you could expand this security system to include your entire house, which will help give you peace of mind as it relates not only to the security of your home office but also your entire house.
Implement Two Factor Authentication
One really simple way of protecting against the many threats that are facing your home office is to enable two-factor authentication wherever possible. This service is becoming more and more available, and it’s so simple that it would be a crime to not use it, especially when you are working from home and need to protect the sensitive information that relates to your job. For those who don’t know, two-factor authentication is a security protocol that simply asks for two forms of identity validation before providing you access to a system. For example, it might first ask you for a password but also an answer to a security question. Or, another form that is becoming increasingly popular relies on you linking your account to a phone number and then entering a code that is sent to that number after typing your password, which helps ensure that it’s really you rying to access the account in question. This is a really simple and easy to set up security protocol that will go a long way towards ensuring your accounts, and by extension, your home office, are as secure as they can possibly be.
Practice Spotting Phishing
Phishing, for those who don’t know, is the tactic hackers use to try and get you to willingly hand over information related to your accounts so that they can gain access to a database they deem valuable. It’s one of the most common forms of cybercrime and is surprisingly effective. Typically, phishing attempts look shockingly similar to official correspondence from a service you use, but there will almost always be something wrong. To check if something is real or not, do the following:
Once you get the hang of this, it actually becomes quite easy to figure out when someone is trying to steal your information. But for those who are struggling to figure out what’s real and what’s not, then consider practicing with this free tool provided by Google. Familiarizing yourself with the patterns that appear in phishing will help keep you and your company safe from most attacks.
Install Anti-Virus Software
Although far from perfect, anti-virus software is a very useful line of defense against the many threats that are out there and is a “must have” for anyone working from home. Not only do these programs help you remove malicious software should it make it onto your computer, but they also do real-time checks to alert you of potentially dangerous sites and links before you click them, and they also put a step between downloading and installing programs downloaded from the internet, which give you the chance to review that what you’re doing is safe. In most cases, your company should provide you with some anti-virus software, but in the event they don’t, then you should reach out to someone and find out how to get access, or, in a worst-case scenario, purchase a subscription for yourself.
Protect Your WiFi Network
Relying on your home WiFi network for work means you need to make sure it’s properly secured and protected, which you can do by following these steps:
Download a VPN
A virtual private network (VPN) is a tool that allows you to encrypt your WiFi network so that it appears you are browsing from somewhere other than where you actually are. This helps keep your online activity and identity private, adding another layer of security in the meantime. Many companies will require you to use a VPN if you are going to work from home, especially the larger ones, but if you work for a smaller company, you may need to get this service on your own, which you should. However, one thing to note is that a VPN will slow down your network connection, so make sure you have the performance you need before installing a VPN, as this will help prevent some headaches down the road.
Encrypt Your Data
One thing you can do to ensure your home office is extra secure is to encrypt the data on your devices. All this means is that this information will be inaccessible to everyone except those who have the key, which would presumably be limited to yourself and few others. For many, such a step might be overkill, but if you have lots of sensitive data on your devices, it’s necessary. However, if you want to go this route, speak to a cybersecurity expert at your company as setting this up can be complicated and you want to make sure you’re not making things harder for yourself down the road.
Regularly Perform Backups
This should be a part of your cybersecurity practices anyway, but ensuring you’ve backed up the information you’ve stored on your devices is essential. This way, if your computer does get compromised by a virus or some other form of malware, you can wipe it clean and not worry about losing everything. You can backup your data manually by setting a reminder to do so once a week or month, or you can use a cloud-based system that will do this automatically. Which one you choose depends on your needs, but the bottom line is that backing up your data is essential to keeping your home office safe and secure.
Conclusion
Whether you’re new to working from home as a result of the pandemic or been doing it for a while, you’re likely familiar by now with how great of an arrangement this can be. However, as with everything in life, the good comes with the bad. But don’t let this discourage you. Instead, be aware of the risks and take the necessary steps to secure your home office. And don’t ever let up; in the end, constant vigilance is the only thing that will keep you safe forever. The following information was obtained and republished, with permission, from CableCompare.com
Announcing Knowledge Anywhere’s New and Improved 2022 LMS User Updates
Knowledge Anywhere has been hard at work developing an improved learner experience for our Learning Management System. This update will provide learners with a newer, sleeker interface, improving upon what we already have. Check out below to see sneak peeks of the new platform!
Why Redesign?
Our customers love our current system. However, with this new and improved user platform, your organization can enjoy updated features. On top of an updated design throughout the system, let’s take a page-by-page look at the top exciting changes on our learner-side platform:
Home Page
Action buttons for a fun and fast way to check progress
An updated design, with a place for Administrators to put customized photos, text, and notifications
A message center, so Administrators can communicate with end-users
A Learning Path report showing visual progress, as well as whether the course is required or elective
Learning Path Page
Filtered learning paths, to easily find courses
Colored visual progress reports, showing percentages of course completions, courses in progress, and unstarted courses
Sleek course cards, with course title, status, ratings, duration, and credits
Transcript Page
A quick and easy “Download Transcript” button
A place to upload External Completions
Knowledge Mark, an xAPI bookmarklet that allows learners to have a button in their internet browser that records selected pages in their LMS transcript
Colored visual progress reports, showing percentages of course completions, courses in progress, and unstarted courses
Important time-sensitive reports, including Past Due and Due Soon
A Course Card details section, showing course name, status, score, certificates, and LinkedIn Sharing status
What WON’T Change?
If you’re an existing Knowledge Anywhere LMS customer, you’re probably worried about the new platform and what this means for your training. So what DON’T you need to worry about? Here are a few things the new update will not affect:
All historical data, including courses, certificates, and surveys
How users log into the platform
The Administrator side of the system – there’s no need to worry about us reorganizing Administrator roles
Knowledge Anywhere’s team will work to move everything into your upgraded house, so learners can quickly transition to our 2022 LMS Update seamlessly, without too much work on your part.
What You Need To Do Now To Upgrade Your Hospitality Training For Next Year
Before the pandemic, hospitality and tourism provided 10.6% of all jobs and 10.4% of global GDP. However, these sectors took a major hit during the pandemic. Several businesses had to close their doors and dismiss their staff. During 2020, almost one-fifth of those jobs were lost and hospitality’s share of the global GDP halved. The good news is, with restrictions gradually easing, the industry is primed to make a comeback! This is cause for celebration for restaurant owners, hotel chains, and event organizers all over the world, as well as for the staff they’ll need to hire. However, the daunting task of providing training to the returning workforce is not one to take lightly. Even veterans of the hospitality industry are bound to be a bit rusty and have a few skills gaps that need filling after over a year of limited or no work. The mass return of labor to the no-longer-dormant industry needs to be approached from every possible angle to ensure a smooth transition back. Considering the wealth of technological resources at our disposal; it’s past time we stop relying on overworked managers to train new or returning staff. eLearning provides a convenient and accessible means for hospitality and tourism workers to brush up on their skills and build up their confidence, ensuring the triumphant and successful return of the industry at large. This article will outline some important elements and benefits of eLearning for hospitality and tourism.
Training through simulation has a long history of success in almost every industry. Simulation may take place by using actors or cutting-edge software. There are several robust hospitality training simulators on the market, many of which are customizable. Your trainee will enter a fabricated, digital representation of a hotel, restaurant, bar, or almost any other hospitality environment. They will interact with simulated guests, patrons, and co-workers in a variety of common workplace situations. Depending on the role they are training for, there are several kinds of simulated tasks and settings to choose from. Simulations provide a low-pressure environment for managers and workers to test their mettle against the everyday stresses that come with their jobs. They can make mistakes and learn without triggering a cascade of one-star reviews, and they will return to work prepared.
Visual Learning
Many training programs make the mistake of depending entirely on verbal or written content. A combination of types of content is the most effective approach to getting your message across. The more areas of the brain engaged, the easier it is for the learner to consolidate and recall it. Hospitality workers encounter several situations where practical knowledge is essential. Serving food, mixing cocktails, making beds, and interacting with customers are all central elements of the hospitality industry, and that list is far from exhaustive. There are nuances to these tasks that are best demonstrated visually. How should I greet guests? How do I garnish the perfect Bloody Mary? How do I wrap cutlery the same way every time? The day of a hospitality worker consists of endless little tasks that must be performed perfectly every time. Seeing them performed in a replicable way is far more beneficial than reading the steps from an instruction manual.
Storytelling
The science of knowledge retention shows us that effective training is all about keeping the learner engaged, anchoring the information into their minds from various angles. Teaching operations, procedures, and protocol to employees goes far more smoothly when they are able to relate the information to an engaging story. Using emotional and thematic devices in your training will help your trainees form a strong mental framework for the information they need to remember. This technique works well in tandem with visual learning when animation is involved.
How eLearning Alleviates Pressure in the Hospitality and Tourism Sectors
The pressures of the hospitality industry are well known. eLearning provides the ideal platform to reduce pressure, free up resources, and still train staff properly. It allows for the following:
Outsourced Training
Every hour of training facilitated by an existing, experienced staff member is an hour they can’t perform their duties. This comes out of company time, and those hours add up faster than you’d expect. Beyond this, most managers do not have the time or energy to properly train new employees, which leads to them juggling their responsibilities with training. As a result, their training is often subpar and their duties fall by the wayside, not to mention the toll of stress it takes on them. Providing new employees with a centralized, digital training platform takes the pressure off your loyal staff and keeps operations running smoothly, while employing experts in the training field, with the experience and knowledge to make your training the best that it can be.
Tracking Progress
Managers can log in to their training platforms at any time to review how far their trainees have progressed. This insight into the training process gives managers a better idea of potential problem areas, which are then easier to address before they leak into daily operations. Utilizing training data can be more valuable than you think!
Easy Updates
Putting together new training material is always tedious, time-consuming, and prone to errors. It’s extremely difficult to remember and integrate every minor change, and more often than not, an entirely new program or manual needs developing. With eLearning, managers can easily chop and change whatever information or material needs changing, without worrying about outdated rules, policies, or procedures confusing their employees.
Cost and Time Saving
eLearning enables trainees to engage with the material from anywhere on their own time. It is notoriously costly and difficult to arrange in-person training sessions due to space limitations, scheduling conflicts, and disruptions to the flow of business. By allowing your trainees to learn from home, money is saved across the board. Transport, time, and real-time supervision are no longer confounding factors in the training process, giving your business the breathing room it needs to get back on track. Read our free eBook to understand how investing in online training costs cost and increases ROI. With eLearning, your employees can effectively teach themselves and arrive prepared for their first day on the job.
“Extended Stay America is proud to have partnered with Knowledge Anywhere to have created Extended Stay University, our training platform .... since creating the University, we’ve seen over 10,000 associates successfully trained in the system, coming out of the experience being able to excel in their positions and experience higher job satisfaction.” Mike Kuenne | VP - Operational Excellence | CareCredit
Incorporate eLearning Into Your Hospitality Business
The hospitality sector is ever-evolving, especially in light of the pandemic. As a service-driven sector, staff need continuous training to deliver what’s required of them. A well-trained workforce is key to success. eLearning makes this simple. Knowledge Anywhere has the technology and experience to help your organization reach your goals! Our cloud-based LMS platform can help you to manage all your online training programs with ease. Harnessing the power of eLearning for the hospitality sector has never been so straightforward. Knowledge Anywhere has worked with Extended Stay America (ESA) for many years to help them improve their online training system. You can see how we’ve helped them in their own words on our customer testimonial page.Contact us today to see how we can help you!
Downloadable Training Resource: Training Organizer Spreadsheet
At Knowledge Anywhere, our goal is to help you achieve your training goals while making the process easy and informative.
Whether you’re perusing a training platform or just created great course content, this downloadable, virtual Training and Development Organizer Spreadsheet has helped many of our customers keep their training content organized and up to date.
If you know someone in a training industry or in a Learning and Development field, send this free resource to them – it may help.
You can download Knowledge Anywhere’s Training and Development Organizer Spreadsheet here to get started. This resource is completely editable, so you can add your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images.
Happy training!
Incorporating an All-Encompassing Learning Platform That Trains White and Blue Collar Workers
Training is an integral part of ensuring that all workers get the support they need. Not only does training prepare them to do their current jobs more effectively, but it can also help set them up for success in future professions; a job requirement becoming increasingly critical for millennials. Incorporating an all-encompassing training system is a key way to help white and blue collar workers alike, allowing you to deliver higher-quality training that will bring your employees to an increased standard while lowering the skills gap, and preparing them for future success.
Bridging the Gap Between Salaried and Hourly Manufacturing Employees Through Training
Salaried and hourly manufacturing employees can face a variety of challenges. Some of those challenges are similar between the two sets of employees. Others, however, differ based on employee knowledge and experience.
Provide Information About the “Why”
In order to effectively train manufacturing employees, you don’t just need to give them the “how.” They also need to know the “why.” Many training platforms, however, fail to offer that critical information. Suppose, for example, that you’re manufacturing car parts. One of your departments may be responsible for checking the fit of specific items; but why is that important? That simple piece of information can go a long way toward enhancing overall employee knowledge and making them more effective decision-makers.
Allow Hourly Employees to Go Above and Beyond
Some of your hourly employees have no desire to move through the ranks of your manufacturing plant. They may like the fact that they can easily get overtime, or prefer to work in an area with less overall responsibility. Others blue collar workers want to move into white collar positions within your facility, which often require less manual labor and the chance to improve corporate skills. With an effective training system, you can provide employees with the opportunity to go above and beyond. Not only do they have access to training specific to positions they already hold, they can consider training for positions they might want to hold in the future. Going through classes, certifications, and training sessions can help prepare them for those roles, while proving to workers that the company is investing in their professional growth.
Watch Employee Motivation
Providing those training opportunities doesn’t just benefit your employees. It can also benefit you, as the employer. You can easily watch employees, from warehouse workers to direct manufacturing workers, is willing to go above and beyond. Who puts in minimum time on your training system, and who takes advantage of everything you have to offer? Looking at that key training data can help you make decisions about raises and promotions, as well as ensuring that you can provide the information employees really need to be successful.
What Do You Need For This All-Encompassing Training System?
Are you ready to incorporate an all-encompassing training system that can help both white and blue collar workers in your facility? Consider some of these important elements.
What training do all employees need?
Take a look at the specific information, from safety training to product training that your employees need to know. What do they need in order to be effective employees and complete their roles within your organization effectively?
What are your large-scale objectives for your employees?
What are the specific metrics and business goals you want your training to impact? How will you measure the overall success of your training program? By starting with those questions and working backward, you can more effectively determine how to create training modules needed to enhance overall employee success.
What problems are you planning to solve with these training modules?
Generally, employee training is designed to rectify a problem. In the manufacturing industry, the problem could be a shortage of available workers with the industry knowledge needed in order to excel. You could need to onboard employees more effectively, especially if it’s difficult to retain more experienced workers who can provide new employees with firsthand knowledge of the equipment and processes you use on a regular basis. Find a training program that can offer personal mentorship programs for new and existing employees, allowing for stronger worker buy-in, company loyalty, job satisfaction, and leadership opportunities.
According to SHRM, over the next decade, there could be a shortage of 2 million manufacturing employees.
Identify problems you’re having and how training can solve them. Focus on specific strategies to implement in order to address concerns.
How will your employees learn effectively?
Consider your current employee demographics and how they may impact training options. For example, if a high percentage of your employees do not speak English as their first language, they may learn best with material presented in their first language or visual tools. Additionally, you find employees best retain information through short sessions, and that they learn best when their training sessions are varied, visual, and incorporate microlearning. Pay attention to challenges employees may face, including any handicaps or accessibility issues that could interfere with their ability to take part in that training. If you genuinely want to bridge the content gap, it’s critical employees’ training meets their needs, rather than forcing them to conform to your training methods.
Choosing the Right Manufacturing Training Provider
The right training system can make a huge impact on your employees and your manufacturing business. With an effective training system, you can develop the skills you need in your workers, build loyalty, and prepare them for overall success in their careers, all from one relatively convenient platform. Knowledge Anywhere has the experience and know-how in manufacturing training. To learn more about our learning platform and content, and how it can benefit white and blue collar workers in your facility, schedule a free meeting with us today!
Let’s start at the basics with Microlearning 101 - here are a few top microlearning FAQ’s, as well as their answers.
What is microlearning?
Microlearning is learning that occurs in small chunks rather than in long, drawn-out sessions. For example, a microlearning session may take anywhere from 15 seconds to 10 minutes, compared to a full multi-hour or multi-day course.
You can engage a global workforce: it can accommodate different time zones and languages
Shorter courses allow learners to easily complete them around working hours
Easy to update content
Ideal for just-in-time training, so it’s easy for people to access what they need, when they need it
Content is delivered quickly and to many types of devices
Expands learners’ ability to fill the skill gap
Let’s take a look at a few amazing statistics about microlearning (according to EdApp)!
What formats does microlearning take?
Microlearning can come in many forms, including:
Videos
Quizzes
Infographics
Podcasts
Flashcards
Bookmarks or extensions
Gamification elements
Just in Time training
At its base, microlearning is any type of learning that is done quickly and in small amounts.
What are some examples of microlearning tools?
Here are a few useful tools to get you started on your journey.
QuickQuiz is an eLearning tool that is accessible on Slack. It allows anyone to create, manage, and deploy quizzes quickly and easily. For more information, visit the site for a free trial of the tool or check out this free blog on applicable use cases from QuickQuiz.
EduMe is a mobile-based platform focusing on training and communication. It has an easy-to-use content creation tool that allows you to build microlearning courses, quizzes, and surveys, which can easily be sent to end users’ devices and track progress.
A mobile training platform, TalentCards allows you to build microlearning courses online, and deliver them straight to your team’s smartphones.
How can you implement microlearning?
With the various advantages of microlearning, it is essential to learn how to effectively implement these strategies into your employee training. Here are 5 steps will improve your employee training program - to see more, you can read this full blog, on how to Effectively Implement Microlearning Into Employee Training.
Develop Microlearning Training Goals
Create a Comprehensive Lesson Plan
Encourage Employees to Continually Use Microlearning
Make Your Microlearning Easily Accessible Anytime, From Anywhere
Evaluate Results To Improve Your Employee Training
How can you track microlearning?
Tracking microlearning depends entirely on the type of tool you choose, and that tool’s ability to analyze user information. However, there are a few Key Progress Indicators (KPIs) that can be used to help track progress of your training. In the text below, you can see just a few KPIs that can be used to track microlearning progress. For more info on learning KPIs, read Knowledge Anywhere’s free eBook on Make the Most of Your LMS Data.
Course/video/quiz completions
Inactive vs. active users
Time it takes to train or onboard employees
Quiz/assessment scores
Virtual Training: What Did We Learn During the Pandemic?
Recently, Knowledge Anywhere was a special host in InSync Training’s 2021 Virtually There webinar, In case you didn’t get a chance to be there, don’t worry! We recorded the session and have created a post-webinar blog, so you can learn about what we learned about training during the pandemic. Keep reading for session highlights and resources to begin effectively training for the future, including the following topics:
Learning interactive elements
Post-pandemic trends and research
Anticipating the next shift
Tips and tricks for shifting
A CareCredit case study
To see the full recording of the webinar for free, you can see it here!
2021 Workplace Trends
Technology and HR trends change at the blink of an eye - let’s look at some recent statistics, so we can understand some basics of U.S. professional patterns.
42% of the American workforce continues to work remotely (Upwork)
36.2 million Americans will be working remotely by 2025 (Upwork)
98% of corporate learning will take place online, as of 2020 (ThinkImpact)
52% of the American workforce are considering a job change this year (Harris Poll, Fast Company)
2 of 3 people who lost their jobs during the pandemic have switched careers
16 million Americans moved during Covid (USPS)
A CareCredit Case Study
To add a real-life element to the webinar, Knowledge Anywhere invited guest speaker Glen Holden to present a training case study about his time in CareCredit during the pandemic. As a company that needed to shift from 80% in-person instructor led training to 100% virtual training practically overnight, Glen provided an insightful look at a company facing a large upset in their training.
Within his time speaking, Glen reflected on initial company concerns, mistakes and lessons learned, and practices that CareCredit will continue to stick with, long after Covid-19 is behind us.
