Category: Blogs

5 Priorities For CHROs During An Economic Downturn

The past three years have taught us how an economic downturn can transform the way we work. Rapid digitization, economic uncertainty and hybrid work are placing new demands on employees who require different skills to cope with the new normal of work.

HR leaders have been challenged like never before to lead their employees through an unpredictable environment. Evolving business demands, shifting priorities, and new skill development needs highlight the role of HR in crisis management and subsequent recovery.

It’s important for HR leaders to prioritize their focus areas especially when they have a growing “to-do” list of responsibilities. What will be the focus for HR leaders in 2023? How can they contribute to building critical skills and competencies that will make their organization and employees future-ready?

 

Understanding HR challenges is the first step

Before defining the focus areas for CHROs during a recession, it’s important to understand the top challenges that impact effective human resource management. 

1. Ensuring productivity in a downsized environment

Downsizing through layoffs can take a toll on workforce morale – HR leaders must handhold employees to overcome their fear, insecurity, and uncertainty, and help them remain productive and engaged. 

HR leaders need to:

  1. Educate and inform employees about how they can go on to become productive in a downsized environment
  2. Reallocate job responsibilities wisely – effective restructuring and reassignments will help ensure that the work is performed efficiently and effectively
  3. Communicate continuously and comprehensively to realign the workforce with current business conditions
  4. Retrain the surviving employees to keep them engaged and feel more valued and satisfied at work

2. Boosting the morale of surviving employees after layoffs

During a recession, many organizations are forced to reduce their workforce. Many of the surviving employees are often wracked with fear as they continue working while their colleagues are laid off or furloughed. It’s imperative for HR managers to have a plan to boost employee morale post-downsizing.

HR leaders should: 

  1. Personalize organizational training to develop the skills of remaining employees and focus on team-building activities
  2. Eliminate the uncertainty by having an open communication platform where company leaders address their workforce’s concerns
  3. Foster better relationships between employees and the organizational leadership through frequent one-on-one meetings, creation of focus groups, and feedback-sharing
  4. Explain to employees why certain roles have become obsolete and what skills should they develop to survive in the new workplace 
  5. Set up a feasible L&D strategy to minimize the learning curve for surviving employees, so they will be equipped to take up the new roles with confidence

3. Training organizational leadership to help them adapt to the new reality

Many organizations overlook training thinking that their leaders have reached a stage where they don’t require ongoing training. However, lack of leadership development can lead to employee-employer discord, workplace disagreements, toxic work environments, and sudden quitting of employees due to poor relationships with their managers. 

It’s crucial for HR leaders to conduct leadership development training to encourage managers and leaders to: 

  1. Tackle the post-downsizing challenges faced by their organization and employees
  2. Reduce employee turnover and increase engagement and workplace morale
  3. Identify new business opportunities that help them maximize returns with minimum investments
  4. Implement new, innovative, and empathetic ways of managing people and retaining top talent

4. Managing HR operations effectively on a limited budget

Economic downturns necessitate organizations to cut business spending, which often results in hiring freezes, layoffs, furloughs, reducing benefits, restructuring jobs, and ending relationships with costly vendors. The biggest challenge for HR managers is to make strategic shifts that will help them cut costs and boost productivity simultaneously.  

During a recession, HR executives should:

  1. Optimize the long-term budget by reevaluating their processes, refining the hiring process, and identifying manual operations that can be eliminated or automated or shifted into employee self-service mode
  2. Determine what kind of benefits will make the most sense for their budget while retaining the competitive advantage in talent attraction and retention
  3. Offer employees workplace flexibility, adequate career development opportunities, and meaningful work roles with proper training 
  4. Digitize the aspects of employee hiring, onboarding, new-hire training, employee management, role-based training, leaves, payroll etc. to free up time for workers to work on higher-level tasks

5. Making room for internal mobility and reskilling programs

Internal mobility is important for boosting employee retention and engagement during a recession. Restructuring or reskilling your current workforce allows you to remain agile and adapt quickly to the shifting business priorities. 

When moving into a recession, HR leaders should take special care to:

  1. Instill confidence in people’s financial security and their position within the company by moving them into relevant roles
  2. Invest in the career growth and development of existing employees by committing to a robust learning program
  3. Align the learning programs with the organization’s upskilling and reskilling needs to close skill gaps and prepare employees for open roles across the company
  4. Implement radical redeployment programs to move displaced workers successfully into new and meaningful roles
  5. Review internal talent pool to identify employees who have the right skills and are willing to take on new or emerging roles that will be required in the future workforce

All these challenges prove that there are no shortcuts for HR teams to deal with the unknown or unexpected consequences of an economic downturn. It’s a time when HR professionals should demonstrate their business acumen and focus on building a robust learning and development strategy that aligns with the organizational goals and objectives

 

5 focus areas for CHROs and L&D experts to recession-proof their business

1. Align training with organizational goals

According to LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report, mapping learning to business goals is the No. 1 priority for learning and development strategists this year. 

When your employees’ skills and knowledge are aligned to your business goals, your organization will gain a significant competitive advantage, enhanced productivity, increased sales, and improved brand reputation. 

