On-the-Job Training: People Development as the Solution

While one of the benefits of implementing accountable on-the-job training is that it uses existing resources to train individuals to do their tasks, it also offers other organizational benefits. Responsible on-the-job training hugely impacts the organization’s overall performance. On-the-job training or OJT, for example, has been proven in studies to be substantially connected with increased creativity and invention, along with improvement in overall work quality.

The move to a remote/hybrid workforce has prompted particular training considerations. Teams may be divided between remote and in-office contingents, making it cumbersome to give regular and meaningful training to both groups. In addition, L&D will need to establish a consistent culture and decide how to implement new regulations. It also implies a strong emphasis on learning and development adapted to the needs of a hybrid workplace and each employee. With 61% of remote employees believing that they require additional training to perform effectively in their role, the need for excellent and accountable remote/hybrid training is even greater.

In this section, we will look at the issues that organizations encounter when educating remote/hybrid workers, such as: 

• Watered-down workplace culture
• Communication inconsistency and lack of transparency
• Ensuring continuity of learning
• Distractions
• Underutilization of on-site workplaces
• Managing and sustaining a healthy work-life balance
• Keeping staff camaraderie and tight working relationships alive and well
• Overall employee satisfaction

Organizations can take several steps to aid employees to perform their best work in personal and shared digital workplaces, including guaranteeing cybersecurity, enabling seamless collaboration with the right digital tools, and investing in training resources to create digital competence.

A well-designed and masterful LMS like Skill Lake makes training content available on mobile devices, making it available to anybody, anywhere, at any time, significantly influencing the training provided to remote/hybrid workers. The system also facilitates communication between learners and instructors, reducing the risk of misunderstanding and ambiguity. Skill Lake users may build mashups, assessments, exams, and more using powerful, light-weight, distraction-free content production tools. It also facilitates feedback and remedial action that results in accountability in L&D. 

Challenges in controlling on-the-job training 

When it comes to allocating resources, most organizations prioritize boosting the effectiveness of their on-the-job training programs. This is hardly unexpected given that training is designed to reduce the time (and money) while delivering on all learning promises that benefit both executives and learners.

Nonetheless, despite the careful allocation of resources, many organizations find ventures useless in accomplishing their objectives. These can be due to reasons like: 

1. Differences in learning styles – At least three generations are represented in the current workforce, each with a fundamentally different relationship with technology. As a result, assuming that all employees are similarly tech-savvy or have the same knowledge levels and learning habits will make your on-the-job training less successful. 

Skill Lake enables accountability for people development by enabling individual accountability, carried out by setting and tracking time-sensitive competence development goals at the individual, department, organization, and intermediate levels. The platform assigns mentors or coaches to leverage specialized knowledge or provide extra support, overcoming differences in learning styles.

2. Engagement – The importance of engagement can get divided into three categories: cognitive, emotional, and behavioral. Without all three, poor knowledge retention, passive learning, and a lack of commitment all lead to on-the-job training issues. Furthermore, behavioral change is impossible in the absence of learning engagement. When instruction feels irrelevant or useless, most students mentally and emotionally “drop out” and refuse to participate. A study on employee engagement conducted in the United States states that disengaged employees cost businesses between 450 and 550 billion dollars per year, highlighting the importance of employee engagement and its impact on your business. 

Skill Lake drives learner engagement by enabling learners to learn anywhere, at any time. The system uses gamification, content mashups, or the creation of “guided tests” to nudge learners to achieve learning goals and easily create personalized learning journeys for individuals based on their specific needs. In comparison to other learning frameworks, Skill Lake has a greater learning retention rate.

3. Overload of Information – When an organization hires a new employee, the priority is to have them onboarded. The goal is to successfully train new employees on your corporate software to be productive. They flood them with too much material from the start of a training session and expect their employees to grasp it all. Employees may become overwhelmed, disconnect from training, and abandon your organization. Studies reveal less than 35% of the US workforce gets engaged at work.  

Skill Lake primarily offers self-paced learning, instructor-led classes, or a mix of the two. The student can choose between two learning modes on the learning platform: self-paced and instructor-led learning. In both cases, the student benefits from the guidance of an instructor or mentor.

4. Inadequate feedback and support structure – Most training programs are organized such that there is minimal room for employee feedback or involvement in terms of what works and what doesn’t. Outwardly, this may appear to be a simple remedy, but in practice, providing a sufficient feedback mechanism for off-the-job training can be difficult. According to Forbes, employees who believe their views get heard are 4.6 times more likely to do their best work. Furthermore, 89%of Human Resource leaders feel that regular peer feedback and frequent check-ins are critical for success. 

At the granular level, Skill Lake tracks learning behavior. It provides administrators with data on various learning metrics, allowing them to assist students who are falling behind.

5. Assessing training efficiency – Many L&D professionals believe it is critical to provide a quantitative assessment of how on-the-job training initiatives are affecting their firm. It might be strenuous to determine which metrics to employ, how to incorporate them into post-training assessments, when and how to follow up, and how to alter future training depending on the results.

Skill Lake allows instructors to observe training progress on the learner dashboard, effectively sanctioning user rights in the organizational hierarchy and allowing tracking of top and average performers, allowing for easy evaluation of training efficiency.

What the future holds for on-the-job training!

On-the-job training should ultimately result in employees being more prepared to do their tasks, being more engaged, and actively contributing to the company’s overall goals. Employees can benefit from accountable on-the-job training by learning and practicing new skills, having learning tools to refer to when doing duties, and building productive working relationships with co-workers.

In the on-the-job training setting, the emergence of L&D technologies has the potential to be a game-changer. Skill Lake takes collaborative learning to a whole new level of involvement and participation. As a result, the future of on-the-job training is practically here, with learning experiences becoming more responsive and robust.

Skill Lake helps the organization navigate hurdles as it surfaces while fostering a learning culture throughout the organization.

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