Perfecting Compliance Training For Your Development Team
Ensuring compliance in a web-development environment is critical from a business perspective because, in case of failure, personal user data and company reputation are put at risk. Compliance may refer to different aspects; some of them are legally bound with data protection laws like GDPR, or CCPA, and others are field-specific compliances like HIPAA or PCI. We can also speak about compliance in following internal security rules like regular code reviews, managing an API, or adhering to certain code policies. All of them need to be taken into account when developing the business logic of the software, planning updates, and for sure during onboarding.
Let’s see how company leaders can improve compliance training for your development team.
Assemble the Initiative Team
Process success is largely determined by people contributing to the initiative. The team should include a project manager responsible for training program delivery on time and on budget, a methodologist to categorize the material so that it’s put in a comprehensive way, and a subject matter expert who will validate the course content. Usually, it’s a tech lead or an architect when it comes to internal compliance.
When it comes to external compliance like GDPR, it’s recommended also to involve an independent consultant to assess your readiness and suggest the list of requirements to follow and provide advice on compliance.
Outline the Main Learning Needs
Usually, the content preparation starts with the analysis of the latest compliance standards, theory, and explanation of the terms. Then, goes the process of preparing practical tasks and tests to check and confirm the progress.
At this stage, you need to take into account the background of your employees, their current knowledge, and company-specific information on compliance rules. You can prepare and send out questionnaires to gather the learning preferences of your team or outline the learning needs by auditing incidents related to compliance to reveal existing gaps.
Choose The Best Learning Management System For You
The quality of material is the most important, but presentation does matter. Even if the most useful content is poorly presented, the final results will not be satisfactory. Here’s where a Learning Management System (LMS) comes in handy. With its help, you will be able to make your content easy to digest, while supplementing it with visuals like graphs, images, and videos. It can also include interactive elements like hints, analytics, and inbuilt progress checkers which make the training consistent and interesting to participate in.
Encourage Learning
Make the learning easy and fun by adding gamification like leaderboard, badges, and certificates. You need to make the compliance training obligatory though without putting pressure on employees. Include this activity into sprint planning so that teammates know their capacities when planning other tasks. It’s a common practice to allocate several working hours per week so that your development can dedicate them for learning and development.
Make sure to include an assessment at the end of the training program in the form of a test or a practical task. This way, people engaged in the learning process development to measure the effectiveness of the course. Asking employees for feedback during the learning process and upon completion will contribute to the training program improvement. A thorough feedback analysis will help you to outline the major difficulties your team faces during learning, and adjust the content adding or removing some materials from the course.
Keep Materials Up-To-Date
The laws may undergo changes, as well as security requirements, because these are dynamic fields. It’s not enough to come up with proper learning materials and compile the training program just once and for good. If you want the training program to be effective, you need to monitor changes and plan regular updates, so course content remains relevant and useful for your team.
Following these simple steps will help you to maintain the highest standards and employee engagement during the learning process. With properly organized training, you can rest assured that your company is safe and sound when it comes to meeting all the compliance needs.
Workplace training and development is a critical component of how the modern organization aims to create and retain top talent. Training your HR staff and working with them to align your company’s workforce planning efforts is necessary. Another highly beneficial practice to reinforce is to establish talent management systems. These systems, under the leadership of HR, can provided advance training, coaching, and corrective measures for the organization. Implementation and continual evaluation of this system to ensure it benefits all the employees requires the attention of the HR staff and management. In this article, we’ll outline 6 proactive measurements you can take to ensure your HR staff is properly equipped, in both knowledge and resources, to meet current and future challenges.
1. Get New HR Team Members Up to Speed Quickly
HR staff need to understand how your business works, what your culture is like, and how to handle common issues. Having a good training program for new starters is essential. In surveys performed by Go2HR, around 40% of inadequately trained new employees will leave the company within a year. You can follow these initial guidelines to plan an efficient HR training program:
1. Determine the company’s goals. What do you want to achieve? How can HR help achieve these goals?
2. Identify the training needs. What do your employees need to know? Do you need a certain skill set? Do you have a lot of gaps?
3. Consolidate programs into a core program. You can work on your core program’s components, including the following:
Scope of training
Dates
Appropriate disciplines
Expected knowledge transfer
Reflection opportunities
Repayment periods
Formal training and testing
A core program can be taught to multiple organizations with different training needs. The core program meets the company’s requests and is strong enough to reduce employee turnover.
4. Create detailed training plans. Use the HR Scorecard to manage your training programs. HR departments can lose sight of the purpose of training often because HR managers focus on paperwork and compliance. Using HR Scorecards, HR managers can evaluate training programs and ensure they are achieving the goals they are set to achieve. Aim for high quality. The core purpose of an HR training program is education, so you want to make sure the training is as good as possible. Make sure it has the right outcomes. Effective training should be of a high quality and in line with your strategic goals.
2. Create a Strategic HR Plan … and Make Sure Your HR Team is On Board
You should have a strategic HR plan that aligns your HR department with your corporate mission and goals. Get input from your existing HR team if you have one, or an outside consultant if you’re only just setting up an HR team. Start by defining key priorities for HR. Then determine what insights you will gather from external speakers or participants at events, to incentivize your HR team to focus on those priorities that support the company’s profitability, or that help the company develop a positive workplace for employees. Register, and then use these principles to implement a strategic HR plan that brings results.
3. Have Clear Policies About Confidentiality
Make sure your HR staff know how to handle information and know what should be (legally and ethically) kept confidential. If you decide to share information with an external employee or administrator, post your policies firmly. Don’t leave them ambiguous. Also ensure you’re only sharing information that doesn’t violate personal privacy. This should eliminate any conversations involving medical information, political data, or ethically cloudy gossip. You need to be sure personnel records, when relevant, are compliant with nondisclosure agreements. Make sure you have an updated website section detailing what’s and isn’t confidential. And confirm your HR departments are following best practices. Renting a personal assistant as an example of a compliance violation.
4. Give Your HR Team Access to Admin Tools
Your HR team members will need access to common admin tools. Like Office 365 users, all staff members will want to seamlessly collaborate with team members when it comes to schedules, calendars, and documents as the company grows. Your HR team needs access to the tools you’re already using so you can make sure they always have the right information. For instance, they may need to create or edit payrolls, allow employees to leave their work assignments or provide approvals to check in at any location, and establish mandatory leave or sick time. Giving your HR department fast, streamlined access to the key cloud platforms will help efficiently manage all aspects of your business.
5. Consider Specialist HRM or HCM Software
HRM software provides for small to medium businesses’ HR needs. It will usually cover payroll, benefits, attendance tracking, recruitment, and talent management. HCM software goes further, covering a wider range of functions across the employee lifecycle. It can help your HR team by offering advanced analytics, industry benchmark data, and robust reporting. You can read this helpful article from ADP to further compare how HRM and HCM differ on several points. Businesses that want to offer such solutions to employees and clients will often include HRM software in the cost of their software solutions. Smaller businesses will likely choose to purchase HRM software on their own. However, larger businesses that use HRM software will typically have one in-house HR manager. Large companies will often outsource HRM solutions, since their HR teams are necessarily large in number.
6. Develop Your Employee Handbook and Keep it Up to Date
Your employee handbook will outline a lot of HR-related issues, like workplace culture, benefits, and policies. If you don’t already have a handbook, make this a priority. If you do have one, make sure it’s being regularly reviewed and updated.
Conclusion
A good HR team can make a huge difference to your company’s success. They’ll help attract and keep top-quality employees and they’ll be proactive in keeping employees productive and motivated. Invest the time and resources you need to train and equip them to do great work. Many HR managers and senior leadership teams are poorly trained and equipped to teach and educate their workforce. Taking the time to teach your leadership team, for instance, how to motivate your employees to perform their best and how to be more effective leaders for your business can be a huge benefit.
How to Find the Right SaaS for Work-From-Home Teams
Do you work from a SaaS-powered remote workplace? Or is your work-from-home team just beginning to explore cloud software as you make the shift towards working fully remotely? Regardless of why you need to find the ideal SaaS app for your team, it’s clear that there are hundreds of different options to choose from. Deciding on a new SaaS tool can entail sifting through lists of dozens or more similar services. It can also be challenging to tell which one will be the best match for the job at hand. Some ‘best in breed’ tools like Zoom and Slack rank at the top of their market segments, and therefore attract plenty of users right off the bat. Yet that doesn’t automatically mean that they are the best choices for your purposes. As a team leader or an IT administrator tasked with choosing a new SaaS tool, you’ll need to consider far more than simply whether or not an app can get a job done. Here are some tips to assist you in making the best choice for your remote team.
Tackling the 5 Steps of Evaluation
1. Start the Search
Your first step in finding a new SaaS software tool or program should always be to take a general look at the market segment and space. You can easily do this using basic web searches and specific search terms relating to the task or project you are trying to complete. Sites like Top10eLearning have helpful lists of the best training solutions, best eLearning blogs, best training tools, and more. For example, if you’re on the hunt for a CMS service optimized for marketing content, ensure that your searches include the term ‘marketing’ for best results. If you want to find an effective LMS program, include terms like ‘learning’ and ‘remote education’ in your searches for relevant results. If you already have a tool in mind, use comparison sites to find cost-effective alternatives. You might actually find a more affordable service that has unique tools even better suited to your team’s purposes than the more obvious choices.
2. Evaluate Your Options
Once you have some service names on your list, it’s time to carefully evaluate them. Decide whether or not each app is in the right sector or area altogether. If a platform/service doesn’t fit the bill, scratch it off the list. Look at each service’s website to gather more information, customer reviews, pricing details, and other essential information.
3. Investigate Demos and Trials
After the initial evaluation stage, you will probably have narrowed down your list of apps considerably. There may be a few SaaS providers on your list that already seem promising to you. The next step is to speak to a salesperson to request a free demo or a free trial of the service. Speaking to salespeople can be a very informative process that gives you specific information about a SaaS service that isn’t necessarily obvious from its official website. A demo will give you a clear indication of whether or not a service will work for your remote team’s purposes, all while giving you a chance to learn the ropes and assess its usability. Make sure you ask these 6 key questions during your LMS demo for best results. Most free trials and demos are well-designed, simple to use, and offer robust features that can stand on their own without creating confusion and chaos for your team. This is how SaaS models became so popular in the first place! In this secondary evaluation stage, you’ll need to ensure that you have a clear understanding of your team’s and stakeholders’ requirements. What needs have to be met? What are your security policies, and how does the SaaS service fit in? Does the app you’re considering align with your organization’s budget?
4. Tick the Boxes
Making a checklist of your business’s and team’s needs and ticking off ones that a SaaS service can meet is a great way of assessing its ultimate suitability. Each organization’s needs will vary, but some features you might want to add to your checklist include:
i. A User-Friendly UI and UX Your app should also offer self-service support, along with public support pages.
Is the app’s user interface easy to navigate? Are the software’s moving parts organized in a logical way? Can you access the same features and documents from numerous places within the program, or is finding your way around a hassle? Is it clunky, slow, or frustrating to use?
How responsive is the UI? It should be optimized for different devices, including mobile, and a wide range of screen sizes. Your remote team should be able to access the service 24/7 from any location. Do the pages load rapidly and reliably?
How long will it take your team to learn how to use the service? Will end users need training to use the app, or will they be able to find their way around easily?
ii. Administrative Transparency Check if your app has transparent and clear pricing listed on its website.
iii. Strict Privacy and Security Any good SaaS app for a remote team should offer exportable system and admin logs. Some apps allow you to export logs automatically, while others require you to do so manually.
Are these pricing models reasonable compared to others?
Does this technology support Single Sign On (SSO)? Will you need to pay extra to access SSO?
Does the brand offer an API and integrate with other tools that you have already added to your team’s SaaS stack?
There are so many factors to consider when choosing the right SaaS app for your team that it’s not always possible to have all of your questions answered in a sales call, or even a demo. If you still have a few promising products on your list by the end of your evaluation process, the best course of action is to try the paid product for yourself. Your team will only really get an accurate sense of how easy the service is to use and whether or not it will meet their needs once they have had a chance to use it. Many SaaS apps on the market kick off with a free trial to allow you to explore everything a service has to offer before your company invests in it. It’s important to remember that not evaluation will have a single clear winner. You might buy a SaaS with a less visually appealing UI because it matches your feature requirements or your budget, for example. Once you have chosen your provider, make sure to do your research on how to start setting up your courses - as a free resource, check out Knowledge Anywhere’s Remote Learning Implementation Guide!
The Takeaway
There are thousands of SaaS products for remote work teams on the market currently. Selecting the right one for your business’s needs can often feel overwhelming. Ensuring that you understand your team’s and stakeholders’ requirements, the options available, and the full range of features in your chosen options will empower you to make the best possible choice in the long run.
How to Keep Training Relevant and Stop Wasting Time
One of the biggest challenges for learning programs is to keep the training relevant to learners. If you can’t keep people engaged, they won’t absorb the material, and it will be a waste of time for you as well as them. In this article, we’ll share some tips to make sure your training remains relevant.
How Ineffective Training Wastes Time
When you create a learning program, you want to make sure it’s relevant, engaging, and actionable. There are several ways that your training may fall short and waste time.
Objectives Are Not Clear
Make sure you consult with all relevant departments and teams so that you’re clear about the goals for the training. If there isn’t proper communication beforehand, the training may leave out crucial elements or include unnecessary material.
If goals are too broad, the training may not address important points. For example, a broad goal may be to teach users how to use a certain software application. However, the software may have hundreds of features, some relevant to your purposes and others not. It’s necessary to focus on the specific features that learners will be using.
User Experience is Flawed
The way learning material is delivered has a big impact on the results. If learners have a hard time accessing or interacting with the content, they won’t be engaged and may waste time trying to figure out how the system works. It’s important to thoroughly test all aspects of user experience and make improvements as needed. This may include issues such as:
Difficulty logging into the system.
Confusing navigation. Users may not be able to figure out where to go next or menus aren’t accurately labeled.
Glitches such as features not loading properly or crashing.
Poor quality audio or visuals.
If your training is a live virtual event, such as instructor led training, a webinar, or a lecture, consider sending learners a this downloadable Free Virtual Training Checklist, which will tell them what steps to take before the event, cutting down on confusion and last minute questions.
Information Overload
Learners can get overwhelmed if there’s too much to absorb in a short amount of time. This can be a challenge for technical topics or when there are long lists of terms and principles to remember. When creating training modules, avoid overwhelming people’s attention spans. Zoom fatigue is also a real phenomenon! Make sure you’re taking breaks, using interactive tools, and chunking up information.
People have different learning styles, which is why you should include course material in diverse formats, such as:
Text: PDF files and other written material
Images: Including infographics and illustrations
Videos: Studies indicate that most learners prefer video to other types of media. According to Forrester Research, employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than read documents.
Slides
Live presentations, such as webinars
When you have multiple types of media, you address the needs of all learners. You also give them a chance to absorb and review material in various ways, such as reading about something after watching a video.
Insufficient Tracking
It’s essential to track the results of learning programs, so you can measure what is and isn’t working. Listening to user feedback is also important for assessing user experience and engagement. It’s helpful to have users fill out a survey after training to give their immediate reactions.
How to Make Learning Relevant
The following are some key points to keep in mind when designing a learning program.
Use Microlearning
Microlearning is the practice of breaking complex topics into smaller, more manageable chunks. This is a way to improve engagement and prevent information overload. It’s also a convenient way to share material to users on different devices and who may be in different locations. For example, it’s simple for someone to access a short video on their phone from any location.
Gamification Improves Engagement
Turning learning into a game helps to keep users interested in the course material. A game can turn a dry or technical subject into a fun challenge. For example, if learners need to remember many regulations for compliance training, turning it into a game with scoring adds an element of fun to the subject. This approach is especially popular for millennials, who often grew up playing video games. At the same time, it’s important to ensure that games are effective at imparting relevant information and don’t become a distraction.
Use an LMS With the Features You Need
Using a learning management system that has user-friendly features can make a big difference in the results of your training. It’s still up to you to include the right material, of course. However, make sure your LMS features include:
Quality user experience
The ability to upload material in multiple formats such as text, images, and video
Tracking capabilities
Gamification features
Use Pre-Testing Assessments
It’s unproductive to teach people material that they already know. Similarly, if the learning content is too advanced for the learner, it will go over their heads. A simple way to avoid either of these problems is to create a pre-testing assessment that gauges what people know about a topic. For example, if someone is learning a new language, there’s a wide spectrum of abilities, from knowing a few words to fluency. The following is a pre-assessment created to test students’ knowledge of German.
Language Learning - Basic German
This type of assessment is useful for measuring competency in any area. Based on the results, learners can be matched with the appropriate level of instruction.
Incorporate Interactive Learning
One way to make learning more relevant is to actively involve people in the training. Using interactive techniques is a powerful complement to reading, listening, and watching. Live role-playing is effective and engaging for certain types of training such as customer service, sales training, and compliance training. However, it’s not always practical for learners and staff to interact in person. This has been especially the case during the 2020 pandemic.
Another possibility, which is often cheaper and more flexible than live role-playing, is interactive video, where people can interact from any location. Both live and video role-playing is effective for working on soft skills and issues where sensitivity is needed, such as harassment and diversity training.
Keep Your Training Relevant
Training is costly and time-consuming. If the material isn’t relevant and engaging, it turns into a waste of time and resources for everyone involved. You need to constantly review your process to make sure it’s meeting your needs and in line with your latest goals. Make sure all concerned teams and stakeholders provide input for the training, while baking in a plat to get regular feedback from learners With the above tips in mind, you’re on your way to keeping your learning relevant!
Launching An Online Course: From the Viewpoint of the Teacher, Student, Guide, and Storyteller
When you’re launching an eLearning course, it’s about more than just building a course with engaging content. That’s certainly important. Whoever creates your course content needs to be sure it is relevant and engaging. But to successfully launch it, you will need the participation, buy-in, and support of many different groups of people. There are many different roles that contribute to a successful eLearning launch. You need people to consume the course content, those to explain it, and those to ensure everyone understands why it’s necessary. You also need people in place to provide guidance when clarity is needed. You’ll find these roles filled by a variety of people throughout your organization. While they may differ in what they do to make a course successful, they’re all nonetheless important. In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at four perspectives of people supporting your Learning Management System course launch:
The Teacher communicates to the Student what they need to know about the content.
The Student needs to know the course exists, how to complete it, and the content within that course.
The Guide serves as a troubleshooter for the Student when there are questions the Teacher can’t answer.
The Storyteller(s) explain how the Student (and the organization, customers, etc.) derive value from 100% course completion.
The Teacher (aka Administrator, Course Trainer, Instructor)
The Teacher is the one to administer your course. Their role is to explain the course content when needed. Their role prior to launch is to understand the concepts illustrated within the course. If they can’t demonstrate some level of mastery, they’ll have a harder time explaining those concepts to those taking the course once it’s launched. During and after the launch, the administrator is there to teach the end-users in a way that optimizes information retention and evaluate learning results with data and analytics. You’ll want them to be equipped with the answers to questions you anticipate the users may ask about the content. If they do their job in being prepared pre-launch, a lot of their work will be done. From there, it’s simply a matter of being able to communicate effectively with the students. That’s not necessarily an easy thing to do, but it gets much easier when you know the content inside and out.
The Student (aka Learner, End User)
The Student is the end user, and a highly important role; launching an eLearning course certainly requires having someone to actually consume the content. Whether it’s for compliance, professional development, or some other reason, your learners need information and you need to give it to them. Before the launch, their role is to register for the course and ensure they can access it. That may require work with your organization or use pre-virtual event resources or checklists to make sure that once the LMS launches, they are an active participant. That means they should engage with the lessons, ask questions when necessary, and take all quizzes or tests upon completion. Following the completion of the course, the end-users aren’t done. This is the best time to continue engaging them. You can ask them for valuable feedback on what elements of the course they found effective. Keep in mind that your most effective partner in fine-tuning your course is someone who has already taken it.
The Guide (aka Support Staff)
Think of your eLearning course in terms of a journey. There comes a time when the learner may need additional assistance the instructor can’t provide. Perhaps they’re having an issue with registration or have an IT issue after launch. That’s where the Guide will step in to show them the way. Your guide comes in the form of your support team.
Their role in an eLearning course launch is to help keep the learners on target. There is a goal in mind - 100% course completion - and your support staff plays a big part in making sure that happens. They’ll need to know questions that may pop up about accessing the course. They’ll need to know what’s needed to confirm completion. When are the important deadlines? What platform should the end-users log in to for access? Before launch, your support team will be largely focused on things like course registration. Once the launch happens, they’ll likely have to focus more on answering logistical questions. Prepare them accordingly and they can help the process go much smoother for the learner.