To align training with business goals, HR leaders should:

  1. Understand and decide on the long-term goals of the business.
  2. Analyze how and what kind of training programs will meet the organizational requirements.
  3. Identify the new skills and competencies that employees will need to achieve the desired performance.
  4. Figure out what kind of modalities (forms of learning) can best meet the training needs – instructor-led live sessions, eLearning, webinars, etc.
  5. Involve the C-suite in the communication loop for a clearer vision of the organizational goals.
  6. Decision-makers should be aware of the purpose of the training and how it helps achieve long-term business goals, so they can justify the money spent on training.
  7. Ensure scope for continual learning through post-training reinforcement. 

2. Invest in training to make your business recession-proof

Every organization that invests in training intends to gain better growth, stability, and a brighter future. A recent study by Deloitte states that organizations with a strong learning culture are able to boost their employee engagement and retention rates by 30 to 50%. Continued training through an affordable solution ensures that your people have the skills they need to keep serving customers even during a recession, and keeps their morale high even when increments fail to meet their expectations.  

What kind of training can help recession-proof your business?

  1. Training people on specific soft skills, such as communication, flexibility, emotional intelligence, tolerance, resilience, adaptability, etc. can prepare them to meet any upcoming challenges.
  2. Interactive training courses that simulate less expected or less likely situations, difficult customer experiences, or other challenging endeavors allow employees to get trained in a completely safe environment.
  3. Companies that invest in upskilling and reskilling programs are in a better position to help their employees stay ahead of the curve and equip them to deal with any challenge or change in the future. 
  4. Managing finances is a stressful process during an economic downturn. Companies that deliver financial planning/wellness training to their workforce can bring positive changes to their employees’ personal and professional lives. 
  5. Similarly, it’s important to prioritize mental health and wellness training initiatives that will equip employees to focus on their job better, making them more productive and happier.

3. Gauge the impact of training on business growth and ROI

A report by Accenture shows that for every dollar a company invests in training, they receive about USD 4.53 in return, that is, a 353% ROI. It’s important for HR leaders and L&D teams to make a strong business case that will justify the adoption of the right learning technology platform for their organization. When the C-suite has a clear insight regarding the business significance and the potential ROI offered by the learning initiatives and tools, they will be ready to invest in employee development.    

Here are a few tips to measure learning ROI and its impact on your business:

  1. Work with the senior leadership to identify your organization’s desired learning outcomes and determine your training goals.
  2. Decide the KPIs to be used for calculating training ROI. Choose measurable and quantifiable KPIs that are competency-based, skill-based, and aligned to employee and organizational goals. 
  3. Implement a learning and development (L&D) platform that allows you to track learning analytics and measure outcomes, or integrate your LMS with a trusted third-party analytics platform that can offer actionable insights on your L&D performance.
  4. Correlate the preferred KPIs against training variables provided by your L&D platform to obtain deep, measurable insights. For example, sales training should improve sales performance and soft skills training should improve communication. 
  5. Test the knowledge gained by employees using periodic quizzes, tests, and assessments. Track the results to understand the level of knowledge retained by employees and analyze how they apply the knowledge back on their jobs. 

4. Reduce training & onboarding costs without sacrificing the quality and effectiveness of Learning

According to the ATD State of The Industry Report, an average organization spent USD 1,280 per employee on formal learning in 2022. However, the cost of not training your employees can hurt your bottom line severely, leading to higher employee turnover and more errors at work. 

Here are a few tips to help you plan a realistic training budget:

  1. Choose an L&D platform that helps streamline and automate the routine tasks around planning, assigning, and measuring your training. This will give your admins their time back to focus on valuable tasks like developing courses and defining learning objectives.
  2. Online training delivered via an L&D will allow your employees to access and learn the courses from anywhere. It saves your employees’ time and traveling costs.
  3. New employees replacing the existing workforce can leverage an L&D platform to access job-specific and organizational courses, reducing the time taken to settle down and be productive. 
  4. Invest in online, asynchronous training to train your employees without breaking the bank.
  5. Collaborate with your in-house experts to create internal training programs that can be delivered via an LMS to cut your training costs. 

5. Create personalized learning journeys

L&D plays an important role in providing highly engaging, learner-centric development experiences. A survey by Forbes shows that 47% of respondents are not satisfied with their employer’s learning and development programs as they take a blanket approach in which all the learners are served the same content. 

Personalized learning, on the other hand, focuses on individual requirements meaning that employees are provided with content that meets their learning needs and objectives. 

  1. Creating personalized learning plans allow L&D leaders to track training progress and performance, and add performance management elements like one-on-ones, feedback, or skills reviews into the process.
  2. Supervisors or managers will find it easy to stay in touch with their employees during key moments and evaluate their progress on the fly.  
  3. Learners are more likely to remember relevant content and apply the knowledge gained in their day-to-day roles.
  4. Personalized learning paths aided by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning powered course recommendations will make it possible for employees to consume relevant content and learn at a faster pace.  
  5. By improving the quality of content and the method of training, employees will be in a better position to create more engaging and relevant customer experiences. Thus, personalized learning helps generate more revenue from your products and services.

 

In short:

To bolster long-term preparedness, organizations must make learning and development a part of their employees’ daily workflow. Nearly 69% of organizations are doing more skill building now than they did before the COVID-19 crisis. “Learning in the flow of work”, which is best managed through a learning management system, will help organizations to upskill and reskill their employees at speed. 

What are your organization’s HR priorities to win in today’s business climate? We’d love to hear from you. If you’d like to know how Skill Lake can help ensure continuous learning and development in your workplace, contact our team. 

Aarathy Jayakrishnan

Aarathy is an e-learning professional and enthusiast with a keen understanding of learning and development concepts. She writes insightful content, unraveling the possibilities that e-learning holds, and strives to make education open for all.

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Stress Management Training for Employees

 

Employee well-being is one of the main challenges across organizations, especially amidst competitive markets and fast technological developments. While minimizing skill gaps, organizations must ensure enough learning and development processes to promote employee wellness and handle employee stress.

However, statistics these days are promising. A US Department of Labor and US Department of Health and Human Services report found that 80% of US businesses with more than 50 employees offered corporate wellness programs.

Stress management training is necessary, especially when you have a lot of expectations from your employees. Instances like pressure to meet rising demands, taking control of how your employees work, fear of getting laid off, low salaries, long working hours, lack of professional growth, and other numerous reasons can make your employees feel insecure.

Infusing stress management training for employees at this point can greatly reduce their stress and healthcare costs. Moreover, it gives a better work environment for your employees and a better employee retention rate for you.

You will find reduced absenteeism and more task-focused and satisfied employees if you make them feel less stressed through work motivation approaches. 

Workplace motivation has improved organizations’ bottom line and has become unignorable these days. Let us see how…

Read more: AR and VR in LMS: The Future of Corporate Training

Benefits of Wellness Initiatives in Reducing Employee Stress

Work motivation, employee motivation, team motivation, and company-wide motivation – all are important for the overall health and well-being of your workforce. There are many other reasons why motivation in the workplace can be beneficial, as detailed below:

1. Physical and mental health improvements

Mental well-being, positive relationships in an inclusive environment, and organized routines are direct benefits of employee wellness programs. Apart from these, physical wellness can also be improved with motivation in the workplace resulting in energy levels, physical activities, balance work schedules, and daily routines.

2. Increased productivity and job satisfaction

Energizing and motivating your employees makes them productive and improves their job satisfaction. They tend to finish their work to the best of their abilities, remain focused on a healthy work routine and increase productivity at the workplace with a smart wellness program in place. 

3. Better work-life balance

With services, programs, and tools that favor work-life balance, your employees can easily balance their official and personal commitments. Such methods increase employee engagement, create a positive work atmosphere, and catalyze a supportive community in your organization. Besides, software-based programs can help identify your employees’ potential problems early, and customized programs make employee buy-ins easier.

4. Improved relationships and teamwork

Teamwork can boost your employees’ creativity, collaboration, and development of innovative ideas. Stress management training for employees and team motivation will strengthen their relationship and promote and hold each other accountable for the set goals.  If the wellness programs are extended beyond your workplace, it further improves employee communication and collaboration. 

5. Reduced healthcare costs for employers

Bring in wellness programs and see the healthcare costs reduced measurably. The chances are slim that your employees fall sick or get injured when you have an employee motivation program on your agenda. This implies that employees avail of medical care less frequently, thus saving the probable healthcare costs incurred by your organization or its individuals. 

6. Boost talent retention

Is your retention and recruitment metrics low? This could be because you have not made enough effort towards the commitment required to ensure the well-being of your existing employees. Invest in wellness segments of your L&D programs and put up health and wellness effectively. You will see the retention ad recruitment metrics go through the roof, and it improves employee engagement and minimizes employee turnover. 

Read more: Boosting Business Value with Streamlined Learning and Development in the Workplace

How does an LMS platform like Skill Lake help initiate wellness in your corporate?

Is your L&D programs and employee wellness taking separate paths? Well, it is time you merge it with Skill Lake. Making wellness one of the core programs of your learning and development process can provide your employees with a better work-life balance. This, in turn, contributes to improved organizational productivity. Skill Lake can include programs like upskilling and reskilling, core skills development, soft skills development, and personalized mentoring in your wellness training. Whatever training you provide, ensure they are nurtured cognitively because that only can bring the actual results of what they have been trained for!

Skill Lake has a large potential to offer when job and wellness training are combined. Wellness-infused  L&D programs are among the best ways to reassure your employees that you are heavily invested in their growth, development, and well-being. Employees will make every effort to grow in their roles and give their maximum output to your organization once they feel invested. If you want, you can leverage wellness program initiatives offered by third parties who are exclusive and excellent in such fields. You will see that your employees’ organic workplace involvement and work culture abiding will grow exponentially.

The learning and development process has many initiatives to manage stress for your employees at different levels and build resilience among them, starting from the new employee orientation best practices. Investing in L&D programs gained more importance during the pandemic. It could wipe out employee stress and ensure employee wellness so they can concentrate on other primary areas of concern with a stress-free mind.

How can Skill Lake help you assist in employee wellness? Here’s how!