The Storyteller (aka Marketing, Human Resources)
Finally, having a Storyteller is a critical part of ensuring your larger team understands exactly why you’re doing what you’re doing prior to launch. Your storytellers in this process will be your marketing and human resources departments. From a marketing standpoint, they may be using the course to paint a picture of why your company is a leader in your industry. If you offer professional training or certification, this makes you that much more attractive to customers and/or other businesses to partner with. You can even include your recruiting department here, as they could advertise this to potential candidates as a reason why you’re a great place to work.
Your marketing team is telling your external audience how this training course makes your organization stronger. From a human resources standpoint, they’re telling the story to your internal team members of why this online training is vital or significant. They’re communicating with the learners on why they need to complete this course, whatever that reason may be. They can also connect the learners with the right person if they have a question that needs answering, referring them to the trainer or support team. When your organization can tell an effective and engaging story as to why the training is both important and necessary, it’s going to increase end-user buy-in. They’ll want to complete it faster and more comprehensively, leading to better compliance and mastery of all the concepts contained within. In short, these four roles in your process will interact at various points before, during, and after your launch. Each one plays a role in achieving your desired result: To effectively launch an eLearning course, you’ll need engagement and buy-in from all of these people. But you’ll also need to develop effective course content and deliver it in an engaging way.
Firms in the financial services sector deal with sensitive information which require careful planning and handling. Banks, for instance, handle cash, credit and other virtual financial details for their clients. For better efficiency and less operational risks, a knowledgeable team in the banking sector is always paramount. ELearning equips employees working in financial institutions, as well as finance departments, to keep them at pace with the rapidly evolving industry. Since most employees have tight working schedules, eLearning saves both time and engagement effort than traditional training. Here, we’ll discuss the main benefits of eLearning for the financial services sector. We will also discuss a few tricks that businesses can use to implement eLearning systems.
Benefits of eLearning in the Finance Sector
In a sector where a single mistake can cause loss of billions, eLearning offers the following multiple benefits:
Better Privacy and Control
Some finance firms use all kinds of training materials and internal procedures, and not all are meant to get outside the firm. ELearning provides an effective solution to this. The online-based training ensures that the employees get the knowledge they need within their employer VPN or firewall, increasing control and privacy.
With eLearning, distance is not a barrier. Financial firms with different branches use an LMS to monitor, manage, and secure the training process to avoid compromising privacy and control.
Staying Up To Date with Changes
The banking and finance sector is dynamic. Changes happen every day, and most of those changes are meant to improve operations efficiency at work.
If employees in those field depend on traditional books and learning forms, they would probably be left behind. Why? Because it's easier to update changes on online learning platforms, compared to publishing in books.
The centralized web-based distribution method makes it easier for every employee in the finance sector to stay at par with what's happening globally.
Cost Savings
ELearning allows employees to educate themselves at their convenience. Whether at home, at the office or at the park, employees can access the online courses from any place. This flexibility minimizes the transport costs of attending the training centers.
The eLearning software automatically sends feedback to the managers to help them know the learners' progress. Managers can then use that information to make the company's vital decision and know the exact areas that need more emphasis.
How to Create the Perfect Online Training Program
The best online training program should foster a personal connection with the employees while still maintaining professionalism. Here are great tips for creating an eLearning program for your employees:
Use images and graphics to explain the complex financial planning ideas
Add emotionally compelling examples and stories to kill boredom and create interest
Create an online support system for the employers - the system should allow the learners to write feedback, share their opinions and concerns
Offer questionnaires and eLearning assessments. You can also conduct random surveys to know the progress of your learners in regards to the training
Provide the employees with online training tools, such as laptops and a reliable internet network
The above tips should motivate your employees to keep up with the eLearning courses.
Tips for a Successful eLearning Implementation
Like any other business decision, eLearning implementation requires well-thought plans. If you have been offering traditional training and would like to switch to eLearning, check out these practical tips for successful online training implementation.
1. Set Clear Goals
You should have clear and objective goals for your online training course. For instance, your goals for training your employees could be to increase the return on investment, save cash on training programs, increase growth, decrease employee turnover, shrink the skills gap, and so on.
Your goals should be realistic and objective and everyone undertaking the course should be aware of the goals.
2. Choose Your LMS Vendor
You will need Learning Management Software (LMS) for your eLearning.
The right LMS vendor should be reliable, friendly, and should have great LMS software whose features match your business needs. Some of the LMS features to consider are the number of applications installed, the server resource monitoring, the support plan, disaster recovery plan, safety plan, and much more.
The ideal LMS should also have an excellent server and database architecture. The software should also be easy to use and maintain.
3. Choose The Team Leaders
A successful financial services training implementation requires a team leader. If your team is large, the leader will collaborate with the team and provide a timely update so that the eLearning project is a success.
Note that your team does not have to be huge to have a team leader. Even for a small team, an eLearning leader would streamline the process for better results.
4. Create Risk Management Guidelines
ELearning entirely depends on the internet and tech devices, and with technology, you can sometimes experience some mishaps. Therefore, you should have a great risk management guideline for handling the risks that arise.
One way to do this is to create a training timetable entirely dependent on your business needs. If you would like to achieve goals within a short duration, a timetable might be necessary to reduce time wastage. Be sure to include the start and end dates in order to track progress.
5. Ensure There's A Way to Measure Success
Evaluation is one of the vital factors of eLearning implementation. You will need to make sure that every employee is achieving or reaping the benefits of eLearning, and that's why it's imperative to have a great assessment method measuring the success of your eLearning program.
The finance services market is evolving rapidly, and so should your team. To remain competitive in the industry, you should regularly train your employees.
From customer service to lending to bank security, everyone in the firm should be equipped with the best practices to win more clients, and outshine competitors. Thanks to eLearning, you can gladly do so! Follow the tips above to implement a successful eLearning program.
Knowledge Anywhere offers a reliable cloud-based LMS platform that allows you to organize and manage your online training programs in one place. Our LMS is quick to set up and use. Contact us today for a free demo of the system and to talk with an eLearning expert about how we can help grow your business.
Talent Management is the combined organizational effort to attract, develop, and retain employees. Effective talent management solutions are manifested in an organization’s ability to obtain and retain a range of individuals with different abilities and skill sets that are paramount to the innovation, development, promotion, and sale of an organization’s products or services to the market. When an organization is successful at managing its talent, the organization often meets the strategic goals and objectives essential to achieving a competitive advantage.
What are the Components of Talent Management?
Keeping employees engaged and motivated to remain with the organization long-term is the ultimate goal of talent management that is achieved through a combination of activities executed by both the HR function and management.
Talent acquisition, typically under the HR wheelhouse, is the gateway to talent management where initial employees are recruited and hired. Beyond the initial attainment of talent, there are five key activities facilitated by an employee’s manager that help keep employee interest in working for an organization intact.
Onboarding
Initial employee education geared around fundamental organizational principles, job role requirements, and manager expectations is pivotal to early employee engagement and satisfaction. When employees have a clear understanding of the organization, what their role encompasses, and what goals they are working toward to help the company be successful, they acclimate to their jobs faster and have a higher sense of ownership over their performance.
Tip:Be intentional with employee onboarding. If the employee feels as though the work that he/she will contribute is valued by the organization as a whole, he/she will be more motivated to meet and exceed performance expectations—adapting to a new workplace climate with speed and excellence.
Employee Training Programs
All employees value the opportunity to refine and develop skills related to their position. Training that is informative, engaging and easily accessible can help employees cultivate the knowledge required to help them become great at their jobs. When it comes to training, the method of delivery, the quality of the training content, and the frequency it is delivered are important aspects that management should prioritize when developing a talent management strategy.
Tip:Deliver training regularly. Not only does ongoing training appease employee desire for improved efficiency and an understanding for existing responsibilities, but it satisfies a deeper desire for career advancement that can be achieved through the development of critical skills within an employee’s department. It also helps management raise awareness of the pace of change as the market grows and matures—ensuring that every employee is positioned to help the organization be successful now, and in the future as new technologies emerge.
Coaching
Often viewed as an element of a successful training program, coaching is an effective way to teach, motivate, and inspire employees to help the organization meet its strategic goals and objectives. Typically, coaching is a 1:1 phenomenon where knowledge is transferred from a senior employee to less experienced employee. Coaching can help management draw out roadblocks, frustrations, and needs from employees—helping managers approach employees with workable solutions.
Tip:Don’t just spend time with your underperformers—your overachievers crave mentorship too, and often feel their contributions are valued in 1:1 sessions as they receive recognition and feedback on how to improve further.
Performance Evaluation & Management
Employees care as much as their managers do about their performance, and when they’re in the dark they’re quick to feel unappreciated and undervalued, leading them to look elsewhere for employment. Regular performance evaluations are essential to helping employees understand responsibilities, workload priorities, and how their contributions impact the organization’s success.
Tip: Give employees public recognition when they’ve done a good job, don’t wait until their annual review to give them kudos in private. In doing this, managers can highlight the tactics of high performing employees that can be emulated by others, as well as keep the employee or team that has been recognized satisfied and committed to continued excellence.
Succession Management
What does your top talent constantly have on their mind? Advancement. High performers are motivated to succeed in existing roles when the opportunity for advancement is within grasp. To retain talented employees, an organization must have opportunities for them to grow. To do this, management must keep a keen eye out for exemplary performers and make efforts to ensure they are set for success when a new position within the company becomes available.
Tip:Be transparent with your top talent by letting them know that you see potential in them to assume a new role down the line. If employees see a future in the organization and are backed by a manager committed to furthering their success they will be much less likely to jump ship and look for a new job.
Talent is the lifeblood of any organization. To keep up with market demands, technological innovations, and the changing industry landscape, an organization must maintain a range of individuals who are gifted in different skillsets to sustain or obtain a competitive advantage. Thus, a sustained approach to managing talented employees is central to the survival of the business.
Knowledge Anywhere Signs Craig Weiss’ Customer Certified Support
Besides our technology, Knowledge Anywhere prides ourselves on our relationships with our partners, and we do everything in our power to provide stellar customer service, with help from content strategy to onboarding to support.
That’s why we’ve decided to join Craig Weiss’ Customer Certified Support. By publicly signing onto the pledge, we hope to prove our commitment to service while being held accountable for it.
A prominent figure in the eLearning industry, Craig Weiss is the CEO and lead analyst for The Craig Weiss Group, which provides analyst, advisory and consulting services to buyers and vendors in the industry. Craig writes his blog, which is read weekly in 174 countries, territories, and colonial territories. Since launching the blog in 2009, his forecasts and projections on eLearning have been over 90% accurate.
What does a vendor have to adhere to in the Customer Certified Support?
There are four key statements, plus an additional two validation checks – after all, promises are one thing, backing it with data and insight is another. Vendors who sign the Customer Excellence Pledge are telling you that they will promise to:
Provide exceptional customer support and service
Maintain high ethical standards in sales, service, and business
Take care of customer’s needs and assistance in a timely fashion
Provide customers with a dedicated customer support/service member or team. This person(s) will be the customer’s point of contact, eliminating the game of “who can help me, where do I go” – a huge problem in the industry.
How will The Craig Weiss Group be able to validate that those who sign the agreement are actually living up to it? Multiple check points are in place. They consist of the following (which a vendor must agree to in writing.)
Provide twice a year, data that presents the following information: response times, follow-up, and the number of support calls.
Present twice a year, the top five issues that have arisen, and the average amount of time to solve those issues. This enables us to see if a constant pattern is showing up.
Present twice a year, the average number of calls in to support compared to the number of clients.
If a vendor does NPS, provide the sample, the number of supporters, passives, and detractors. Explain how the sample was selected and how do they follow up with those customers.
Provide five customers Craig Weiss can contact to seek insight into the level of support. This is yearly.
To read more about the Pledge and what it entails, you can click here.
It’s every host’s nightmare: right before training, scheduled webinar, or meeting, participants start asking the dreaded tech questions. “The link’s not right! How do I use Zoom? Does my camera have to be on?” In order to cut down on confusion, late starts, or slow internet speeds, send out this free virtual user checklist to all participants before your virtual event. This will ward off questions, making event planning smoother and clearer, while providing a valuable resource. You can see this checklist below as an image, as a downloadable PDF here, or as an editable template here. This way, you can add your organization’s branding, including colors, logos, fonts, or images.
Happy training!
Evaluating Soft Skills With eLearning Expert Clark Quinn
As has become a pattern, someone recently asked me how to evaluate soft skills. And without being an expert on soft skill or evaluation, I tried to answer on principle. So I thought about the types of observable data you should expect to find. And that yielded an initial answer. Then I watched an interesting video of a lecture by a scholar and consultant, and it elaborated the challenges. So, there’s a longer answer too. So here’s an extended riff on evaluating soft skills. I started with wondering what performance outcomes would you expect for soft skills. Coupled, as well, with how could you find evidence of these observable differences.
As a short answer, I suggested that there should be 3(+) outcomes from effective soft skills training.
the learner should be able to perform in soft skills scenarios (c.f. Will Thalheimer’s LTEM). This is the most obvious. Put them in the situation and ask them to perform. This is the bit that gets re-addressed further down.
the learner should be aware of an improvement in their ability to perform. However, asking immediately can lead to a misapprehension of ability. So, as Will Thalheimer advises in his Performance-Focused Smile Sheets, ask them 3 months later. Also, ask about behavior, not knowledge. E.g. “Are you using the <> model in your work, and do you notice an improvement in your ability?”
The ‘customers’ of the learner should notice the improvement. Depending on whether that’s internal or external, it might show up (at least in aggregate) in either 360 eval scores, or some observable metric like customer sat scores. It may be harder to collect this data, but of course it’s also more valuable.
Finally, their supervisors/managers should notice the improvement, whether observationally or empirically.They should be not only prepared to support the change over time, but asked to look for evidence (including as a basis to fine tune performance).
All together, triangulating on this should be a way to establish the validity.
Now, extending this, Guy Wallace tweeted a link to a lecture by Neil Rackham. In it, Neil makes the case that universities need to change to teaching core skills, in particular the 4 C’s: critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. He also points out how hard it is to evaluate these without a labor-intensive effort of an individual observing performance. This is a point that others have made, that these skills have hard to observe criteria.
There’s some argument about so-called 21C skills, and yet I can agree that these four things would be good. The question is how to assess them reliably. Rackham argues that perhaps AI can help here. Perhaps, but at this point I’d argue for two things. First, help students self-evaluate (which has the benefits of them understanding what’s involved).
Second, instrumenting environments (say, for instance, with xAPI) in which these activities are performed. There will be data records that can be matched to behaviors, initially for human evaluation, but perhaps ultimately for machine evaluation. Of course, this requires assigning meaningful activities that necessarily involve creativity, critical thinking, communication, and/or collaboration. This means project based work, and I’ve long argued that you can’t learn such skills without a domain. Actually, to create transferable versions, you’d need to develop the skills across domains. When I teach, I prefer to give group work projects that do require these skills. It was, indeed, hard to mark these extra skills, but I found that scaffolding it (a ‘how to collaborate’ document) facilitated good outcomes. Being explicit about the best thinking practices isn’t only a good idea, it’s a demonstrably useful approach in general. So I think developing skills is important. That means we need a means to be evaluating soft skills. We know it when we see it, but it’s hard to necessarily find the opportunity, but if we can assign it, we can evaluate and develop these skills more readily. That, I think, is a desirable goal.
New Ford Tech Programs: From Students to Technicians
Ford ACE
The Ford Automotive Career Exploration (ACE) program raises interest and awareness around career opportunities in the automotive service industry. It’s been an active program for three years, and it has already had a widespread impact on students in every state in America! In just three years, the program has seen a staggering growth of over 97,000 students and instructors at 1,152 sponsored schools and 823 sponsoring Ford and Lincoln dealerships. This has resulted in over 1,185 new hires within the field. To see more statistics about how the program has grown, scroll down to view our newest Ford ACE infographic.
Students in an ACE-sponsored school receive access to a uniquely created Learning Management System (LMS) curriculum. The courses are the same as those taken by dealership technicians giving students a jump start on their experience and careers. School participants receive support from the dealership, including bi-annual presentations, participation in career fairs, and opportunities for job shadowing. The combined knowledge and experience provides real-world perspective on careers in the auto-industry. ACE students have a leg up with transferable Ford eLearning course credits, should they decide to seek employment or enroll in a Ford Automotive Student Service Educational Training (ASSET) program to further their education with Ford. If a student chooses to further their career path with us, their LMS records are transferred into the Ford and Lincoln technician database. They become part of the Ford and Lincoln family.
Ford ASSET
One of the most significant opportunities is for an ACE student to attend the New Ford Tech ASSET (Automotive Student Service Educational Training) program. Upon graduation from ASSET, students can receive Ford Service Technician Specialty Training certifications & an Associates degree, saving time and money while providing access to real-life training. The certificates alone could take five to seven years while working at the dealership following the traditional training planner and attending classroom courses.
We’re now enrolling for our ASSET program, which has 40 locations nationwide. If you or anyone you know is interested in advancing their career in the automotive sector, fill out this form and a Ford representative will reach out within two business days.
Next Steps To A Ford Career
Knowledge Anywhere is excited to spotlight the success and benefit of our partners at New Ford Tech. For more details and a full list of all Ford Career Entry programs, visit https://www.newfordtech.com/.
Do you already have skills and want to join Ford in the field as a technician? If so, click here to join the workforce.
The great challenge many organizations face? Optimizing effectiveness. Sure, productivity and efficiency are nice. But ultimately, what’s most important to an organization is having employees who are excellent at what they do. But how do you ensure your employees are performing well at their job? And how do you ensure you have the right person in the right role? Using an eLearning platform to conduct employee assessments through corporate learning is one way to help improve performance. There are multiple ways you can implement an eLearning tool, not just help your employees do their jobs better, but to make them happier with the organization and their role within it. Let’s take a closer look at three ways you can use employee assessments as an engaging way to improve employee performance (and satisfaction).
1. You can determine how employees are doing
Companies can often go through challenging stretches. There will always be times when your team members feel particularly challenged. Many employees feel the need to hide this from their employer without going into great detail about their state of mind. But when an employee is distracted or feeling stressed at work, it can negatively impact how well they do in their position. That's why an employee assessment that asks the general question of "How are you doing?" is such a useful tool.
You can conduct an employee assessment to gauge your employees' job satisfaction and see how they're managing their workloads. You can use this information to calibrate how much responsibility you give them, or how many tasks they're assigned. Ultimately, employees who feel stressed can have issues that cascade into their overall job performance. One study found that 40% of employees feel stressed in their jobs. If this is happening to your team, you'll want to know so you can address it.
An employee assessment can help you conduct a quick gut check to determine how your employees are feeling at any given moment. Being able to adjust your employees' workload based on their current satisfaction can help not just ease their load, but also do better at the tasks they end up holding onto.
2. Determining personality types and traits
Are all of your team members in a position that's right for them? There's nothing more fulfilling for an employee than feeling like they're in a job that they're a perfect fit for. Sometimes, this goes beyond their skillset and relates to their personality or personal strength areas. An eLearning platform with an employee assessment can help you test your employees' personality traits.
By identifying what kind of personality your team members have, you can help guide their career path. For example, if someone's a leader or more of a Type-A, take-charge kind of person, they may be well-suited for a management track. Someone who's more introspective and knowledgeable may be a good candidate to become a subject-matter expert in their chosen field.
Personality tests don't have to be limiting - quite the opposite, actually. They help you figure out what kind of roles your team members have the temperament for. No matter what traits your employees have, you can match them with the right job for their personality.
You want to make sure you're using the right personality test for your organization, and you certainly don't want it to be the only criteria you use. But it can be a valuable part of putting your team members in a position to succeed. Here are just a few different kinds of free personality tests your organization could use:
You'll also want to test your employees' (and potentially future employees) skill levels. 82% of companies use some form of skill assessment in their organizations. One of the best parts about these assessments is their versatility. You can use them at a variety of stages in the employment (or pre-employment) process.
Hiring
Before you add a new member to your team, you may want to see how proficient they are in the role. A skills test can give you a read on their aptitude for a specific set of tasks. It can also show you how they deal under a bit of pressure. You can even direct them toward a different role if you find they possess a skill set better suited elsewhere in the company.