  1. Enable offering online courses on wellness initiatives, stress management, nutrition, physical activities, and employee motivation at their preferred pace.
  2. Help conduct interactive quizzes and assessments to engage employees and reinforce wellness concepts.
  3. Help initiate webinars to get access to subject matter experts and wellness trainers to understand the importance of managing stress and creating a healthy work environment.
  4. Give access to wellness anywhere, anytime, and from any device courses by incorporating mobile learning. 
  5. Collaborate with other employees and teams to share their wellness journey and provide support, thus fostering a wellness culture at your workplace.

Turning a blind eye to your employees’ mental well-being can greatly cost you! If you have not focused on your employees’ mental health, there is a high chance that they might give up on you. With Skill Lake incorporated into your training programs, consider your wellness initiative half done! With features that enable quick learning, improved engagement, and enhanced experience, Skill Lake can help you foster a strong, healthy, and mindful workforce. Connect with us today to learn more about Skill Lake!

Aarathy Jayakrishnan

Aarathy is an e-learning professional and enthusiast with a keen understanding of learning and development concepts. She writes insightful content, unraveling the possibilities that e-learning holds, and strives to make education open for all.

Instagram|Twitter | Facebook

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Flipped Learning

A teaching approach that endorses the notion of ‘activity before lecture’! This might sound outlandish, but flipped learning helps you understand the concepts your trainer shares better since you already went through its activities first. 

Flipped instructions flow from a group learning space to an individual learning space. This approach is advantageous in creating an energetic and interactive learning environment where trainers guide trainees as they practice concepts and engage creatively in various courses.

What do you think led to the instigation of such training approaches? 

The challenges in the corporate world have necessitated different learning approaches, like flipped learning. Some such corporate training challenges include:

  1. Change management
  2. Building leadership qualities
  3. Learner engagement
  4. Constant deliverance of training
  5. Track the application level of various skills
  6. Conflict management abilities
  7. Demonstrating value to leadership
  8. Measure corporate learning effectiveness
  9. Providing training to a varied audience 

Yes, pitching the right approach for user engagement and keeping your employees’ focus on training materials is important and so is engaging your employees through smart corporate training approaches.

  1. Get involved and apply what they learned in real-life scenarios
  2. Retain more information
  3. Become better at work by improving their performance
  4. Benefit your business through better ROI 

Can the flipped learning model be the right answer for enhancing corporate training? Let’s dive more into the concept of flipped learning…

Read more: Unlock Success: The Ultimate Guide to Corporate Training Growth!

What are the Benefits of Flipped Learning in Your E-learning Corporate?

When we say about adopting flipped learning, we are not simply talking about adopting a new fad. Your company can genuinely benefit from it, and some of the benefits it offers include:

1. Active learning and engagement: Direct instruction from the trainers ensures the involvement of your employees, making them capable of independently handling their tasks through a variety of content like internet-based simulations and other engaging materials that direct your employees to synthesize information on their own.

2. Flexibility and customization: A good LMS leveraging flipped learning will allow easy third-party integration with other enterprise applications that your company is already using. Also, such corporate training platforms cater to your company’s specific business needs through easily customizable features. 

3. Improved retention and application: The flipped learning content can be made available at your employees’ convenience. Making learning available at their fingertips and understanding the inside out of various concepts and technologies anytime they want makes them confident in what they do. Their application level knowledge improves, and you can retain your employees for longer periods.

4. Enhanced collaboration and communication: Flipped learning embraces intensive hands-on collaborative activities by involving your people irrespective of their team, department, or location. Flipped learning activities in your company with a proper LMS in place represent a cross-section of your company’s professionals with enhanced collaboration and communication channels like trainee-led courses,  hands-on practices, and trainer-trainee conferencing among others.

5. Cost-effective and scalable: The economics of flipping is one other advantage of flipped learning- it saves the logistical costs involved like traveling, or getting trainers and trainees together all the time, especially if you have a large or dispersed workforce. Furthermore, when your business is scaling, this approach can too!

What are the Areas to Implement Flipped Learning in Corporate Training?

Remote working has made the dependency of your workforce on freshly brewed or curated content much larger. A motivated professional learner can become the top performer through flipped corporate classroom teachings delivered digitally. 

Surely, flipped learning merged with an LMS can transfer information through customized and engaging content. It can back and reinstate skills development and peer collaboration in the best way possible. These factors comprise the foundation of the corporate training model. You can be sure that your employees are equipped with the tangible skills and knowledge needed to be acquired through:

  1. Sales team enablement 
  2. Customer service and support  training
  3. Compliance and regulatory training
  4. Leadership and management development
  5. Technical, software, and hardware training
  6. Onboarding and orientation of new hires
  7. Remote workforce training
  8. Support education
  9. Retain employee knowledge and more!

Best Practices to Implement Flipped Learning in Corporate Training

If you are running a company with diverse employees, then flipped learning is your first ‘go-to’. Flipped learning is not as easy as a pie. This is why we have a put list of a few best practices to start off on the right foot:

1. Strategize, Plan, and Prepare

If you plan to flip all the training modules, don’t do it just yet. Start with the modules that are related to hands-on skills. Flipping the complex learning materials first is also apposite as it develops the employees’ skills through properly guided practices. 

2. Technology and Platform Selection

To ensure that your employees get all the benefits flipped learning offers, you need to choose the right technology and a corporate training platform selection such as screen and video recorder, interactive quizzes and polling capabilities, AI-powered captioning tools, secure and shared video libraries, and Learning Management Systems (LMS)

3. Content Creation and Curation

For some organizations, curation can be just an add-on and not an important focus in the content design process. It is better if your courses are the knowledgeable ones translated by the subject matter experts. When such new content is designed and approved, next you need next is a set of follow-up resources and activities. If the core learning program content is missing any important essence, there is always an option to curate the content in the shadow of the main content.

4. Delivery and Facilitation

Deliver engaging online content and make it more interesting through innovative approaches like videos, quizzes, AR/VR technology-supported content, searching for resources, podcast interviews with subject matter experts, and so on. Promote active preparation by giving them awards and recognitions through gamified learning approaches.

5. Evaluation and Feedback

Compare the data you collected during the implementation phase with the resultant data to analyze the strengths and weak points of flipped learning in your organization. Make the necessary modifications to your flipped learning model, activities, and strategies to improve its effectiveness. Do not forget to consider the perspectives and feedback of your employees and other stakeholders.

Read more: AR and VR in LMS: The Future of Corporate Training

The Future of Flipped Learning in Corporate Training

E-learning corporates using flipped training have better chances of improving the perspectives if thinking, working, and learning of their employees. Why is flipped training regarded as the next corporate training model trend by most companies? The answer is simple- it can leverage technologies to present information at the time when you need it!

Long gone are the days when employees used to remember the details about their products and the troubleshooting steps Instead, today we have content-delivering systems that support the performance of your employees. 

When you choose the right technologies that go with the flipped learning model, you are supplying your employees with opportunities for growth and innovation, introducing and integrating with cutting-edge technologies, collaborating and sharing knowledge among organizations, understanding the importance of research and evaluation, and a lot more!

How can Skill Lake boost Flipped Learning in Corporate?

At Skill Lake, we merge various interesting training courses with engaging content making learning more enjoyable for your employees. Implementing flipped learning model can contribute to the productivity and improved efficiency of individuals, teams, departments, and therefore organization as a whole.

There are opportunities for your employees to upskill and reskill and doing so can be pivotal during your challenging times. Moreover what Skill Lake offers is the experience of a deeper level of learning through engaging training sessions advocating interactive and responsive approaches through features like:

  1. AR/VR learning
  2. Personalized learning
  3. Comprehensive learning
  4. Multiple learning delivery options
  5. Gamification
  6. Social and collaborative learning
  7. Instructor-led training
  8. Synchronous and asynchronous learning
  9. Mobility and a lot more!

Connect with us today and learn how Skill Lake can enhance your corporate training efficiencies.

Ashmitha Chatterjee

Ashmitha is a learning and development enthusiast who shares her insights on e-learning. She loves to create engaging and informative content and is dedicated to helping people learn and grow through her deep expertise in the field.

Instagram|Twitter | Facebook

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corporate training

Business expansion is inevitable for any company. Companies that started as small company expands to medium and then to large by beating the odds in the highly competitive market. 

When your business expands, opens franchises, and opts for mergers and acquisitions, you ensure your company’s brand value, culture, and objectives are never compromised. 

Your employee count goes way too high amidst such juggling, and you will have too much to handle, like employee onboarding, performance analysis, employee training, and much more! 

While you cannot automate mergers and acquisitions or other business processes, you can automate employee training and management.

Many companies fail to notice this, but your employee training directly impacts the company’s outcomes and success. As companies expand, scaling up employee programs to match your company’s needs become complex. 

To avoid such complexities related to scaling up training, let us dive into some details, like why your companies need to scale up, the advantages of scaling up your organizational training, and a few tips to achieve those.

Read more: Why Consider LXP over LMS for Employee Training and Development

Why Does Your Company Need To Scale Up Training?

While scaling your business, investing in your workforce is highly underrated. Investing in your employees is as important as bringing new leads- both fuel your business growth quickly. Your company is good, only as good as those working within it. Therefore, training your workforce and expanding their skillset will help your business scale from excellence to excellence.

Provide your employee with structured learning and development opportunities. This way, you can ensure that your employees have the skills to power your business growth at any time. This will also lead to nurturing a positive work environment where employees are supported, valued, and appreciated. 

Apart from business growth, solving various business challenges, and shifts in job roles necessitating the need for a scale-up in training, here are a few more reasons to scale up training in your company, whether it is a startup, small, medium, or large enterprise:

  1. Makes your company a more tempting option for people to join your organization in a highly competitive market.
  2. Make employees feel valued; therefore, you will see employee retention improve.
  3. Helps with talent mapping and identifying the individuals capable of driving your business growth further- this will save a fortune for your company trying to hire managers amidst your employees making progress.
  4. Supports your employees becoming multi-skilled, thus opening doors towards new opportunities, reducing recruitment costs, and making your employees future-ready through various skill sets they acquire.
  5. Make your employees stay with you for a long haul, and they will become the face of your organization, thus strengthening your employee brand.

Benefits Of Scaling Up Training In Organizations

Scaling up training has numerous benefits, such as improved employee productivity, engagement, and enhanced value and morale. 