Promotions
When identifying which employees to advance in your organization, you sometimes have to move people into roles they may be unaccustomed to. They may be performing new tasks for the first time, often dealing with leadership and soft skills. Employee assessments can do wonders to help your team members' internal growth. By offering those up for promotion the chance to prove their abilities through an assessment, you're providing them with an easy way to climb the corporate ladder. It also promotes the idea of your hierarchy as a meritocracy. If your employees prove they have the abilities, you can move them up accordingly.
Starting a project
If you're starting a new project, you may have to get creative in filling the positions on the new team. It should be staffed with the right candidates in each role, possessing the right set of attributes. Having team members take assessments can help match them with the right fit, leaving them feeling comfortable and confident. They'll be well-qualified for their responsibilities, which will in turn help the project get off to a good start.
Ultimately, employee assessments are a great tool for better performance for a variety of reasons. The key is to ensure you have the right eLearning platform in place to facilitate the process. With Knowledge Anywhere, you can set up a customizable eLearning system sure to appeal to your employees and maximize results.
Knowledge Anywhere can provide you with a comprehensive eLearning platform that helps you stay in tune with your employees while giving them the best possible chance at success. For more on how we can help you improve your entire team's performance, contact us today.
Learning Record Store (LRS) Guide: Basics You Need to Know
eLearning has become a popular and convenient modern-day training tool. There is an urgent need to seek effective ways to collect data about learner performance and utilize it to enhance eLearning experiences for both educators and learners. This data will not only improve eLearning experiences, but also serve as a good reference point for organizations when making critical decisions.
Enter, a Learning Record Store. In this blog, we’ll go over its’ basic definition, its’ history, pros and cons of an LRS, and how it differentiates from a Learning Management System (LMS). We’ll also cover more applicable knowledge, such as how to choose the right LRS for your organization, what pricing looks like, and how Knowledge Anywhere is incorporating more LRS features into our LMS.
What is a Learning Record Store (LRS)?
A LRS (Learning Record System) is a storage system that functions as a depository for learning records collected from connected systems where eLearning is conducted. An LRS is the focal point of your eLearning ecosystem and brings together data from your learning systems and applications. It is responsible for receiving, storing, and providing access to all eLearning records.
An LRS is an integral element in the process flow for utilizing the Experience API (xAPI) standard by ADL (Advanced Distributed Learning). The Experience API is also popularly referred to as project Tin Can, or Tin Can API, and is an Open-source eLearning stipulation developed after SCORM and AICC. The LRS is uniquely designed to help systems store and retrieve xAPI statements and other forms of xAPI metadata from other systems.
Lately, it’s become a trendy topic in the eLearning sphere. Just make sure you know if a system really has or needs an LRS before buying into it, as many confuse the function of an LRS with an LMS.
History
The LRS was first adopted in the eLearning sector in 2011 seeking to transform eLearning specifications. Before 2011, SCORM was the eLearning software specification for interoperability since 2001.
However, the specification could not keep up with the technological advancements and needed an update. What followed was extensive research and developments that led to Experience API and the LRS concept.
An Overview of the LRS: Pros
In plain English, xAPI-enabled learning activities generate data in the form of “statements” or eLearning records in the format of “Actor verb Object” or “I did this.” The statements are then sent via HTTPS or HTTP to an LRS. The primary function of the LRS is to receive, store and retrieve data generated from Experience API statements. An LRS can be incorporated within a traditional Learning Management System (LMS) or can stand-alone. LRSs can transmit learner data to other systems, including other LRS servers, mobile devices, sensor-enabled devices, and LMSs. Systems that send statements to an LRS are referred to as Activity Providers or learning record providers. Examples of Activity providers include (but not limited to):
Mobile apps
VR/AR simulators
LMSs
Videos
Games
Articles, webpages, or entire websites
An eLearning course
LRSs offer you unique abilities to create detailed eLearning analytics. This is because you can capture any data on any learning experience regardless of where and in what format it takes place. Traditional eLearning specifications, such as SCORM, can only store single data points, such as a completed study or the final score of a test.
The LRS, on the other hand, records a statement structure that gives you multiple data points to report against. You can pull reports on multiple combinations of “Actor,” “verb,” and “object.” By gathering data about all learning experiences, you can accurately evaluate the impact of your organization’s training resources to determine which tools and methods are most effective.
However, an LRS strictly designed to the xAPI specification may not feature a built-in reporting capability. Therefore, you may have to provide a way of accessing the LRS data and create a system for data reporting.
LMS vs. LRS
Take note not to confuse the Learning Management System and the Learning Record Store. The features of an LRS make it sound like it does the same things as an LMS. Your LRS will likely replace and exceed the reporting and analytics capability of your LMS. However, there are still many other functions of the LMS that are not featured in an LRS. As such, LRS is not a replacement for your LMS and vice versa.
Functions of an LRS:
The major difference between the two is that an LRS is designed to receive, track, and store xAPI statements.
Functions of an LMS:
On the flip side, LMS manages all your company’s learning needs, tracking, and reporting statements through its native reporting features. You can also forward data from an LMS to your LRS server if you need to.
Manage course content
Manage users
Schedule events
Send reports
Use Certifications
Deliver course content
Choosing the Right LRS for Your Organization
Choosing an LRS to track the effectiveness of your learning programs (and learners’ performance) is a critical step. You need to consider some key factors to help you choose and implement the right LRS system. Here are a few factors you should consider to help you choose a suitable LRS system for your organization.
Functionality: Whereas most LRS systems have the same basic functionality (storing and retrieving xAPI statements), they are customized for interfacing with various external systems and often have built-in reporting, analytics, and visualization functions that may vary in features. If you choose a system not optimized for your organization, you may end up wasting your company’s money and time for learners and administrators.
Durability: Another important factor when choosing an LRS system is durability. This is the question of whether the system will keep up with the market so it remains available and consistent with periodic upgrades and maintenances. This is critical so as to account for evolutionary changes in the IT environment in which LRS operates. You should also consider whether the system will easily incorporate revisions to the xAPI in the future.
Scalability: As with learning platforms, LRSs should be chosen with consideration for scalability and extensibility and how they will fit your organization’s overall architecture. To determine an LRS system’s extensibility, consider focusing on systems’ modularity and how you can customize the LRS services to meet the learners’ changing needs. When thinking about scalability, evaluate your organization’s growth patterns and projections to determine whether or not an LRS meets the potential volume demands (due to growth) for your organization.
Business System Integration: According to Brandon-Hall’s 2011 survey, enterprise integration is the most critical requirement for businesses seeking to migrate to a new LMS. But this applies to LRSs as well, more so in terms of the ability of the xAPI to correlate learning behavior data (captured in an LRS) with work performance data (captured in non-learning systems).
Other essential factors to consider include:
LRS conformance testing
Security and reliability
Level of expertise required, among others.
LRS Cost and Pricing Models
Different LRS vendors have different pricing models depending on a wide range of factors, and it may be difficult to compare prices between vendors. Have a look at these basic categories of pricing models to help you make an informed decision.
Seat-based model: This model uses the number of learners/employees in your organization or the maximum possible number of users who will ever write statements to the LRS. Usually, there are tiers - for instance, up to 10,000 users, up to 20,000 users. However, this model may run into problems with extranet users (other users besides the employees).
Analyst based model:This model is a slight variation of the seat-based model. The difference is that it uses the number of people who need to analyze or maintain the system’s data rather than the number of learners who may send statements to it. This system is priced according to the number of users in each tier. Each tier often at least includes system administrators and owners and is differentiated by permissions/privileges.
Usage-based pricing models: This pricing model is based on the number of xAPI statements sent to the LRS per month. It is particularly useful when you anticipate LRS usage surges due to seasonal cycles, new product releases, and such. In case your company minimally uses an LRS system except in specific short periods, it is more economical to pay per use for the time used than paying for a tier of seats.
Capability-based: In this model, the pricing is based on system capability rather than usage or seats. For example, this model’s base-level product can be a simple/pure LRS without any analytics. The mid-level tier can integrate reports and external business intelligence. The highest tier can entail features like sign-on and interactive, real-time analytics. The capability pricing model can also be used together with any of the pricing models mentioned above.
How Knowledge Anywhere Can Help
At Knowledge Anywhere, it is our job to help you achieve your training goals faster. Ours is an innovative alternative to the traditional Learning Management System. It’s a superior training platform that allows you to seamlessly manage, organize and assign your online or in-person training all under one roof.
While we do not have a full LRS, Knowledge Anywhere has made conscious steps to integrate LRS capabilities into our LMS platform. With this in mind, we’ve been working on supporting the storage of data in an LRS, which will in-turn open up other integration and analytics opportunities.
For any information about eLearning, whether it be about a Learning Record Store, Learning Management System, SCORM Conversion tool, Learning Content Distribution System, Custom Course Development, or Virtual Reality Training, contact us today!
Is There Still a Place For In-Person Corporate Learning?
Online learning has gotten more and more popular in the last few years. In 2020, many businesses were forced to move live training and events online due to the global pandemic. All of this may suggest that live in-person learning is fading into irrelevance. Will all corporate learning be online in the future or is there still a place for traditional in-person learning?
The Growth of Online Learning
Online learning has grown exponentially over the last decade. Small Business Trends revealed in 2017, 77% of companies used online learning, but 98% planned to start using it by 2020. In other words, just about all businesses either already use or plan to use some type of online training.
There are several important advantages to online learning.
Convenience. People can access online learning from any location and review materials at their own pace.
Better retention. Research indicates that eLearning boosts retention by 25% to 60%.
More personalized. eLearning is better suited to creating personalized learning programs that meet the needs of individuals with their own needs and learning styles.
Traditional in-person learning was, of course, the norm throughout history. It's only relatively recently that technology allowed for eLearning to become practical on a large scale. The events of 2020 further spurred the growth of virtual learning. However, it's still premature to dismiss in-person learning completely.
Advantages of In-Person Learning
It allows for socialization and can help foster bonds between people
Lets you observe subtle cues and nuances, such as body language and facial expressions
Face-to-face learning can be especially beneficial for acting out scenarios, such as between customers and employees. However, this can be done using virtual tools such as interactive video and VR.
Drawbacks of In-Person Learning
These benefits must be weighed against the disadvantages of traditional learning.
Safety during a time of health challenges such as the pandemic of 2020.
Less ability to incorporate advanced technology, including tracking data in a quantifiable way.
The Future of Corporate Learning
At Knowledge Anywhere, our belief is that the future of corporate training will be a mixture of live and online learning, with an increasing emphasis on the latter. Live training will never become completely obsolete. However, there's no denying the advantages of eLearning, which will only get more pronounced as technology advances.
Blended Learning
While it's useful to contrast the pros and cons of online and offline learning, there's no reason we have to see them as opposing forces. In practice, it's often ideal to find a hybrid learning model that incorporates the best of both worlds. While there are good reasons to believe that the future will bring about an increased emphasis on eLearning, using live learning when appropriate is also helpful.
Even when the bulk of the training is conducted online, when it's practical (and safe), live training can supplement and enhance eLearning. Live sessions can foster a team spirit and let people interact in person as well as online. Live interaction can make future virtual interaction even more engaging and help trainees, employees, and instructors get to know one another better.
Transitioning to Online Learning
Many businesses are eager to embrace the advantages of eLearning but aren't always sure how to go about making this transition. In 2020, many businesses were forced to make this transition without a remote learning plan. The actual steps will vary depending on your industry and needs. It can be instructive to look at how this might look for different industries.
Healthcare. Employees in this growing field often work long hours and have unpredictable schedules, making online learning a convenient alternative to in-person sessions. Training in healthcare often needs to focus on compliance issues, which are frequently updated. eLearning is a useful way to keep trainees and healthcare workers up to date with the latest developments.
Retail.Retail businesses need to train employees quickly to adjust to high turnover rates and varying volumes of business over different times of the year. Online training can be efficient for conveying store policies to both seasonal and full-time workers. Interactive tools such as VR and gamification can help train employees on the best customer service policies.
IT and Technology.Technology is a fast-paced industry, and a natural match for eLearning, as workers are typically working with software and hardware in the course of their jobs. Online training can be constantly updated to reflect the latest upgrades and advances.
Finance. Companies in the financial sector need to keep up with rapidly changing conditions and markets as well as compliance requirements. As financial markets differ vastly depending on geography and the types of markets or investments in question, microlearning strategies can be quite useful to train workers in particular areas.
In these and other industries, eLearning techniques can target the particular topics that trainees and employees need to absorb. The advantage of working on a platform such as our LMS is that it's extremely flexible and incorporates multiple styles of learning.
In-Person Learning: Sometimes Relevant, But Fading
Just as remote work and flexible hours are replacing the 9-5 schedule at many businesses, online learning is increasingly taking the place of traditional in-person learning. In both cases, however, the traditional model is still relevant. There will always be a need for people to interact in person. Live meetings, training sessions, and social events help to solidify relationships and reinforce information. In a high tech world, not to mention one beset with a challenging health crisis, it's natural that eLearning is becoming the predominant method of training. It's more economical, flexible, and adaptable than traditional learning methods. The challenge for today's businesses is to find the right balance. Book a meeting with an eLearning expert today to talk more!
So many people get caught up in the process of setting up and running their business that they might not pay that much attention to the idea of succession planning. When you retire, who’s going to take over your business? Do you have children who might be interested in continuing your legacy? And, if not, do you have a protégé who can keep your business going? Succession planning involves finding someone with a vision who will be able to develop and grow your business rather than just keeping it static - someone who has the flexibility necessary to adapt to the changing needs of the market.
Most successful business owners start their business and, through trial and error, learn what’s needed to make it successful. However, the person who takes over from you doesn’t have to learn things the same way.
The Importance of Succession Planning
Succession planning has now become a buzzword, especially in large firms. If someone is stepping down from a position of some importance, it becomes necessary to find someone else to take their place so that the company can continue to function smoothly.
When it comes to small firms, however, people may not use the term “succession planning.” But most business owners put some thought into figuring out who’s going to take over from them when they retire. They might encourage their children to work with them so that they can learn the ins and outs of the business.
If you’ve just started thinking about succession planning, consider the following reasons why it’s important:
Strategizing in Advance: Training someone to take over your business is a long process. Succession planning makes it easier by encouraging you to strategize in advance.
Running Your Business Your Way: With succession planning, you get to train the person who will succeed you. This means that your business will continue to be run in the way that you want.
Finding the Right Person: Sometimes, you might think that one person has what it takes to run the business, but they might not work out. If you start succession planning in advance, you can always take someone else under your wing and train them instead.
Retiring When You Want: If you’ve trained someone to take over from you, you can choose to go on as many vacations or retire as early as you want.
Infusing Your Business with New Blood: When you hire someone to train them to succeed you, chances are they’re also going to have some ideas about your business. A good protégé is one who has something to contribute even while you’re still the boss.
Succession planning is important because it enables your business to continue running smoothly, even when you’re not at its helm. By using the strategies listed above, your organization can achieve the goals below:
Longevity: Succession planning ensures that your business will have longevity. Many business owners can’t continue putting in the same hours as they approach retirement age. So it’s necessary for them to find someone who will be able to do so.
Long-Term Aims: It forces you to think about your long-term aims for your business. Once you start thinking about succession planning, you are also forced to think about where you want your business to go ten years from now.
Mentorship: With succession planning, you get to experience the joy of mentorship. Any good teacher will tell you that there’s a great deal to be said about sharing the benefit of your experience with others.
Vision: For most business owners, running their own business isn’t just about making money. It’s also about the physical realization of their mental vision. Training a successor means that you get to imbue them with this vision.
Having understood the importance and the advantages of succession planning, you might still be at a loss about how to begin. Who do you pick to be your successor? How do you train them? Do you plunge them directly into the business, let them work their way up or keep them with you 24/7? Here are a few ideas:
Finding a Successor: When you choose a successor, try to follow the same steps you would, when you hire someone new. Make up a list of duties and requirements, conduct interviews and then choose a candidate. Even if you’re thinking about training one of your children, it doesn’t hurt to go through these steps so that they understand what’s required of them.
Evaluating Strengths and Weaknesses
Think about whether that person will be a good successor. It’s easy to get carried away with enthusiasm when you’re hoping that one of your children will take over from you. But it’s always best to be clear about their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to running a business. Often times, simply liking or getting along with someone can cloud our judgement as to whether or not colleagues are the best choice for their job.
Letting Them Work Their Way Up
If possible, it’s always a good idea to hire someone at the lowest rung and allow them to work their way up. If you find someone to succeed you early enough, you can adopt this plan. You might already have someone who fits this description in your company - consider them in your succession planning. This approach allows you to see them take on different roles, while giving them time to learn the business from the inside out. As an added bonus, it means your successor would have valuable insight on the day to day operations of your workforce; instead of being a comfortable and complacent top-tier position, they would understand how the business is run from every level.
Encouraging Independence
Keeping someone with you throughout the day is a good way to make sure that they see your job role. But after a while, you should start assigning them projects they can complete on their own, with an assigned due date or starting off point. That’s the only way they’ll learn to make independent decisions and run a business on their own.
How eLearning is an Asset in Succession Planning
An LMS solution can help you deliver consistent, targeted information to up-and-coming leaders in your organization as you prepare them for stepping into future roles. Additionally, the capacity to assign quizzes/exams following learned material can also help you assess the aptitude for a potential leader to absorb and retain important information.
If you’re interested in learning more about how an eLearning system can help facilitate succession planning, feel free to contact us today. We’re happy to help you create succession planning learning paths for the future leaders of your organization.
New Badges page for learners, with heightened features! With this page, learners can see which badges they have completed, which are available to them. Clicking on the badge itself will expose a list below, with all of the courses they can take to complete that badge.
Located in the User LMS - Achievements - Badges
New Benchmark Page
New Benchmark page for learners, which allows learners to compare their training progress to other learners in the system, including the best learner, the average learner, and their group(s).
Located in the User LMS - Achievements - Benchmark
Improved User Menu
In the learner side of the LMS, we've updated the menu for a friendlier navigation and streamlined design! The menu now has all icons, as well as rollover text, which learners can see when they scroll their mouse over the icons.
Download Transcripts as a PDF
Coming soon, learners will have the option to instantaneously download transcripts as a PDF, by pressing a download button in their "Transcripts" page.
Course Set Auto-Select Dropdown Menu
Admins can now type in a few letters into a course set dropdown menu and the appropriate course sets will automatically fill in, for a more seamless experience.
Located under Administrator LMS - Content – Course Sets - Assign Courses - Add/Remove Courses.
Certificate Upload Preview
Admins can now see a thumbnail preview of their certificate backgrounds when editing a course. To view this, click the "Edit Certificate" button on the Course Editing page. Then select your desired certificate background in the popup window.
Located under Admin LMS – Content – Courses
Restricted Group Admin
A new role has been added to the LMS! Now Super Admins have the ability to restrict the visibility of a Group Admin with our new Restricted Group Admin Role. To do this, go into the account of a Group Admin, and check the box for "Restricted Group Admin". Once that box is checked, the next time that Group Admin logs in, they will only be able to see content and areas of the LMS pertaining to their group only.
Content Upload Process Enhancement
Add new courses more efficiently than ever with our new file upload enhancement. Now, when an admin is creating a new Online course, once the course edit page has been filled out, just click "Save & Continue" to be taken directly to the file upload screen.
You may know automotive technicians are a male-dominated industry. But did you know by how much? According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in 2018, women only account for about 2% of all auto mechanics.
For International Women’s Day, Knowledge Anywhere’s partner New Ford Tech wants to highlight the accomplishments of women in the auto industry, through an interview with a female mechanic in their ACE program. If you’d like to hear more about Courtney's story from her own perspective, alongside other women in the auto-workplace, you can watch the recording of New Ford Tech's live broadcast here.
Brad McClure, the Ford Technical Recruiting Liaison, representing the Oklahoma Ford Dealers, recognized Courtney Parrish, at Riverside Ford of Tulsa, for completing the Ford ACE Technician Training Program Curriculum in the fall of 2020. At the time, Courtney was an Automotive Service Technology student of Tulsa Technology Center and had an Internship at Riverside Ford of Tulsa.