When employees are offered constant training to upskill and reskill to build their skills, they feel supported and valued, and there will be genuine interest from their side to contribute more to your organization. 

Various on-the-job training like job role-specific training, company culture training, customer service training, and safety guidelines training are great advantages of scaling up your training programs. 

Mentorship provided through learning programs can strengthen areas such as customer engagement, overall profitability, and reduced absenteeism.

A company fostering a learning culture is helping its workforce build a career based on values, morale, a positive growth mindset, and becoming more innovative, helping in better problem-solving skills and quick decision-making abilities. 

When your company has a future-ready robust workforce, it makes your company’s backbone stronger.

You now know the need for a scale-up in your training and the advantages it puts forth. Now let us have a walkthrough of how to achieve it.

Read more: Powering Corporate Training with SCORM Compliant Learning Management System

Tips and Ways To Scale Up Training

Creating a corporate training program that aligns with your company is challenging. Still, you can achieve it with constant practice and small steps taken on:

1. Outline Your Training Program’s Scope 

When the market is highly competitive, your employees must stay on top of the new skills. Shred off the outdated chunks of your training programs and bring in the updated ones to overcome your employees’ challenges. When your organizational needs are on par with the performance targets, it will take care of your employee engagement built on values aligned with your company. 

2. Go for E-learning Solutions

Your company might have a scattered, distributed, or remote workforce. You may be following a hybrid work model. Irrespective of the workforce models, you can make training accessible, easier, and equal for all your employees. Through e-learning solutions like LMS, LXP, etc., you can provide the learning content and conduct assessments to your employees anytime, anywhere, and from any device.

3. Take Small Steps in Training Paths

Before you roll out a training program company-wide, ensure its practicality by trying it on a small sample size like a team, department, or even for employees in a specific location. Before you put in all your efforts, time, and money, such test trials will ensure whether a training program is feasible for your company. Start with small ideas, ascertain the results it produces, and then take the big leap!

4. Underline Your Brand Name

Customize your training program, and ensure it underlines your brand. This will imprint your brand identity among your employees and other stakeholders. Emphasizing your brand will give your employees a sense of belonging by bringing the scattered teams together under one roof. Training employees can nurture your employees as a family where everyone supports and grows together.

5. Choose Blended Learning Programs

Training can be offered in various modes like graphical representations, videos, webinars, and other appealing content. Such ways of blended learning will help your employees retain information more effectively. Sounds like blended learning should be on top of your list to scale training programs in a way that is effective and reaches wider trainees. 

6. Provide Microlearning 

When the training content gets complex for your employees, simplify it through micro lessons. When training is provided in small bite-sized chunks instead of lengthy seminars and classroom training, it imprints in employees’ minds. Furthermore, when these micro learners can access content 24X7 from anywhere and any device, they can devote their time to other priority tasks. Rest assured, you will witness improved learner attention and engagement with microlearning!

Read more: Boosting Business Value with Streamlined Learning and Development in the Workplace

How LMS Platforms Like Skill Lake Can Help

We know how to scale your training program to the next level, but what is the right platform to achieve it?

Skill Lake can help you get there. With unique features like customization, availability on any device, multitudes of online learning libraries to choose from, and fitting your employees’ busy schedules in a hassle-free manner, you can ensure your training standards scale up from time to time. 

Skill Lake is the perfect online training solution for an organization of any size that needs to automate training. While companies focus on their mainstream business activities, Skill Lake will handle employee training well. 

To experience the perfection of content consumption, ensure learning accountability of all employees, organize learning materials, improve social and collaborative learning, personalized learning paths, make use of multiple learning delivery options, promote comprehensive learning, and above all, accelerate business growth, all you need is the support of an efficient learning platform like Skill Lake!

Request a free demo now!

Aarathy Jayakrishnan

Aarathy is an e-learning professional and enthusiast with a keen understanding of learning and development concepts. She writes insightful content, unraveling the possibilities that e-learning holds, and strives to make education open for all.

Instagram|Twitter | Facebook

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AR and VR in LMS

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtuality Reality (VR)- the clever technologies that connect our physical and digital worlds, we know!

But what are the definitions of AR and VR? Let us get a load of those…

Creating AR content basically is about a real-time view of the actual world where the elements are blanketed by computer-generated visuals and sounds thus adding more layers of information, activity, and entertainment. It incorporates digital information through visual and audio aids, or through the real-time user environment itself.

VR is all about recreating our real world or creating an entirely new reality for the users. To translate various motions into simulations, the user will need devices like headsets with screens, sensors, and handsets into simulations. Basically, it creates a virtual environment and puts users inside that experience. 

One main difference between AR and VR, if you ask us, is that the former works with the real world as its basic foundation and the latter takes you away from the distractions of the real world.

Twin Sweeney, the CEO of Epic Games once said, “I believe that augmented reality will be the biggest technological revolution that happens in our lifetime”. And time proved he was true. Statista reports that users in the AR & VR market are expected to amount to 2,593.00m by 2027. User penetration will be 28.8% in 2023 and is expected to hit 32.6% by 2027. The average revenue per user (ARPU) is expected to be US$14.08.

AR and VR have created a space in corporate learning where learners can have a hands-on experience in various subject matters. It advocates “learning by doing” and is beneficial for corporate training in giving training in a safe and cost-effective manner, a better way to practice and develop your employees’ soft or technical skills, making employees ready for any emergency situations, and making learning more interesting through gamification. 

A corporate LMS that integrates AR and VR can enjoy the benefits of simulated learning like

  1. Training made interesting and cost-saving in a secure environment.
  2. Practicing new skills or polishing existing skills made it easy
  3. Employee readiness for any emergencies ensured
  4. The effectiveness of learning materials is enhanced and a lot more!

Why Implement AR and VR in Your Corporate LMS?

An enhanced learning experience and improved learner engagement are one of the primary goals of implementing AR and VR in the corporate space. The Augmented and Virtual Reality Survey Report says that 86% of respondents believe that XR technologies―Virtual Reality (VR) as an entirely digital world, Augmented Reality (AR) as an overlay on the digital world and existing surroundings, and Mixed Reality (MR) as a combination of VR and AR―will be requested as hand-held devices and mobile-first solutions by 2025.

Redesigning your LMS or LXP by adopting VR and AR content brings the following values:

  1. Enhanced user engagement
  2. Personalized learning
  3. Immersive user experience
  4. Interactive and engaging course content
  5. Tracking and estimating course effectiveness
  6. Life-like learning scenarios in low-risk environments
  7. Cost savings due to less expensive tooling changes
  8. Faster time to market and improved scalability of your workforce

Why Do Organizations Hesitate to Implement AR and VR Despite the Benefits?

AR and VR content creation enabled through your LMS provides virtual walkthroughs of your employees’ work environments, interactive product demos, and problem-centric scenario-focused learning. However, it too has a flip side of challenges like any other technology, and those are…

1. Heavy Cost Incurred During the Initial Stages

AR and VR need software and devices like headsets and AR glasses. Additionally, you might also need a strong PC and MAC for creating AR VR content. Hence the course turnaround time and expenses will be more than regular eLearning courses. Experts say that the prices associated with these technologies will reduce soon. Considering the value it adds to your workforce and the ROI it can offer, this is a one-time investment that is safe to embark on.

2. Technical Limitations

Trainers if not familiar with the latest technologies like AR and VR technology can find its implementation quite challenging. They will have to invest their time, resources, and effort into learning how to use and troubleshoot AR and VR equipment. The same goes for trainees. If they are not familiar with such technologies and the associated devices, the learning curve for educators and trainers can make only slow progress at the beginning.

3. Potential for Distraction and Disengagement

It is a possibility that your learners get addicted to the virtual world. Visual treats are fun and trainees can get carried away by the AR and VR technologies. If the learners experience the virtual reality lessons better than their conventional ways of learning experiences, then they will lose their focus and drift away from their main areas of attention.

4. Malfunctioning Can Waste Time

AR and VR are used along with a specific set of devices like headphones. If any or few of the devices malfunction, then that will lead to the wastage of your resources and time while facing inconveniences and rectification efforts and alternatives.

How Skill Lake Can Help?

The integration of AR and VR into LMS is in a way providing an additional option for you to measure your employees’ success rate. Besides a direct impact on your business results, it eliminates the weak points of your trainers through training efforts that provide real-life lessons!

The efforts involved in ramping up the learning experience are one of the main reasons for interest in VR and AR content creation for companies. AR and VR technologies are increasingly used in business activities and the learning sphere. Integrating AR and VR into an e-learning product like Skill Lake can help you gain numerous benefits through features like:

  1. Streamlined and regularized corporate training
  2. Easy uploading of learning content in any format like videos, graphics, simulations, etc.
  3. Enhanced personalized learning and user engagement
  4. We have a dedicated content creation team to convert basic training materials to interesting ones: 
  5. AI/ML-powered platform to boost organization-wide employee growth
  6. Competency management and mapping
  7. Accountability for people’s development
  8. Learning delivery and content authoring
  9. Smart library, learner dashboard, and user management
  10. Enterprise IT ready and adheres to enterprise security standards

The training in today’s modern companies can be revolutionized with AR and VR technologies. But we suggest scrutiny of ethical, equity, and privacy issues are conducted for the effective implementation of this. Skill Lake can address all these challenges and help your companies reach their maximum potential and carve a future-ready workforce! Connect with us today!

Aarathy Jayakrishnan

Aarathy is an e-learning professional and enthusiast with a keen understanding of learning and development concepts. She writes insightful content, unraveling the possibilities that e-learning holds, and strives to make education open for all.

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Learning and Development in Workplace

Employers are trying to attract and retain employees by focusing on new-age technology. Many industries today are facing skill gaps and labor shortages. Retaining and strengthening the workforce is turning a cumbersome job.

The general lack of digital maturity is one essential reason companies are critically looking to improve their workplace learning and development processes. Formstack and Mantis Research revealed that only 4% of today’s organizations had achieved a fully digitized and automated workplace. Today, companies need to grow up digitally to avoid inefficient redundant processes impacting their productivity. And to ensure employees combat the rising organizational changes,  effective L&D processes are inevitable. 

This blog will take you through the corporate Learning and Development paradigm shifts and how L&D training in workplaces impacts business value!