When asked how she decided to become an automotive technician, Courtney said,
“I graduated high school and worked unskilled jobs for a couple years and did not like the work. I have always wanted to work on cars. Because of my dad, automotive repair is in my blood. And the fact I am a little bit of a tomboy, made this my career of choice. I love American Muscle Cars and I want to work on American Made cars. Foreign cars are cool and all that, but they are not what I like. I like American made cars. This past February 2020, as a 23 year-old single mother of a new baby son, I decided to go back to Tulsa Tech for Automotive Service Technology. I have overcome some major hurdles, but it has been worth all the effort. I now get to work on cars, and I love it.”
Working at Riverside Ford of Tulsa for her internship was just what she wanted. Today, Courtney is a graduate and works full time as a Technician Helper, so she can get in more depth experience working on the vehicles. Help us all congratulate Courtney for her great accomplishments and cheer her on for a bright future as a Ford Automotive Service Technician!
The Ford Automotive Career Exploration (ACE) program is a cooperative training program sponsored by Ford Motor Company in partnership with local Ford Dealerships and Career Technical Training programs, in order to help train and certify Ford Automotive Service Technicians. Students in the program get access to Ford Automotive Service Training Web Based Training courses that prepare them for working at a Ford Dealership. These are the same courses that are used in the Ford and Lincoln dealerships. An ACE program student can have over 65 Ford Web Based Training completed courses to transfer when hired by a Ford or Lincoln dealership or joining a Ford Career Entry program.
About the ACE Program
If you’re interested in learning more about becoming a New Ford Tech, visit here, where a representative will reach out to you within two business days.
Do you already have skills and want to join Courtney in the field as a technician? If so, click here to join the workforce.
There are so many great, useful features that Learning Management Systems (LMS) offer; it can be easy to lose sight of the ones companies should prioritize. Below is the absolute, must have list for ten top, must-have LMS features, in no particular order. When looking for a new training platform, you should be sure to ask about these, alongside other key demo questions.
Analytics/Dashboard
Without a doubt, this should be a priority. One of the great benefits of choosing a formalized training system is a clear way to evaluate progress through data. And while implementing a training process is a great first step, it means very little without the follow-through of analytics to back it up. Through a Dashboard, you should be able to track, measure, and evaluate the following:
Course completions
Course hours completed
Time spent per course
Geo-location of users
Popularity of learning materials
Amount of users (new, inactive, active, etc.)
Administrators should also have an option of how to view this data, including specific dates or time periods and customizable fields. For reference, here are a few data related questions that you should be asking during a demo of the system:
What types of metrics does the eLearning company track?
Where are metrics located within the system?
How customizable is the data?
Can it be segmented by all end users?
Can it be segmented by specific teams?
Can it be segmented by specific departments?
Can it be segmented by individual learners?
Can administrators choose the date range of their data?
Can administrators choose how they prefer metrics to be displayed?
Training can be monotonous. These features can provide some fun and friendly competition or sense of personal accomplishment. Studies show that users spend more time, more willingly on systems that leverage gamification, since it’s seen as less of a chore and more of a challenge. When a user’s experience with training is positive, the willingness to complete it should increase.
2. They allow learners to show off their progress internally and externally
Besides just being interesting, badges and certifications have real world value. Internally, it can be used for employees to show employers that they have learned new skills and systems, and can even potentially be used as justification of more responsibility.
Outside of the organization, it shows user’s level of employability in ways that are tangible and easy for others to see. Instead of saying “I have worked with [X skill, system, or product],” learners with badges and certificates can proudly display official-looking titles, with their names, while explaining “I have been professionally trained and certified in [X skill, system, or product] on [date] during my [role] at [company]. This sounds more official, legitimate, and specific. In other words, it’s certifiable!
Transcripts
Learners need a way to easily access courses they have already taken, as well as ones that are due soon. Enter, transcripts. This is a straightforward way to visually see and sort training, all in one place. This page will vary widely, depending on the system being used. Here is a list of a few things to look out for when viewing a provider’s transcript page:
Course progress. For example, is the course completed? In progress? Untouched?
Course accomplishments. This could include a score card of how well the learner did in the course, or a downloadable certificate. This can act as a storage place for learner achievements.
Course due dates. If a course is due soon, you want to make sure learners don’t miss it, Making these easily identifiable is a key part of a transcript page.
Downloadable transcripts. Having a transcript is great. But it’s even more helpful if it’s accessible outside of the system. If there is an option to download, this is a huge plus within a system, allowing learners to show off their training to others.
Customization and Branding
One size rarely ever fits all. That’s why it’s important that your eLearning provider takes your company into account when setting up a system. Customization and branding allow corporations to reflect their company colors, logos, missions, values, and overall brand. This can also serve to reinforce current marketing strategies to re-remind internal employees or to show off external partners your company in another light.
Training isn’t just a one-off event; it should be woven into the fabric of your corporation. This means it should communicate professionalism and efficiency, while remaining true to your company’s personal culture. Here’s a few elements of your LMS that Administrators should be able to be personalized:
Logos
Text
Image placement, cropping, and color edits
Colors
Social media links
Languages
Personalized badges
Personalized email formatting
External Training Uploads
Training doesn’t always happen in the same place. If you want to include learner’s training records completed outside of a Learning Management System, external training uploads are the way to go. With this feature, Administrators will have the option to add a training title, date, file name, and file URL. This results in an effective way to import training from other sources, onto your LMS.
Although this is a generic feature, it’s potentially the most important. A streamlined learner training platform is essential. It should be easy to navigate and self explanatory, so employees can get in, do their training, and get out. This will not only create a positive experience for the end user, but it also helps the organization, since clear training platforms require less Administrator assistance and back and forth emails about how to complete training.
To test out this element of an LMS, simply look at the system during a demo or trial. Is it easy to navigate? Can you find what you need?
Social Media Sharing Integrations
While learning, users should feel like they’re making progress. For maximum engagement and usage, online training be as beneficial to employees as it is for employers. Ideally, an LMS would provide learners skills that would make them more employable. One innovative way to do this is by having a platform that integrates with social medias, that can seamlessly show off newly acquired skills. For example, let’s say you’re in marketing and have taken multiple courses about SEO, Google Analytics, and Product Management. If you’ve completed the courses and obtained a certificate, you could add these employable skills to your personal resume. The next time you look for a job, you’ll be able to prove how this training can help the new company, not only the old one!
If an LMS has the ability to integrate with LinkedIn, this is even better! Knowledge Anywhere is a LinkedIn Learning LMS Integration Partner, which allows us to upload and update all LinkedIn Learning content directly in Knowledge Anywhere’s systems, providing a streamlined experience for companies, administrators, and learners, alike. Our platform also allows learners to post their certificates directly into their LinkedIn profile and allows them to show off which training was completed, who assigned it, and when it was done. interviewers often check the online presence of interviewees when deciding on a new hire. By completing training and making it available to the public eye, it’s now possible to benefit from the fruits of your labor!
SCORM Conversion Tool
We’ve done a lot of blogs in the past about creating and uploading content on an LMS. To get content on your platform quickly, you need to make your materials SCORM compliant.
So what is SCORM and why is it important? In short, SCORM stands for “Shareable Content Object Reference Model.” It is technically not a single set of standards; SCORM is a collection of standards and specifications for eLearning technology, and serves as a guideline or reference point for how developers can successfully use different standards in combination with one another. At its core, SCORM is concerned with regulating two vital aspects of a Learning Management System: content packaging and data exchange.
If your LMS has a built in SCORM converter, that is ideal! If it doesn’t, there are standalone products that can do this pretty inexpensively. For example, Scormify is a fast and easy SCORM conversion tool, which instantly transforms learning objects, such as documents, videos, or PDFs, into SCORM-compliant training materials, to place into Learning Management Systems.
Make sure you can actually use the training content you’ve worked so hard to create, and do the work to check if your materials are SCORM compliant.
Supports Multiple Languages
Language is an essential part of communication. It allows access to information. In order for learners around the world to get the skills they need, multi-lingual functionality is imperative. A quick, easy step is to put together a list of what languages you think your learners will need, then ask your LMS training provider if they already offer (or have the option to offer) those translation services.
Personalized Support
Feeling supported in the ideation and implementation process is important. The truth is, there are many eLearning companies with great technology. The key is to find one that also understands your organization’s goals and will strategize with you to help you achieve them. Your provider should introduce you to the system and train you on how to make it your own. They should be available for support questions and queries. They should also check in frequently, to see if any assistance is necessary.
At Knowledge Anywhere, we have over a 23 year history of successful partnerships. Knowledge Anywhere is focused on a customer-centric approach. We don’t sell our products and disappear. We strategize and assist organizations as they utilize our eLearning tools to engage, empower and inspire their workforce. Think of us as an extension of your own team! And while our learning technology is pretty cool, we think our people are what really makes the difference when it comes to our customers’ success.
Training your sales team is about more than teaching them how to make sales. It also is a great opportunity to teach them job specifics in the way you want them done. Whether you have a special tactics customized for your customer base or just a general set of best practices, sales training is the best way to integrate these core concepts into their daily work schedules. When you implement sales training, it’s not enough to simply have your team take a few courses. You’ll also want to have mechanisms in place to gauge the training’s effectiveness. There are a number of metrics you can look at to determine how successful your sales training is. Using these metrics to evaluate training has a number of positive effects, including:
Helping you adjust training, if necessary, to give your sales team the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in their roles.
Helping the existing team save time training new employees — the more comprehensive and engaging the training, the less time will be spent going over the concepts within the course.
It will ultimately lead to more sales.
Let’s take a closer look at four ways you can track the success of your organization’s sales training.
1. Revenue Results
Obviously, the main goal of sales training is to give your sales team the knowledge they need to make more sales. To that end, the ultimate metric for determining the success of your sales training is the number and quality of sales your team makes overall. Your sales training is intended to equip your sales team with the information they need to identify prospects, engage them effectively, and ultimately close the sale. Your curriculum should reinforce your strategy and tactics, targeting several different parts of the selling process. Certainly, your sales team will bring their own personal expertise and experience to the table as well. But the overall success of your sales operations will depend on the tips, tricks, and processes you share with your team. Communicating them with your team is critical to ensuring uniform performance across your entire operation. If you implement a new LMS, first look to see how it’s affecting your team’s sales numbers. If there’s an uptick, it may mean you have the right training in place. If numbers stagnate or go down, you may need to take another look at what you’re teaching and adapt your content where necessary.
2. Employee Performance Reviews
The team’s sales results tell one side of the story. But individual employee performance reviews also help measure how successful the sales training is. While the team’s performance is valuable to help you assess your training, your team members aren’t robots. They each learn and perform differently. When you examine the individual performances of your team members, you’ll be able to see which ones benefited from your sales training the most when you track training. You’ll also get a better idea of any variations in performance across the team. For example, let’s say you have a veteran member of your team whose performance begins to lag before you implement a new sales training program. If their numbers begin to improve, you may be able to chalk that up to the improvements in your team’s training. Conversely, if new team members join and take an updated training course, but are being routinely outperformed by existing team members who took an older training course, you may need to adjust your material.
3. Sales Team Feedback
Numbers and stats are important in business. But you should also listen to what your employees are saying about the training system, to see how you can optimize it. You can gather this feedback in the form of surveys or other data points. The important thing is to press your team for their thoughts on the course. To help start the process, here’s a few questions that you could ask them:
On [insert scale here], what was the difficulty of [name of course or training here]?
Which parts of the sales training did you find the most engaging?
What type of learning helps you retain information the best?
Do you feel this course helped you? Comment below with honest feedback.
Are there any more sales topics or lessons that you felt should have been added?
It isn’t the most scientific metric, but considering the user experience is imperative. You’ll want to have training that your team members enjoy and, most importantly, find valuable in learning the material.
4. Post-Training Evaluation
Does your sales training have some sort of evaluation in place to help determine how much information your team members actually learned during the training? This is where course content is processed and applied, usually taking the form of a test or quiz following the course. It will accurately reflect just how well they were able to retain the data. If your sales team members are consistently scoring below average on their post-training evaluation, there may be an issue with the content, the questions, or both. You can get a better handle on the specific problem when you ask your team for their thoughts.
Reevaluating How to Track Sales’ Success
In summary, there are four indicators you can look at to determine the effectiveness of your online sales training:
Overall team sales
Individual employee sales
Feedback from your team
Performance on post-training evaluation
On their own, none of these will tell the whole story. But you can examine them together as part of an integrated approach to determining the efficacy of your online courses. Rethink how you measure your sales training’s success and also, how you develop your sales training to begin with. At Knowledge Anywhere, we’re experts for advising on online training and eLearning. We can help you empower your team and prepare them for success. To learn more about how we can partner with you to create more effective sales training, schedule a meeting with us today.
4 Tricks to Remotely Involve Employees in the Company
With more people working remotely than ever before, businesses are faced with a brand new challenge; how do you keep employees invested and accountable if they are not in the office?
Luckily there are a few strategies which will let you ensure that remote workers feel involved with the company and satisfied by their jobs, even if they are logging on from home rather than sharing the same space as their colleagues and managers. Here are just a handful of the top tricks to implement to achieve this in your business.
Offer Training & Development to Bolster Career Progression
Employees and companies alike can reap the benefits of schemes designed to endow individuals with new skills that they can put to use in their daily duties.
Furthermore, there are plenty of programs you could try offering to members of staff at all levels, ranging from team communication training to conflict resolution, leadership, emotional intelligence, and everything in between.
By giving employees the option to train and develop fresh abilities, you will be showing them that you not only value them but also want to see them make progress and unleash their true potential as they continue down their chosen career path.
Thanks to the explosion in the number of remotely accessible training schemes, working from home is no barrier to getting the guidance employees need to succeed. And more skillful employees will be more productive and valuable to the business as a whole, which is obviously good news.
Clarify Goals & Recognize Achievements
Part of the reason that some remote workers can feel disconnected from an organization is that they do not have a specific, concrete goal to work towards, either individually or as a team.
This can be exacerbated further in larger groups, where fragmented aims and a lack of clarity can create a snowball effect which may even result in conflict.
As such it is necessary to outline specific goals which are being worked towards by all team members, so that everyone has something to aim for and each person understands what is expected of them in this context.
Better still, take this a step further and ensure that employees get the recognition they deserve for their achievements in the line of duty. If a deadline is hit and this goes unnoticed, workers will be less bothered about putting in all that effort the next time around, so formally implementing an employee recognition system to make sure that this does not happen in a remote working scenario is sensible.
Remote working invariably involves a lot of virtual meetings, and you might think that just because you see team members in this group conferencing context several times a week or even multiple times a day, this is enough to ensure company-wide engagement.
In reality, there are many stresses and strains that come with multi-participant virtual meetings that can leave some attendees feeling unseen and undervalued as a result. It is therefore better to make sure that individual catch-ups are also part of your schedule, so that you can check in to see how each member is doing in an environment where they can get points across without fear of being interrupted.
Clearly this will take up more of your time as a result, but the benefits in terms of employee engagement and involvement will be worth it.
Invest in the Best Tools
Employees can feel hamstrung while working remotely if they are forced to communicate and collaborate with colleagues using suboptimal solutions.
Whether this means leveraging cloud storage so that teams can simultaneously contribute to projects, share updates and see the latest changes to documents and files, or transitioning away from an email-first approach to communication and harnessing an inter-organizational instant messaging service like Slack as the first port of call for quick chats, having the right tools to hand can be seriously empowering.
In short, your efforts to involve employees in the company when they are working remotely should not be pinned on a single approach, but should involve several concurrent strategies to get the best results.
As virtual training and learning has increased at light speed over the past year, many people have turned to eLearning in order to improve training outcomes. Unfortunately, many myths persist that have left people unsure about virtual learning. Have you fallen prey to these common training myths?
Myth #1: It does not work for all learner types.
Some people believe that eLearning only works for visual learners: those who can readily absorb information directly from the screen, without needing someone else to explain it to them. In reality, however, eLearning is a highly effective style for learners of all types. It can include visual, auditory, and even kinesthetic methods, depending on the modules used and how you interact with your students. Through platforms like Knowledge Anywhere, you can also provide increased interaction for your students.
Myth #2: It decreases interaction (and makes it hard to measure).
During eLearning courses, learners are, of course, locked to their computer screens, rather than interacting in a standard classroom environment. That does not mean, however, that it does not allow for interaction: both interaction between students and interaction between student and teacher or trainer. In fact, eLearning can provide for less distracted interaction, since instructors can place students in breakout rooms for small group interactions. Students may, in some cases, also receive more interaction with the instructor, since instructors can more accurately track all student progress.
In addition, eLearning provides a high degree of tracking and accountability; providing data on organizational, departmental, and individual levels. Often, instructors can do a better job of paying attention to all students and judging their interaction than they can if they have students in a traditional classroom environment. Instructors can track individual student progress and even see how often they interact with their peers and with the classroom as a whole.
Myth #3: It’s difficult for students who don’t learn at the same pace
Some people have a mental picture of eLearning that looks something like a television show. Instead of actively interacting with the content, they picture learners passively taking in information while staring at the screen, then being forced to take a test on it when they reach the end.
Modern technology, however, has made eLearning more interactive than ever. Not only does it allow students to directly interact with instructors and peers, asking questions and determining what they need to know about their content, it also provides students with customized content that they can take in at their preferred pace. For fast learners, that may mean quickly going over the information, taking a test or quiz, and moving on to other content. Struggling learners, on the other hand, can choose to review that material or access supplemental information as needed.
Myth #4: Creating modules is a complex, time-consuming process.
In order to treat training content of any type, you will need to create a foundation for that content. You may, for example, already have a handbook that employees are expected to review, or you may have training videos that your business has been using for a long time. Developing eLearning content, however, is often simpler than you think. In many cases, including health and safety training, you can find pre-created modules that already fit your needs. In others, you can often incorporate your existing materials to create highly effective training modules based on your company’s individual needs. The basic setup and format is already in place; you need only add in the information that is specific to your company.
If you’d like to learn more about how to get quality content immediately up on your learning platform, check out our free eBook, which provides tips, as well as free training templates, in PDF and in PowerPoint form!
Myth #5: Employees don’t like eLearning.
Many employers choose not to implement eLearning protocols for their organizations because they think their employees will not like them. Employees might not want to be stuck behind a computer all day, for example, or might struggle with the lack of face-to-face relationship.
In reality, however, most employees like using eLearning platforms to go through training and learn more about their industries. In many cases, employees prefer the ability to work at their own pace. It’s easier to ask questions and work through problems on a screen, when you don’t feel pressured to meet time constraints, than it is to handle similar issues during in-person training sessions. Not only that, eLearning means that employees can fit in their training sessions when it’s convenient for them, rather than having to attend training at a specific time and in a specific place. In fact, there are many employee benefits of online training, that help advance their careers and skillsets.
Small companies may turn away from eLearning opportunities because they feel that they are outside their budget or will take too much time to implement. The truth, however, is that eLearning offers opportunities for all organizations, both big and small. Pretreated training modules can make it much easier for many employers to keep their employees up-to-date on basic health and safety regulations, harassment protocols, and even industry standards. Creating your own training modules can help ensure that all employees receive the same training, regardless of who is on hand the day they need it. Many small organizations have also found that eLearning can help cut their training costs each year.
Myth #7: It’s expensive.
Compared to many types of training and learning, eLearning is not expensive at all. To send an employee out for training, you may need to pay for travel costs, a hotel room, and a per diem fee. To bring a trainer into your organization, you will need to pay the same types of fees. When your employees train through eLearning methods, on the other hand, you can often provide them with the information they need from the convenience of the office. They won’t have to travel or be away from home, which means they will also be more likely to take on additional training or certifications. The truth is, investing in online training can cut costs and increase ROI.
Corporate training is a highly effective method of handling training, assisting employees as they move toward additional certifications, and ensuring that your employees meet necessary standards each year. If you’re interested in learning more about what eLearning opportunities could offer for your organization, contact us today.
The Science of Knowledge Retention and How It Affects Online Training
Although learning is often associated with school, the fact is, people learn throughout their lives. This is true more than ever, as new technology is constantly being introduced. In the business world, companies need to train new hires and keep employees updated on the latest advances. The science of knowledge retention is worth studying, as it helps you design more effective training. When you need to teach something, you need to understand how retention works and how to address the needs of different types of learners.
Learning Retention in Adults
When you create online courses, you’re not simply creating a school for grown-ups. It turns out that there are important differences in the way children and adults learn.
It’s been widely observed that children learn many things more quickly than adults. For example, a child picks up a second or even third language fairly easily while adults struggle at memorizing vocabulary and rules. Children also tend to learn sports, how to play musical instruments, and other tasks fairly quickly. In a blog for Gottesman Libraries Teachers College, Abdul Malik Muftau explains that in adults, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is more developed, which makes adults see things in a more fixed way. However, that’s only part of the story.
Adults are Self-Directed and Motivated
One of the main differences in teaching adults is that they need to be self-motivated. Christopher Pappas, in the eLearning Industry, explains some key characteristics of adult learners. While children tend to absorb things naturally, adults need to make a conscious effort to learn something new. Adults’ fixed mindset makes them less open-minded and more resistant to change, which is why they need to understand the relevance of what they’re learning. For example, if they’re learning how to use the software, it helps to explain exactly how online training will benefit them.
Adults Relate New Knowledge to Personal Experience
While children have less experience to draw upon, adult learners tend to connect new knowledge with what they already know. When you teach adults, you aren’t dealing with a blank slate, but with minds that are already full of facts and experiences. This can work in the favor of eLearning, if trainers are able to leverage new information by relating it to common experiences.
Doing and Teaching Improves Retention
As we’ll see below, people have different learning preferences. However, almost everyone will retain more information if they repeat out loud and actually do what they’ve been taught. One influential learning model, the Learning Pyramid, postulates students retain only 10% of what they read but 75% of what they do and 90% of what they teach to others.
How to Increase Learning Retention in Online Learning
The way adults learn has important implications for online learning. The following are some key points to keep in mind when developing an LMS or online course.
Emphasize relevance. Since adults are self-directed, it’s not enough to present information in a purely abstract way. Emphasize how it will be put to use. Some learning, such as a type of process or software, helps employees do their jobs more efficiently. Other types of knowledge, such as policies on workplace discrimination and sexual harassment, can have serious consequences for employees’ careers. In all instances, pointing out the major benefits of learning and possible negative consequences of failing to learn, can help improve retention.
Use analogies and connect new ideas and processes with older, familiar ones. Since adults are always processing new information in relation to what they already know, it helps to bridge ideas.
Have learners practice and repeat what they’ve learned. This gets back to the above statistics about learning retention. It’s much more effective to have someone perform a task than to simply learn it by reading or hearing about it. That’s why the most effective learning management systems use technology such as gamification and interactive video.
Use chunking. The chunking technique involves taking small bits of information and combining them into groups. Finding connections between items and categorizing them makes it easier to remember. A simple example is how we remember long strings of numbers such as phone numbers or social security numbers. Rather than remembering each digit separately, we group them into sets of 3 or 4, as in 123-456-789.
Use frequent assessments and quizzes to measure progress. It’s essential to track learners’ progress as often as possible. The very act of taking a quiz or assessment helps to reinforce knowledge. It also lets you review the course and make adjustments in your approach.
eLearning to Meet the Needs of Different Learning Styles
We’ve looked at some general principles concerning the science of learning retention and adult learning. It’s also the case that people learn in different ways. When creating a course or an online training program, you have to meet the needs of diverse learning styles. Let’s look at some ways you can design a course that accomplishes this.
Reading Prefer the traditional method of reading material.
Visual Learn best by seeing.
Auditory Retain more of what they hear.
Kinesthetic Need a hands-on and experiential approach.
People don’t necessarily fit into one single category. However, it’s common for learners to have a preference for one or two of the above modalities.
Provide Coursework in a Variety of Formats
With today’s technology, it’s possible to create courses that incorporate multiple learning methods. The material can be presented in a variety of formats, such as text, audio, videos, and interactive games. When the information is presented in diverse formats, it’s better able to meet the needs of different types of learners.
Use Personalization
A personalized approach to learning lets individual learners make choices about how they learn. Even if everyone needs to reach the same goals and perhaps pass the same assessments, they don’t necessarily have to get there by the same path. Knowledge Anywhere’s LMS, for example, lets you create custom learning paths that are designed to meet the needs of individual learners. We also have a large focus on branded content and personalization.
Keep Looking for Ways to Improve Retention
The science of learner retention is constantly evolving. Results also depend a great deal on the environment and motivation for learning. For example, employees who know that training can help them advance in their careers tend to be more motivated learners than those forced to undergo annual compliance training. Yet all types of learning can be presented in a way that optimizes retention by emphasizing the benefits and meeting the needs of diverse learning styles. Testing your results and making changes when appropriate allows you to observe which methods provide the best knowledge retention for your needs.
Asynchronous or Synchronous: A Guide To eLearning Approaches
Organizations face the challenge of providing continuous education for personnel. eLearning has become a powerful go-to method of accomplishing this goal across many industries and enterprises. For learners to participate and acquire new skills and knowledge, there are two methods of online training to pay attention to; synchronous and asynchronous eLearning. Let’s take a closer look at both of these methods now.
Synchronous eLearning
Most of us are familiar with different types of eLearning from enrolling in classes and seminars that utilize virtual classrooms. Here’s a few ways that training can occur: via webinars, video conferences, webcasts, application sharing, and live chat. In synchronous eLearning, the presentation occurs at specific times for the group to participate in the training which is led by a professional online instructor. Benefits of synchronous eLearning include the following:
Instructors can deliver course material and answer participants’ questions live, which improves the quality of the program.
Instructors can receive instant feedback about the class to put to help improve future classes.
eLearners realize cost savings since they are not required to travel to offsite class locations.
Collaborative and interactive training is delivered in a virtual classroom through tools such as whiteboards and screen sharing.
Large groups of eLearners are reached simultaneously, which conserves time that can be used to schedule other classes and attend to other tasks and projects.
However, synchronous eLearning does have some disadvantages:
eLearners must adhere to a set schedule and are unable to access the content at their convenience.
Some participants may get lost in the shuffle if there is a large group participating. Questions may go unseen in chats if others are “speaking” over them.
The speed of the presentation may be too slow or too fast for some participants.
Technical problems can arise which may interfere with the live class. This could include anything, from losing internet access to having audio difficulties. Advanced technical know-how is often required on both ends to help solve unexpected issues.
Asynchronous eLearning
In asynchronous online education, eLearners do not gather simultaneously in virtual classrooms. Instead, presentations are pre-recorded and digital materials are delivered via email, discussion boards, social networking, and collaborative documents. Commonly used delivery methods include recorded audio, video presentations, and discussion tools. This type of eLearning offers the following advantages:
Greater flexibility for eLearners to access curriculum at their convenience and from any location.
Discussion forums help reinforce learning through discussions with peers. This aids in the reinforcement and retention of the curriculum.
Learning can take place over time which can help eLearners practice and apply the material.
However, this type of learning may not suit all, because:
Some eLearners may feel isolated in attempting to understand the material without a live instructor.
The lack of live communication means expressions and tones of an instructor are not present to hold interest.
This approach requires eLearners to be self-disciplined, motivated, and not easily distracted to progress through the material.
The limited contact with the instructors and other participants may be frustrating for some.
Clarification and support may not be as easily accessible in self-paced courses.
A combination of learning tools can be used in either approach. For example, while live webinars are intended to gather participants together at the same time, they are also recorded for viewing later on. This also applies to texting to ask questions about the materials. The conversation is synchronous if the recipient is online and can respond immediately. However, it becomes asynchronous if the question is not answered until later.
Blending Asynchronous and Synchronous eLearning
A third option in eLearning is to utilize tools from both approaches. A Learning Management System (LMS) provides a blend of tools to support both types of presentations. These can combine videos, downloadable files, live sessions, discussions, and texts all in one platform. The blended approach offers invaluable social interactions while providing flexibility in presentations. Users have the flexibility of viewing lessons on their own time while real-time support is provided by instructors as needed.
Interactions In Both Approaches
Both asynchronous and synchronous learning approaches require participants to mentally process the material individually as well as have the option to socially interact with others. In the asynchronous approach, interacting with the content is a way to ensure the material is understood. An example of content interaction would be a series of multiple choice questions following a presentation. Another tool would be an online interactive activity, such as using the application that was taught. For example, a lesson on how to use PowerPoint could be followed by an exercise where the user creates their own slideshow with the application. Social interactions are just as important in either eLearning approach. Using the above lesson example, a participant with a question about adding graphics to a slide, can either instantly message an instructor (synchronous) for the answer or post the question to an online forum (asynchronous). Without valuable social interactions, it is difficult to have access to different points of view and gain new insights. Instructors accessing eLearner forums can also see what points are more confusing and make clarifications accordingly.
Choosing the Best Solution
When building courses for eLearners, the following factors must be considered when deciding on asynchronous, synchronous, or a blend of both approaches.
Who and where is the target audience? Participants with varying skill and experience levels who are located all over the world may benefit most from asynchronous learning. A selection of courses at various levels can be provided to accommodate skill levels. Time zone differences would also not be an obstacle. If the course content is highly specialized and complex, synchronous learning is the better option. Instructors can then instantly address questions and clarify concepts during the presentation.
Internet and Wi-Fi accessibility. Most participants will normally have access to 24/7 high speed internet without any issues. However, inclement weather can cause extended downtimes and must be considered when planning and presenting synchronous learning courses.
Our powerful and versatile Learning Management System (LMS) at Knowledge Anywhere can help you deliver and manage course content in several ways. Our centralized learning platform provides a variety of methodologies to build and manage content with access to virtual learning, webinars, assessments, and instructor-led training. Whether you select synchronous, asynchronous, or a blend of the two presentation methods, our experienced team will help to ensure that your courseware is immersive, engaging, and informative for your eLearners.
Contact us to schedule a demo of our LMS and learn how our platform can help you build an effective training and development program.
This new tool allows Administrators to set course renewals, for repeating a course after a certain amount of time. This is useful if learners are supposed to retake courses. On the user side, this will show up as “Course History” underneath the courses that have been taken multiple times. For Administrators, reports on renewed courses are located under Reports – Course Details - Course Renewal/Iteration filter option. To see the Renewal/Iterations, this option can be added under Content – Courses.
Renewal Course History
Learners can now see their course history on courses that have implemented the auto-renewal feature and have been taken multiple times. Includes the potential for progress report, date taken, score, and certification if available. Viewable under Learner Side LMS – My Courses, within course cards that have multiple retakes.
“Due Soon” Banner for Courses
Learners will now see a teal colored Banner, with “Due Soon” text for courses that will expire within the next 30 dates. This will be located in the Learner Side LMS under “My Courses,” as well as “Transcripts.”
Training Timeline: Identifying Your Stage and Next Steps
What is a training timeline and where are learners within it? In this blog, we'll explore how to identify the different stages of the training process and discuss how to move forward from each point.
Onboarding
Onboarding is usually the most first type of training that comes to mind, since the learner is new and knows nothing about the organization's process, products, or rules. A vital stage, updated and engaging onboarding is a surefire way to ensure new employees understand how to best do their job.
This stage can be customized depending on role, rule, or product. For example, Knowledge Anywhere has resources that can tailor specifically towards onboarding product training for sales representatives. This kind of attention to detail will only help employees clarify how they can succeed within your company.
Training
The title of this stage is vague for a reason - general, anytime training can have many different forms. Here's a few types of training for different types of employees:
The key here is to sit down and think about how each kind of training could elevate employee knowledge and company wellbeing. Once the correct approach is identified, get started on implementation!
Re-Engagement & Check-Ins
Sometimes, our availability or motivation dips - for those times, it's imperative that your organization has a re-engagement plan in place. It's time to utilize internal marketing strategies to reach your learners and remind them why online training is important for them and the company. Here's a few quick steps to implementing re-engagement campaigns. To see more, check out our blog about How To Implement A Captivating eLearning Re-Engagement Campaign:
Figure out WHY learners aren't engaged
Evaluate your learning materials
Create need and make it urgent
Launch an internal marketing strategy
Refresh & Renew
The biggest mistake trainers can make is assuming that they're done after a course has been completed by learners. In truth, there is no "end" to training - it's a continuous cycle of lifetime learning, which should be refreshed and renewed often. To stop training is like saying there's no more to learn!
If you find yourself not creating or managing any training at the moment, rethink where your organization's training fits within this cycle. If you need some inspiration here's a few starting blocks to help: what can you do to make it more relevant to users? How can your company be improved by enhanced employee skills? Are all certificates, information, and products up to date? Is your compliance training refreshed and up to date? Have you created a 1 year LMS check-up?
Summary
Learning is an ongoing, lifelong process. Your training should be no different! Check-in with your learning platform constantly, for optimization and improvement. The goal is to think of corporate training as less of an event, and more of an experience. For any questions about eLearning, talk to an expert for free today!
When your team has to learn, you'll want to have a reliable training program in place to support and accommodate all types of learners through a multifaceted learning approach.
That's why the strongest organizations tend to have a strong training ecosystem to support their employees. But what is a training ecosystem, and what are their main components? And how can you build the best training ecosystem possible to accommodate the learning your team needs to accomplish?
A Training Ecosystem: Definition
First, a definition: a training ecosystem is all the training materials available to learners within an organization. These can come in a variety of formats, but it includes all learning and educational content employees are responsible for mastering. A training ecosystem represents everything within an organization dedicated to employees' learning and growth. But why use the term ecosystem and not "training program?"
Think of any ecosystem in nature. No matter what type of setting, they all have one thing in common — they're made up of many parts that interact with each other to create the whole. A forest has trees, rivers, and animals that all have a specific role within that ecosystem. In a training ecosystem, each component plays a different role, relying on the others to function effectively. A training ecosystem serves as almost a living organism — adapting, evolving, and thriving based on the content, platforms, and people who contribute to it. A jungle isn't just made up of trees - the same can be said for training systems. Not only do you need one piece of the puzzle, but many that work together to create a whole system, set up for employee success.
But what are these different components that make up the training ecosystem?
Different Components of A Training Ecosystem
Each component in your training ecosystem plays a different role. Let's take a closer look at a few:
Content
Your content is the actual information and data provided. It's what users need to learn to perform their roles more effectively. Content can include:
Mandatory or legally required certification or training
Policies and procedures
Emergency response and business continuity plans
Job-specific guidance
You can have content that your entire organization needs to learn, or content specific to teams or individuals. This resource can be developed internally or externally, depending on your level of comfort creating content or outsourcing it.
No matter what, you'll want to vet and regularly update content to ensure it reflects the accurate and updated information you need your organization to understand.
Platforms & Channels
Other components of your training system include the platforms you use to convey the information to the learners. This includes the technology you utilize to take advantage of these platforms. There are multiple types of learning systems — the important thing is to have one (or many) that fits different types of learners within your team.
Cutting edge technology is always emerging. Instead of being conducted in a classroom setting, not almost all corporate training has moved online. Here's a few great channels/platforms that an organization can use to stay current and interactive:
The learners in a training ecosystem are the people tasked with consuming content. Understanding this group and how they learn best is critical to selecting the content and platforms that enable the highest retention levels.
The administrators in a training ecosystem are the people responsible for assisting with the transmission of information from the content to learners. In the past, teachers would operate in a classroom setting. Now? They can represent:
The learner themselves, as many online courses are self-guided and self-taught
Whoever's responsible for developing the content, whether that is an internal department or external expert
Educational coordinators meant to address questions about training content
Culture
Finally, your company's educational culture is also part of your training ecosystem. Your culture is not just the sum total of all components in an ecosystem; it's also the values and mission of your organization. Your culture will guide what kind of training your organization will take part in. For example, let's say one of your company's primary values is taking an ethical approach to work. It would then make sense to develop an ethics training course for everyone in your organization to complete.
Think of your company's culture — both the overarching values and your educational goals— as the guiding force for the direction in which your training ecosystem moves. Your overall brand should be reflected in your training content, emphasizing your culture's various aspects.
How to build the strongest training ecosystem possible
Now that you understand how a training ecosystem functions and what the different components of it are, it's critical to understand how to build the strongest one possible. The first thing to remember about building a strong training ecosystem is that each piece is interconnected. No single aspect of your ecosystem operates in a vacuum; each one relies on all other components to be successful.
That's why when you're defining and developing each part of your training ecosystem, consider all parts. When you're developing content, consider who the specific audience is, who will develop the content and whether they're qualified to do so, what platform you'll use to distribute the content, and how the content supports your overall organizational mission and goals. Your content should be communicated in a way that respects the audience and is convenient for them to access and understand.
Cultivating a training ecosystem best suited for your specific organization involves thinking strategically, planning each component in concert with the others. It also involves making changes when necessary. As new technologies and online learning systems are developed, you may find yourself needing to adopt new strategies. Listening to your staff and monitoring their progress using your platform is also critical to a healthy training ecosystem. Ensuring workers are capturing and retaining the information is the difference between successful and unsuccessful training.
In short, envision your training ecosystem as a machine. It has multiple parts that all require attention and forethought to operate effectively. If you're thinking of elevating or improving any aspect of your training system, you'll want to partner with a knowledge provider who can give you the best tools for the job. Let Knowledge Anywhere be that trusted partner. For more on how we can help your organization, contact us today.
No matter what industry you’re in, you’re bound to face the challenge of a skills gap at some point. A skills gap is when a gap exists between the skills of a team member and the skills required for their position. The problem here is fairly obvious: if an individual doesn’t possess the prerequisite skills needed to fulfill their daily responsibilities, they may do a subpar job in their role.
So how do you, as an organization, mitigate this? One of the best ways to help address skills gaps is through online training. Let’s take a closer look at when skills gaps occur, what industries they occur in, and how online training can help you manage and overcome them.
When do gaps in skills occur?
There are several scenarios in which your organization may encounter skill gaps. While each situation can be remedied, it’s important to understand how and why you may come across each one:
Technology evolves faster than expected
There are so many ways the modern workplace is evolving. One major area is technology. Looking back 15-20 years ago, work was radically different from today. Now, much of the communication that was done in person is now performed digitally. Whether it’s the use of laptops and mobile devices, cloud computing, and cybersecurity, these are all concerns of the modern employee.
These systems come with skill sets that need to be addressed. One example is cybersecurity. Employees need to be made aware of cybersecurity threats and best practices for managing those threats. Not understanding how to properly identify or respond to a phishing email scam could lead to a malicious actor compromising your organization’s network or data security.
Technological skill gaps will continue to appear and evolve as new technologies are developed and implemented.
Policy or regulation changes
If a new law comes into effect, it may lead to regulatory requirements your staff needs to uphold. These skills could apply to a wide array of your employees or a specific subset. Either way, policy changes can mean your organization’s responsibilities permanently shift. To adapt to this, it may mean adopting new skills. Failure to do so could potentially lead to legal issues, penalties, or loss of reputation with your customer base.
Let’s say you come across a candidate for a position that has all the positive attributes you could look for in a candidate — qualifications aside. They have a positive attitude, are a fast learner, and are generally the type of person you want to become involved with your company. You may hire that person even if they don’t fit your job requirement perfectly. This can be a great way to think outside the box and add talented, motivated people to your team even if they don’t have the exact requirements you set out to find.
That said, there still may be skill gaps you need to manage. You may have team members that are eminently qualified in some areas and lacking in others who you hire despite this shortcoming. They may have skill gaps that will need to be addressed during onboarding.
What industries have the biggest skills gaps?
Generally speaking, skills gaps can affect almost any industry. Industries like healthcare and finance have constantly changing technical and legal developments. Conversely, industries such as office administration can also have evolving requirements such as ethics or harassment training that need to be consistently reviewed and updated.
There’s also the question of skill gaps as they pertain to softer, less technical skills. Think about someone staffing an IT help desk. That individual may know everything there is to know about managing computer hardware. But if they don’t have the customer service and communication skills to effectively work with your employees, they’ll be ineffective at their job.
The answer to the question of, “Which industries are most affected by skills gaps?” is a simple one: all of them.
How does online training mitigate skills gaps?
No matter what the reason for the skills gaps you may be facing, it’s critical to develop a plan for dealing with them that ensures you’re addressing it in a way that allows your existing employees to effectively retain the information and that you have a system in place that will work for future employees who may need to use it.
Online training is the best way to mitigate skills gaps for a number of reasons.
It’s flexible
Online training enables you to provide your employees with an educational platform that works for them. Online training appeals to all kinds of learning styles.
Your team members can also take courses and exams at their own pace on their own schedule. You may have multiple team members who all need to partake in the training to add a new skill. Scheduling this kind of training session can often prove difficult, as everyone may have a busy calendar. With online training, you don’t have to worry about this. Everyone can learn the new skill when it is convenient for them. This is especially helpful for remote or part time workers.
You can easily customize and update it
Every industry faces changes and challenges. Your team members will no doubt need new skills in five years they may not need now. That’s why online training works: you can easily customize your learning system to fit your current needs. You can also provide updates for any new developments you’ll need to account for. With online training, you can tweak your training systems to keep up with the demands of your particular sector. You can build a system targeted at a specific group within your company or opt for training that can be cross-departmental.
It can be used for a variety of skills
Because online training is so versatile, you can apply it to a number of different skills and disciplines. For the majority of skills you may need your team members to add to their repertoire, online training can likely accommodate it.
The bottom line? Skills gaps have the potential to negatively impact your organization, but online training can help you navigate around them reliably and effectively. You can provide your employees with the tools they need to do their job in a format in which they can easily retain information.
The key to developing a solid online training program is having a trusted partner with you on the journey. Knowledge Anywhere can be that partner. For more on how we can help you mitigate your skills gaps, contact us today!
Top 7 Ways Employees Can Benefit From Corporate Training
Most organizations have training programs for their employees, which aim to equip them with the skills they need to perform their jobs and grow in their particular field or profession. Mostly, one hears about how this benefits company efficiency or the bottom line. But how does it help the learners?
In this blog, we’ll explore why employees should WANT to take training, outside of company profit.
Internal Career Progress
Training programs can help employees achieve internal career growth by equipping them with the skills they need to take more responsibilities at work, including ones required to perform in senior positions. For instance, corporate training programs can equip employees with the leadership skills preferred in managerial roles.
Most organizations have comprehensive leadership development programs that facilitate succession planning, and a Learning Management System with great data analysis features will show administrators who is completing training sessions and how well they’re preforming on them. This can become a great bargaining skill for learners during raise or promotion negotiations - they will have a viewable track record to Human Resource professionals that demonstrates high potential via such online training programs.
If a recessionhits or hard times are ahead, employees who embrace constant learning and development may be retained when others become redundant. Such employees are also adaptable to changes in organization policy and governance structure. Moreover, such employees may be able to serve in different roles or switch to jobs that align with a new company strategy.
Training Increases Employability
Training is one way of enhancing an employee’s value to any organization, not just their current one! If an training platform has the ability to export data or show proof of training publicly, this will make it much easier for learners to market themselves as great potential employees. For example, let’s say you’re in marketing and have taken multiple courses about SEO, Google Analytics, and Product Management. If you’ve completed the courses and obtained a certificate, you could add these employable skills to your personal resume. The next time you look for a job, you’ll be able to prove how this training can help the new company, not only the old one!
If an LMS has the ability to integrate with LinkedIn, this is even better! Knowledge Anywhere is a LinkedIn Learning LMS Integration Partner, which allows us to upload and update all LinkedIn Learning content directly in Knowledge Anywhere’s systems, providing a streamlined experience for companies, administrators, and learners, alike. Our platform also allows learners to post their certificates directly into their LinkedIn profile and allows them to show off which training was completed, who assigned it, and when it was done. interviewers often check the online presence of interviewees when deciding on a new hire. By completing training and making it available to the public eye, it’s now possible to benefit from the fruits of your labor!
Skills Competency
Training helps employees increase their knowledge and skills, leading to improved performance. Employees who understand their job and the resources they can use to enhance effectiveness are more productive than those without such training. Below are just a few examples of skills that learners can improve through training:
IT and Computer Skills: Most employees lack competency in IT and basic computer skills required to complete different tasks. Research indicates 82% of all the office jobs in the modern workplace require knowledge of computing and digital communication skills. Training programs can bridge these gaps by teaching them how to use different software applications and internal communication networks. Training programs also help workers learn the latest updates on the existing software, which can be used to improve the quality of their work.
Communication and Interpersonal Skills: As simple as it sounds, many employees are hired without the necessary soft skills needed to thrive in the workplace. Training can help bridge this gap to improve employee communication skills, enabling them to interact with others politely and avoid unnecessary conflicts. Communication training will also improve their ability to collaborate with others and work in teams when completing different tasks and projects.
Mentor Matching
Training programs provide an opportunity for employees to find mentors who can coach and guide them on their career. It is during training that employees encounter senior staff and consultants who specialize in different fields and professions. Employees can use this opportunity to get contacts, utilize mentors, and join professional networks. Exposure to such people helps employees benefit from their insights and experience on the corporate scene while creating powerful bonds. Word of mouth and networking are some of the most effective tools in career progression - training can give you the rare professional opportunity to have this power.
Increases Job Satisfaction
Training gives employees the skills to complete their work with minimal supervision, which increases autonomy and confidence in their work. Such employees feel more valued by the organization and more free without a micro-manager breathing down their back. As such, training linked to career planning is a great way of increasing the satisfaction of workers. When employees gain new skills and have strong bonds with mentors, this results in an improved perception of the organization and contentment with their work. Such employees are likely to be motivated to do their jobs and grow their career with the organization.
Let’s be honest - sometimes, workplaces can be boring, especially when employees feel that they lack focus and inspiration to complete their work. Part of the disillusionment results from the feeling that the employer is using outdated technologies and workplace practices. ELearning can improve employee engagement by upgrading their skills and serving as a way to modernizing the organization with the latest technologies and practices. Such initiatives will enhance employee engagement leading to improved productivity and commitment to their jobs.
A New Form of Empowerment
Training also helps employees avoid anti-social practices such as sexual harassment and know how to protect themselves from workplace bullies. Training helps them identify the forms of language and sexual advances that may be considered as harassment. Employees also learn about the types of offensive language and hostility that can be classified as harassment or bullying.
Employees will in a position to identify various forms of harassment such as racial profiling, gender-based hostility, religious intolerance, and age-based intolerance. They can report such incidences to the management for further investigation. Empowerment is an effective way of reducing workplace stress.
Enhanced Safety
Training has real-world implications that can increase job performance and safety. Employees who undergo company training are likely to be aware of the risks posed by their job and heed all the safety precautions while reducing accidents and injuries at work.
For workers in high risk professions such as engineering and healthcare, training helps create a safety culture that ensures that everyone complies with strict protocols. Employees will be in a position to identify safety hazard early and take necessary measures before accidents happen. Workers also need to undergo regular training to acquaint themselves with the latest policies and industry standards.
While training is great for corporations, it’s important to see how it can have positive effects for the employees in their own right, and when these perks are communicated properly, it can help with engagement and personal buy-in from learners.
Technology continues to advance at a fast pace, including the evolution of eLearning, which is constantly adapting to the market demands. Gone are the days of rigid training outlets with tight schedules and unnecessary travel. If you are just starting your eLearning journey, you may face a few challenges as you try to navigate into your preferred mode of study. To help you out, here are some types of eLearning that you will come across, alongside their definitions, as well as pros and cons.
Types of eLearning
1. Fixed eLearning
Fixed eLearning is one of the older versions of online learning. It refers to a learning process that uses a traditional structure of passing down information to students. All learners receive the same type of information as determined by the instructors. Since the learning materials rely on the instructors, fixed eLearning is rigid and does not adapt to the students’ preferences. Such a type is best suited to environments where learners have similar schedules and skills. Traditional grade school classes in need of eLearning can, for instance, adapt this type of structure.
Pros
Fixed eLearning works well when the learning depends on a time-sensitive completion schedule involving fixed curriculums.
It may be easier and more time sensitive for trainers to implement a one-sized-fits-all strategy, with less variation.
Cons
Due to its rigidity, it would be hard to adapt to the current diverse eLearning needs.
Its traditional training approach also lacks real-world elements.
It is a generalized form of learning that fails to consider each student’s individual learning abilities.
2. Adaptive eLearning
Adaptive eLearning is another type of online learning. Unlike the first outlet, adaptive eLearning has the learner’s flexibility as its focal point. Here, all learning materials are designed to fit your learning preferences. This pays attention to aspects such as skills, abilities, and individual performance. Using such factors to tailor your learning needs means that you can switch things up whenever you feel like you are lagging behind, or change based on your course completion goals. Adaptive eLearning works well where learners prefer to study at their own pace. You, however, need to be highly disciplined to stick to your pace in adaptive eLearning.
Pros: Adaptive learning is flexible, allowing you to take courses based on your individual needs.
Cons: Since adaptive eLearning is tailor-made for each student, instructors planning it face setbacks trying to meet the enormous number of eLearning schedules on a wide-scale level.
3. Asynchronous eLearning
In asynchronous eLearning, students study independently from different locations. Here, learners can study on their own time, depending on their schedule. If done in an engaging way, this could include user generated content. For example, instead of multiple choice exams, learners could submit video of themselves proving their newly-learned skills.
Pros
This type of eLearning takes into account the need for flexible individual schedules, allowing personalized and individualized learning time frames.
Learners at different geographical areas also benefit from the same learning tools available to their peers.
Cons: Asynchronous eLearning can lead to isolation, creating a ripple effect in complacency while studying. Some learners require constant evaluation and interaction with their peers to keep pace, which lacks here.
4. Interactive eLearning
In interactive eLearning, both teachers and students can communicate freely, allowing both parties to make changes to the learning materials as they see fit. An open line of communication also allows for better interaction, resulting in a better learning process should any queries arise. Interactive eLearning works well in a limited and close-knit group environment that allows for flexibility.
Pros
The open form of communication gives rise to a seamless process of learning, for both learners and teachers.
Open communication also strengthens independence in learning for students, since you have a say in the learning process.
Cons: Not suited for large numbers of online learners, as it leads to confusion (mainly for the instructors).
5. Individual eLearning
Individual eLearning is all about students learning on their own without any peer communication.
Pros: Individual eLearning helps students learn based on personal attributes such as goal achievements rather than relying on their teachers’ and peers’ standards.
Cons: It restricts all forms of communication, resulting in isolation. Here, you are required to learn solely on your own and complete your goals by yourself. Due to the lack of follow-up, individual eLearning can only work in highly specialized situations where learners are highly motivated and skilled.
6. Collaborative eLearning
Collaborative eLearning focuses on teamwork, allowing students to work together. Learning materials and goals rely on combined effort from all students for completion of the course. If you prefer this type of learning, you have to factor in your strengths and weaknesses, as well as that of your peers.
Pros
Promotes communication and teamwork among the students, an aspect that is often lacking in online learning.
It also develops critical thinking that is needed to accommodate different students’ views during the learning process. Due to its collaborative design, it can work well with learners from different backgrounds and cultures. It is an effective learning process that helps to build awareness and harmony among people from diverse groups.
Cons: Collaborative eLearning can give rise to over-dependence by some students. Due to reliance on combined effort, some learners can opt to take a back seat and let others do the work for them. This can seem unfair to some learners, dependent on the work load of each student.
Each eLearning process is suited to different environments and personal preferences. Before settling for any option, understand what works well for you and your goals.
To design the best possible online training, trainers must be able to see the experience through the learner’s point of view. Is the process easy to navigate? Is the platform going to teach people the right skills at the right time? To answer these questions before they become problems, it’s best to create learner profiles to walk through learner’s training journeys with.
Not all learners are the same, and training needs to reflect those differences and adapt. During this process, we’ll create backstories of how three profiles found online training, what their role in the company is, what they need training for, and potential eLearning solutions for their goals. By showcasing three potential learner profiles using multichannel mediums, we can understand how they navigate differently through a Learning Management System, and why training needs to be designed with these profiles in mind.
Sales Representative
To start off, let's look at a sales representative going through sales training, as this is a common scenario in many organizations. Here's his quick background: He found training when he Google searched "online training sales," and came across this website, and his goal was simple - to find and use sales training in order to complete more sales. With this information, we can cater potential eLearning solutions to him. This could include:
Mobile
Because salesman may be travelling to meetings with perspective leads, mobile access to a learning system may be more important than in other roles. This will also allow them to have accessibility to learning anytime, anywhere.
Microlearning
By breaking information into smaller, bite-sized portions, salesman can quickly receive information within the natural flow of their workday. There are many ways to make microlearning interesting, including just in time training, quizzes, short videos, infographics, or eBooks.
Human Resources Representative
For our second profile, we'll explore an HR representative, who has a diverse team with different skill sets and has been referred to this training by her coworker. She is looking for an engaging, virtual onboarding process that works remotely! Her experience in eLearning could look something like this:
Full Courses and Assessments
To properly onboard members remotely, a course set with check-in points is essential. These segments could be any type of format or lesson, but should thoughtfully cover how key elements of jobs are to be done. Here are a few basic onboarding ideas, to help get started:
Company overview and background
Basic job processing
Teaching specific technologies or systems, if necessary
Product training, if applicable
Compliance/ethics/diversity training
Scoring, Badges, or Certificates
Gamification is a great way to engage learners. This could come in many forms, but common ones include leaderboards, badges, or certificates. This is a great question to ask during a demo of an LMS system, and is a good example of making sure you know what to look for before buying!
Multi-Formatted Training For Different Types of Learners
While most of the population are visual learners, it's important to cater to all types of learners, in a blended approach. This means making sure that your training has multiple different formats and is able to engage different parts of the brain. No one wants to watch a 3 hour video, or listen to a long lecture - provide different options, such as exams, videos, one-on-one chats, live sessions, quizzes, eBooks, podcasts or audio tools, role playing, and more!
Safety Officer
Lastly, a Safety Officer who needs safety and compliance help, and saw our training solutions through an eBook website promotion through social media. Below are just a few ways that training could be tailored specifically to them, in order to help them reach their goals.
Virtual Reality (VR)
Some jobs can be dangerous - the role of a safety officer is to identify and reduce risks. One great way to do this is by accepting Virtual Reality as part of the curriculum. With it, learners can practice real-world problem-solving and minimize training risks. Give your workforce an immersive VR training experience that establishes a mock environment where your employees can practice jumping over realistic job hurdles. To talk with an eLearning expert about VR in a workplace training environment, you can schedule a meeting here.
Visual and Easy to Understand Courses
Simplified concepts, clear visuals, and easy takeaways - this is the trifecta for easily understood courses! The more fun and simple it is, the more likely learners are to engage and learn the desired information.
Multiple Attempts at Learning Concepts
While retention is important for all types of training, you really want safety training to be remembered, because it could save workers (and potentially clients) from injury, and save the company lots of money on legal and medical bills. To make sure the information transfers over to long-term memory, make sure there are multiple ways to test learners on the course. Are you sure they have the key takeaways? Drive the point home by rephrasing and retesting, to make sure it sticks.
Role Play & Real Life Scenarios
Since safety and compliance training is all about real-world scenarios, role playing is usually necessary for these trainings. This allows employees to interact in a realistic way, without the risk of an in-person try. Through video role-playing, these situations can be better anticipated and learned. Experienced online mentors walk trainees through a scenario that puts them in the right mindset to respond appropriately. Trainees learn faster and more effectively in this type of active environment.
Industry-Specific and Customized Courses
Usually, jobs worrying about safety training are industry-specific, such as a healthcare/medical field, or manufacturing. This means that training cannot be a one-size-fits-all; tailor your approach in order to fit the learners! Work with a training company that has experience in multiple fields, with the ability to customize training solutions.
Timelines & Training Journeys
Because each of these profiles needs different solutions, it makes sense that they choose to train at different times. The graph below is one potential example of how different roles may access corporate learning at different points in their journey. For example, the sales rep may not look towards training until they're going out for a meeting, using the LMS's mobile features, or until a point of need. This could result in a "feast or famine" timeline, with big ups and downs.
This could be a heavy contrast to HR's onboarding. Look at the yellow line below - this is an example of how onboarding training could go; the learner joins a new team, studies up very hard, and then eventually training decreases as they get more and more used to their new role. Lastly, our safety officer shows as a flat line. This can be explained by constant and ever-ongoing safety training at all times, as new systems emerge and new challenges arise. Of course, none of these lines are set in stone. The point of creating learner profiles and training journeys is not to accurately predict all possibilities; it is to walk through different potential experiences, so you can design a marketing strategy, product features, and training solutions that can apply to all types of learners. This will make sure your training is not a one-size-fits-all, but is customizable and varied!
Using Microlearning to Improve Remote Worker Training
While remote work is a wonderful and inevitable development, it also features inherent challenges. For example, think of when your team needs to complete a mandatory training course. In the past, you’d have to schedule a meeting, make sure everyone was able to attend, and reserve a meeting space in which to hold the training. For companies with remote workers, this has been rendered just about impossible. Enter microlearning.
Microlearning is the practice of providing instruction in smaller, manageable portions as opposed to longer lessons. It’s a format particularly well-suited for employees that telecommute. Let’s take a closer look exactly why microlearning is the answer for training your remote teams.
Benefits of using microlearning for remote worker training
You can engage a global workforce
With the onset of remote work, you can place team members all across the globe. Less important than your team members’ physical locations is the skill set they bring to your company.
Microlearning allows you to engage your team members no matter where they work. By keeping your information in smaller units of information, you can distribute it via email or some other shareable form of IT platform (i.e. SharePoint or GoogleDocs). With more traditional forms of in-person training, you’d have to deliver the information when you had your entire team gathered together. With remote workers consuming it according to their own schedule, microlearning allows for more flexibility.
It can accommodate different time zones
As noted above, your team isn’t going to be conducting the training at the same time. You could have a team member in New York, California, and London all responsible for learning the same content.
Microlearning is better for teams in varying time zones because it’s dependent on the user completing it as opposed to the user being available at a set time.
It can accommodate different languages
When your training courses are organized in larger chunks of content, it may be difficult to translate to accommodate your team members who speak different languages. This gets a lot easier with shorter courses. It’s less of a hassle to configure when the information is stored in smaller chunks.
Shorter courses allow learners to easily complete them around working hours
Your team is busy. Along with your training, they also have a set of daily responsibilities to complete. With smaller-sized courses, it makes completing your course during their normal work day much more manageable. Longer courses may impede the flow of work. With the shorter courses, they can budget their time to complete it throughout the assigned time period.
How to use microlearning to improve remote worker training
Identify training goals
Before you begin your training period, it’s important to have your team’s goals in mind. Microlearning helps you create more manageable goals for them. For example, with a longer course, you may have to give them a single deadline to complete one long block of training requirements. With a series of short courses, you can create a series of deadlines that allows your team to continually hit any training milestones.
Create complete and cohesive courses
Once you’ve identified your goal, you’ll need to craft a training course to help you and your team meet it. Microlearning is a perfect format for creating a comprehensive course with multiple components for remote workers.
With a single course, you run the risk of packing too much information into a single session. That decreases the chance your team will retain the information and use it effectively going forward. With a series of shorter courses, you can cover more information without creating a mental burden on your team members. They can pace themselves as to how they process the information, thereby allowing them to learn more over a longer period of time.
Make content easily accessible
By including less information in a higher number of courses, you make the content more accessible. Having the content in bite-sized portion increases the odds your team will know where to go to find the information for reference. When your content is buried in a longer, cumbersome module, reaching back for it after the fact may prove harder to do.
Using a Learning Management System
Microlearning is a great format for your training courses, and using an LMS to execute your microlearning courses will allow you to create personalized training path for each member of your team.
Not every team member will learn at the same pace or with the same training style. In fact, not every team member may want to take your training courses in the same order if the order isn’t regulated for a specific reason.
With microlearning, you can create a customized training path for each member of the team depending on how they learn, how fast they work, and precisely what training course they’re responsible for completing. You can also tweak the metrics for each team member - certain members may have differing training requirements. Because microlearning allows you to break the training up into smaller pieces, it’s easier to substitute different components depending on what’s relevant to that particular team member.
Additionally, having a personalized training path will help you keep your remote workers accountable. You’ll be able to track the completion of their training path when you’re not able to check in with them every day at the office. If they are ever stuck on a certain part of the training, you can follow up to see where they have questions to help push them to completion.
Summary
The bottom line is that microlearning is a flexible, customizable training format that suits remote workers perfectly. When your team members are in disparate locations, they can process the information in your training courses - included as part of a personalized plan tailored to their needs - in shorter bursts that are less mentally draining and time-consuming than longer, traditional courses.
We’ve added a lot of new and exciting features to our Learning Management System this summer! Keep up with our updates in this article, as well as our ongoing Announcements and Releases section within our Support Center.
Password Strength Meter
Users now have a password strength meter to check the security strength of the new passwords they create.
Site Message Images
Admins can now add images to their site messages! Personalized toaster messages. Added ability to add image, and customize text formatting. Located under Admin LMS – Site – Site Messaging.
Customized Certificates
Shows list of certificates completed, and for each, it will show course usage, status (active, inactive, in progress). Can also show what the certificate will look like, and will allow you to adjust and customize (color, font, size, centered/justified text, add background images, etc.). Located under LMS Admin – Content - Certificates.
“Copy Link” button added to documents
Administrators can now easily link documents for learners by using the “Copy Link” button. This link can be inserted in various places within the LMS including course descriptions, site messages, and homepage text. Once a user clicks on the link a new tab will open and the link will automatically download to their device.
Edit Agreement for Terms & Conditions
Ability to edit agreement for Terms and Conditions or FAQ. Located under Admin LMS – Site – Manage Content.
Quiz Report Improvement - Processing and Filters
Adjusted and improved processing, and can now filter by a specific course. You will also be able to see differences of quiz results over time, to see if people are answering the versions more or less accurately. Located under LMS Admin – Reports – Course Reports - Quiz Details.
Businesses across the world have heard the call to step up their game to improve in-office training and gain an edge on competitors still lecturing to bored groups of professionals. Of course, the art of engaging and fast-paced learning isn’t static. A single upgrade isn’t going to be the magic feather of effective training. Learning is a technology, and like all technology, it is constantly evolving. If your organization has eLearning, it’s time to upgrade again as the possibilities for corporate learning continue to improve. There are now dozens of high-tech training options and we’re about to list our favorites to help you choose which cutting-edge approaches will work best for your industry and company culture.
1. Online eLearning Classes
With the rise in digital training techniques, it has now also become possible to onboard new team members without actually bringing them into the office. Even companies with on-site positions have found that by making their digital training courses available online, employees can study, learn, and review the materials before they ever step into the office, effectively streamlining the training process and providing more reference material to new hires.
2. Virtual Reality Scenario Training
Virtual and augmented reality has had a hard time finding footing in gaming, but in the business world, the useful applications are surprisingly numerous. For occupations that involve a certain amount of risk like mining, manufacturing, and labwork, virtual training allows employees to get used to a risky environment and make their first few mistakes without putting themselves or their coworkers in danger.
If your company has been looking for a way to new-hire mistakes, virtual reality training can give your professional students their ‘first day’ from the safety of the training room where mistakes can be gently corrected and quickly learned from.
3. Cognitive Computing
On the cutting edge of eLearning technology lies cognitive computing. This computerized, digital system is meant to mimic human brain function to come to conclusions using a mix of artificial intelligence, neural networks, machine learning, natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and contextual awareness. By quickly studying patterns and analyzing a problem or process from many sides, cognitive computing is meant to replicate humans, while expediting the process and helping make decisions.
Although this is exciting technology with many applications, we have yet to see it truly take on it’s own potential in most businesses. However, early reports are promising. As an example, Towards Data Science shares a few real work applications.
“With the help of IBM Watson, Royal Bank of Scotland developed an intelligent assistant that is capable of handling 5000 queries in a single day. Using cognitive learning capabilities, the assistant gave RBS the ability to analyze customer grievance data and create a repository of commonly asked questions. Not only did the assistant analyze queries, but, it was also capable of providing 1000 different responses and understand 200 customer intents. The digital assistant learned how customers ask general questions, how to handle the query and transfer to a human agent if it is too complicated.”
The Internet of Things, Smart Home, and Smart Business innovations are changing the landscape of modern business tech quite significantly. Companies across the world are replacing their light bulbs with color-changing LED alternatives, installing WiFi security cameras, smart programmable coffee pots, and decorating the office with self-watering plants. However, where IoT really shines is in business automation, especially when combined with the voice controls of the smart “home” hubs.
Any process that can be automated can also be voice-activated, meaning you can significantly streamline repetitive tasks to be completed in an almost conversational way with a computer or smart home hub. Naturally, you can also configure IoT integrations to effectively help teach systems to new trainees. Simply having an infrastructure that responds to voice and mobile app commands can help professional learners gain a stronger grasp on company procedures.
5. Paired Learning with a ‘Pen Pal’
It has long since been found that training works better for most people if they do it in a collaborative way. Working together with at least one other person allows trainees to share the information they’re working with and process more thoroughly by explaining it to each other and discussing the lessons. One way to bring collaborative learning to the workplace even when you’re only training one employee in a facility is to give your employees a training pen-pal, someone who works in another facility but is either also learning or can teach the subject in question.
Paired learning can either by going through online training materials while partnered with another student in a different location or it can be used to pair your individual trainees with a mentor when the pair will be in two separate locations. This allows collaboration and interactive learning without anyone having to learn away from home. Video chat is usually considered the best way to do paired learning though, of course, email gets a fair workout during this process as well.
6. BYOD Mobile Training
Some companies believe the highest possible technology for modern training techniques is going mobile. It’s true that the mobile app has come great leaps and bounds in the last ten years going from very simple small-memory applications to full-sized pseudo-VR video games. A mobile training platform allows you to train equally well in the office, on the go, and to hook up remote hires with the same training that everyone else receives. Of course, the usual question is then what mobile devices to use.
While some companies are still focused on getting everyone a company cell phone, with the reliable capability of most modern devices, the new trend is Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) when it comes to mobile training and interactions both in and out of the office.
7. Cloud-Collaborative Project Learning
Many business positions are not for an independent role, but part of a team. This means each new hire must not only be well-versed in the software, but a good team player that can handle collaborative efforts. There are hundreds of software options that allow for collaboration and version control, but the most reliable are all now based on the cloud. The cloud, unlike software that relies on your local network, ensures any project is not only accessible to remote employees, but is also backed up and safe from malware attacks on local systems.
There are two ways to use cloud-collaborative project learning in your training methods. The first and most popular method is to coordinate a group of fresh recruits to work on a test project together using your collaborative software solution. This gets them all used to the process of saving, making notes, and working together without interrupting workflow. The second option, often implemented later, allows you to slowly introduce new team members to the collaborative projects currently being worked on by the teams they are about to join.
8. Gamified Skills Assessment and Training
25 years ago, business stood by the concept that work doesn’t have to be fun. As it turns out, we now know that people work harder, are more committed to results, and are more loyal to a company when they are having a good time. This has encouraged business training leaders to design new eLearning solutions that are built to entertain as well as educate.
Gamification was introduced. With the use of animations, scores, and game-like features to convey the training material, trainees will strive to become better at their job tasks partly just to beat their own high scores while incidentally absorbing and actively using the material that was important to teach.
9. Video Libraries for Self-Guided Training
Let’s not forget self-directed learners, who prefer to explore a library of knowledge on their own. Traditionally, companies have built up libraries of dry explanatory materials and old reports. However, with new video recording and sharing technology, it is now surprisingly easy to both record training videos and make them available to both new hires and current employees pursuing in-line training. If stored online, even your remote employees can gain the benefit of the video training library.
How is your company currently handling onboarding and online training? If you’re still holding classes in the old lecture fashion, it’s high time to look into what modern technology has to offer in order to speed, up, streamline, and increase the engagement of your office courses.
To keep up to date with innovative training tools on the market, check out "best of" lists like Top10eLearning.
Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) vs. Learning Management Systems (LMS)
Staying on top of the different learning systems online can feel like a full-time job. So what exactly is an LXP is and how can it fit into your business plan?
A Learning Experience Platform (LXP) manages online learning experiences for employees, primarily at large corporations, and can provide learning resources that encourage employees to invest in the learning culture of the business. An LXP is ideal for online learning environments designed to facilitate employee choice, collaboration, and promotions within your organization.
To leverage this, set up your online learning system so employee-level users have the ability to create their own course and manage them afterward. Also ensure learning assessments are designed so employees are able to quickly set up assessment instruments, instead of a system that requires course teachers to do manual grading. An LXP often integrates with multiple types of LMSs. If your business has multiple learning environments, you can use an LXP to pull them all together.
An LXP has been used recently in the eLearning industry as a catchy, exciting phrase to use at conferences. However, it’s important to clarify the difference between an LXP and LMS, as they are often used recklessly and interchangeably.
Administrator vs Employee Driven
While an LMS is controlled by a teacher or administrator, an LXP is a platform that enables more granular user controls for educational systems. This allows employees to design and publish their modules and courses within the learning environment. This gives trainers less control of the content, but opens up possibilities for user-generated lessons.
Closed vs Open System
Because of the nature of a platform, an LXP is an open learning environment and a traditional LMS is a more closed system. Businesses able to use an open LXP system provide employees the ability to build out learning systems for team-training or cross-team communication. This open system improves the ability to create growth from the learning systems.
Certifications vs Employee Growth
When you need to create a course that demonstrates a specific level of proficiency, an LMS is ideal because you are able to track learning and engagement and control the information within the course. This type of platform is preferred for certifications or courses to prove compliance with governmental or industrial standards. If you want to give your entire business the ability to grow together or in smaller teams, an LXP provides a platform for growth.
Static vs Dynamic
An LMS is focused on content and is administrator-driven; therefore providing a static and structured framework. An LXP is focused on dynamic courses and employee-driven content, meaning course creators are able to quickly swivel and change.
LMS vs LXP: Which One Should We Use?
An LMS is ideal for delivering learning content; an LXP is ideal for creating the platform an LMS works within. It is not really a choice between an LMS and an LXP, but of when to extend one with the other. Since they both offer unique tools and environments, they can work together to provide a more robust online learning system.
While an LXP is exciting and new, it has major drawbacks. Because it’s evolving, it does not have the LMS’s advantage of being a tried and true product, with verified strength in a proven platform. To see which is right for you, talk with an eLearning professional about your organization and its specific needs.
About Knowledge Anywhere
Knowledge Anywhere is mostly focused on our LMS platform. However, we do have some elements of an LXP, including intuitive user experience, rich content, data collection and analysis, personalization features, mobile friendly learning, and integrations. We are currently looking to expand our system to include more beneficial elements of an LXP!
At Knowledge Anywhere, we’re always looking towards the latest training trends. That’s why we often consult eLearning experts about where they believe the industry to be heading. In a recent talk with Josh Bersin, we asked “what technology do you think will have the most significant impact on corporate training and performance support in this decade?” His response was an unexpected one, saying
“Tools that facilitate what I call “learning in the flow of work.” These include VR and AR tools that show new procedures and interventions, chat and text based learning solutions, and micro-learning and modular designed programs that let people learn continually without having to leave their existing digital environments.”
So what exactly is learning in the flow of work, and what does it mean for online training? You’ve come to the right place to find out!
Definition & Importance
In essence, learning in the flow of work means learners are able to extract information they need, when they need it, without having to interrupt their process. Ideally, this would mean learners could be on the job, learn a skill they need, use that skill quickly, and then move on to their work as before. This involves microlearning, which allows learning in multiple, short forms, improving memory and employee engagement. Instead of formally training workers for hours in a lecture hall, learning in the flow of work uses design and strategy to meet learners where they are in a digital platform.
By feeding employees information naturally throughout the workday when they need it or have time, this process has the potential to increase efficiency, and cut down on time, while shrinking the skills gap.
Real-World Examples
Now that we know what it means, let’s delve into how organizations can practically utilize learning in the flow of work within Learning Management Systems (LMS).
Recommended Resources Based Your Past Behaviors
Netflix is the most obvious example of this tip, but lately, sites such as YouTube, Amazon, Spotify, and many others have caught on. By providing choices based on relevant behavior, companies can add value to their customers by effectively anticipating their needs. So how does this work in the world of eLearning? Say you’re in an LMS and have taken three safety training courses, along with a compliance course a few years ago. Based on just this information, the system could be able to provide “Recommended Courses,” which could include a certification or badge based on safety training and an ethics course reminder, to re-up the old one. This would allow a learner to continue learning, without having had to navigate or search for courses that could potentially apply to them.
Chatboxes, Feedback, and Contacts
Let’s say I am doing research on a company as a part of a larger project. Instead of filtering thorough multiple website pages, chatbots and messaging boards provide a quick way for me to talk with someone about specific questions, instead of doing all of the work alone. Allow for many different, clear ways for people to make contact with your organization. Not only will this help them in their journey, it will allow you to show off your customer service skills and provide real feedback as to what people want.
Make Content Easily Accessible
This may seem like a no-brainer, but if learners cannot find helpful resources, they can’t use them easily and quickly. Make sure blogs and articles are tagged and try to have a clear layout, filters, or search functionality bar that will help people get to where they want to go.
Knowledge Mark
Knowledge Anywhere has created a tool designed to promote learning in the flow of work. With Knowledge Mark, users can now put any external site info into their transcripts - simply drag and drop into your bookmarks, find the external site you wish to upload, and click the Knowledge Mark bookmark! It will automatically download in the user’s LMS. This allows learners to track content accessed outside of the LMS, and integrate it seamlessly, without having to navigate off the page or switch browsers.
While learning in the flow of work is not yet incorporated into every company, it is an up-and-coming tool gaining traction. Understanding and incorporating the basics of this concept will only help your organization train, teach, and learn better!
What is QuickQuiz? As a fast recap, QuickQuiz is an eLearning tool that is accessible on Slack. It allows anyone to create, manage, and deploy quizzes quickly and easily. Now that we’ve summarized the tool, how can you actually, practically use it? Below are just a few real-world examples of how QuickQuiz can fit into your training toolkit.
Test to see if your team was listening after meetings
After a meeting, send a Slack quiz to the group, asking for basic recaps of what happened. Not only does this clearly define the key takeaways; it pushes the information back up to top of mind. It’s a less painless equivalent to studying flashcards; the more you see information, the more you retain it! After meetings end, it’s easy to go your separate ways and get sucked into other work. Push your agenda up to top of mind with this simple tip.
While you can use this tactic anytime, it’s especially useful while people work remotely! Although people may be signed into a virtual meeting, it’s difficult to tell engagement level if there is no face to face communication. With this trick, you can know who was paying attention and how successful the meeting was!
Remind people with a pop quiz
Employ microlearning with a pop quiz in Slack! Every once in a while, check to make sure everyone’s on the same page. New product roll-out? Ensure the sales and marketing departments understand the messaging. For technology and customer support teams, this could be a great way to re-enforce company policies and procedures. It can even be used company-wide to make sure employees know about new directions, benefits, or trends.
Onboard new employees easily
During the hiring process, some large corporations have hundreds or even thousands of applicants. This can cost HR reps time and resources to sort through. In the first few stages of interviews, companies can use QuickQuiz to evaluate serious candidates, with questions about how they would approach situations, company histories and policies, or use it to automate boring but necessary legal questions, such as citizenship, work permits, necessary certifications, or mandatory language requirements.
This tool can also be used during onboarding, when new hires need to learn and retain new information quickly. Save company money by leveraging eLearning tools and get them up to speed as fast as possible!
Why HR Needs To Advocate For Comprehensive Training Solutions
As the world changes rapidly, the importance of acquiring and retaining high-quality talent stays constant. Whether you are exploring remote work possibilities, expanding the business, reeling in new employees or simply trying to stay ahead of the competition, comprehensive training is on the agenda.
Let’s explore several reasons why HR needs comprehensive training solutions today.
Keeping employees happy is high on the list of every HR department. A satisfied employee doesn’t make plans for leaving the company, keeping turnover rates low. Happy workers are more productive and loyal. They help increase revenue and improve the work environment.
One of the highly important factors that contribute to employee satisfaction and retention is proper training. Many workers complain that employers demand the output they can’t provide due to a lack of information and training. More often than not, this happens due to a substantial workflow and a lack of time.
Effective online training solutions allow the workers to train when and where they need, without being dependent on a manager. Such an approach can improve employee satisfaction and reduce turnover rates.
2. Efficient Onboarding and Orientation
In many industries, onboarding is a complex, costly, and time-consuming process. The time a new employee spends on training and orientation can mean lost money for the employer, not to mention potential travel fees for in-person, traditional training. During the training process, company is essentially paying salary to employees who aren’t contributing to the work process. Meanwhile, designated orientation supervisors can’t execute their responsibilities in full force since they are busy bringing new employees on board.
Online training solutions can substantially improve the onboarding process by giving new employees an opportunity to train as they go. By creating an interactive online training program, it’s possible to reduce the orientation time and take the pressure off the supervisors.
According to BambooHR’s report, more than 16% of employees quit during the first week. Many of them list “not enough training” as the reason. A well-designed online training program can improve new employee satisfaction rates and take some stress out of the onboarding process.
Today, more and more companies are opting to have their employees work from home. A year ago, Upwork predicted that by 2028, 73% of all teams would have remote workers. With COVID-19 ravaging the planet, the number of remote workers is growing much faster than expected, and it pays to be prepared with a remote learning plan. HR departments that implement them before emergencies hit look like training heros!
Remote workers need education and training just as much as on-site employees do and online corporate training is an integral part of their development. By taking advantage of comprehensive learning solutions, an HR department can increase work efficiency tremendously while providing a flexible schedule for both the worker and the organization.
4. Quick Compliance
In many industries, new work process requirements and codes appear on a regular basis. Keeping up and staying compliant could be an issue for HR departments. Ensuring that all employees are following the new rules is often time-consuming. Delays could lead to fines and other unfortunate consequences.
By taking advantage of just-in-time comprehensive training solutions, companies can make sure all employees get appropriate compliance training quickly.
5. Improved Output
The main goal of any training is to improve employees’ output. Employees don’t just get a new sense of purpose while acquiring new skills, they are eager to apply them. Proper training boosts the workers’ confidence and provides extra stimulation. Comprehensive training solutions also reduce duplication of the effort in the workplace, thus cutting costs. The time employees spend correcting mistakes due to improper training can be channeled into boosting the revenue.
6. Cheaper and Easier Staffing
From the HR department’s point of view, developing internal talent is the easiest way to fill the company’s roles. It’s usually cheaper to source skills internally. and the costs of recruiting junior positions are always lower than for senior positions, which is why moving employees from junior to senior positions within the company can cut costs.To achieve a smooth transition between the company ranks, proper comprehensive training is required. Generally, homegrown senior specialists perform better than external hires, mostly because of the increased loyalty to the company.
Even though it’s easier to bring an existing employee up to speed rather than train a new one “from scratch”, without proper training techniques, the effort may be futile. Online training solutions can help HR move employees up career ladders while saving money for the company.
7. A Powerful Attraction
Top-notch learning opportunities at the workplace is something that new talents consider when choosing a workplace. By developing comprehensive training solutions online, an HR department makes the company an attractive place to work in, thus simplifying the search for new talent. According to LinkedIn, 59% of employees join a company for better career paths or more opportunities. Working on training solutions allows the company to attract new talents by appealing to their desire to develop.
With substantial resources available to help employees develop new skills, the company turns into a powerful talent attraction force.
Take Full Advantage of Online Training Solutions
If you believe that comprehensive online training solutions can help your HR thrive, you can take advantage of Knowledge Anywhere services. We work hard to bring you a variety of eLearning solutions, such as the Learning Management System, Virtual Reality Training solutions, and Course Creation services. To take full advantage of our offers, contact us today!
Want to know our qualifications? Our staff can walk you through them, or you can see Knowledge Anywhere listed here, as a Top 12 Learning Management Systems (LMS) for 2021.
As we move into a new decade of the 21st century, some are apprehensive about the role of technology in the workplace. Rather than be doubtful of our new future, however, organizations should welcome the potential for progress and view the oncoming years as a chance for more learning and growth.
Companies will continue to incorporate more and more technology into the workplace, all of it designed to help the workforce do their jobs better while improving efficiency. This presents a tremendous opportunity for employees and leadership alike to alter the way they look at learning in the workplace. By integrating elements of our future technological world into an organization’s training systems, you give your team the chance to increase their skill set and adapt in a way that sets them up for future success.
How technology might change the workplace
There isn’t an industry or sector that won’t be touched by technological improvements in the future. Just a few technologies and concepts that will impact the workplace include:
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
Continuing advancements in mobile devices
Cloud computing
Big data and how it is managed
These systems may seem intimidating as if they exist to replace the workforce. But all these technological developments mean is that organizations must pivot to ensure employees get the opportunity to learn more about them. When they do, they’ll understand that technology isn’t a restricting force. It’s a tool to help make our lives - and jobs - easier.
But how can you, as an organization looking to share information with your team - enable your workforce to incorporate this new reality into their skill set and knowledge base?
How you can help your employees adapt to the new technological reality
There are a number of ways you can use the way you train your employees to h
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