Read more: L&D Trends Corporates Need To Lookout For In 2023!

The Shift in Corporate Learning and Development Paradigm 

The paradigm shift has hit rock bottom in the way people work, the way customers prefer things, and on a larger picture, the world as a whole. When your organization fails to be digitally ahead, there is a pullback on employee productivity, employee retention, customer satisfaction, and henceforth your business value.

Post-COVID, companies in all spectrums are trying to stay afloat to make spontaneous decisions. But it is time now that companies address their gaps and reach digital maturity through proactive strategic decisions. 

How?

Culture, workflow digitization, futuristic technologies, and team collaboration are pivotal in your organization’s automation efforts. Planning is important to determine where your organization lands on a digital maturity model. Then identify changes you can make to achieve the goal of workflow automation, employee empowerment, improved customer experience, and other goals that build your business value.

When an employee learns a new skill, its period of effectiveness is limited, say five years or so. Moreover, there is no assurance that your employees will stick with you for that long. In this digital age, companies must break their function silos, and employees must quit efforts to build linear career paths.

How can a modern workplace like yours pace up with such paradigm shifts?

An always-on, collaborative learning and development experience is the answer! Don’t give your employees a long ladder; ask them to climb to the top all at once. Make them take small progressive steps, give them time to pause and evolve, and guide them in collecting a large cluster of capabilities and experiences on their way up. 

The question is: Can you provide a hassle-free, iterative learning experience for supporting a rapidly evolving workforce? While doing so, can you ensure your organization’s agility and digital maturity?

You can if you have an innovative corporate learning platform to assure the delivery of actual employee and business value.

How is Learning & Development Impacting Business Value

Providing your employees the chance to learn and grow makes them feel invested in your organization. In a rapidly evolving skill market, your employees should be given new challenges to push beyond expectations. This will help your employees remain content and interested in their work.

Employees are trying to pace with the rapidly shifting modern workplace through agile and ‘responsive to change’ learning. Therefore, a focus on your organization’s learning and development strategy makes a strong case for its wide-ranging impacts on business values.

Now let us look through a few business areas that can be impacted by effective learning and development!

1. Talent Attraction and Retention

While it is important to follow the traditional learning approach of improving productivity at both the individual and organizational levels, now it has wider impacts on employability. The work landscape has taken a dramatic twist regarding employees staying long-term in one company.

Employees will stay only until they feel valued in the company, feel the value for the role and positively contribute to their career development. You might find employee attraction and retention complex in such a situation. One of the main reasons employees joined your organization is the tremendous opportunities you offer. When the opportunities get exhausted, employees do too!

2. Grow Your People and Their Abilities

The skill market fastly evolves, necessitating employee skill polishing now more than ever. But when you have training and development opportunities, your employees will stay on top of the changes as it happens. When you invest in developing leaders in the workplace through learning, you will see increased ROIs. This will make your organization more likely to achieve performance targets.

4. Build A Value-based Culture

Your organization’s values and morals have been built upon the need to be understood by the employees you recruit. Only a learning and development program can help better communicate and practice company values. Even when your employees are scattered or remotely working or distributed, value-based culture training can help build a sense of community or connection among your employees. 

4. Build Your Brand

As already said, fostering a company value-based training is your organization’s ‘mantra’ to build a brand among Gen Y professionals. When it comes to other prospective employees, your brand identity is the first thing they care about, and they will also look into the position you hold in the business landscape. Communicating your company as a brand through L&D training programs can help you improve your organization’s status.

5. Employee Engagement and Motivation 

Again, employees need opportunities to stay happy and connected with your organization. For this, make sure you have a proper L&D training strategy. When employees are engaged and motivated, they will give their 100% effort, have more creativity, and focus on innovative approaches. 

How L&D Platforms Can Help

Investing in Learning and Development training can harvest great rewards for your company. Just needing one in place is not enough. You also need to have an understanding of the measure to which these changes are impacting your employees and the company as a whole. Measuring just employee satisfaction and completion rates like conventional methods won’t do. 

A result-based matrix is also needed to assess the impacts of these changes on employees, their learning engagement, and the impact these changes have on teams and the whole business process. To ensure your organization adopts these business values properly, ensure you have a review framework that checks for strategic alignment, people’s capabilities, organizational health, individual peak performance, etc. What’s better than L&D software to help streamline the entire learning and development process?

Read more: How Significant is L&D for the Future of Work?

How Skill Lake Makes an Apt L&D Platform

Skill Lake is a unified platform for all your learning and development programs in the workplace. When your business expands, training many employees can be painstaking. But with Skill Lake you can achieve this task hands down, maximizing your chances of building a dedicated workforce and unique business value.

Skill Lake offers several benefits that can help your company easily tackle the quickly evolving L&D training programs. Some of them are:

  1. Driving business growth
  2. Promoting learning and accountability
  3. Organizing course materials
  4. Boosting learner engagement
  5. Offering continuous learning and growth

The features and benefits of Skill Lake catalyze your business value, improve your ROI and make your company go places through one simple step- Continuously making your employees future-ready! Connect with us now!

Sachin Krishna

Sachin is a passionate advocate of e-learning with a profound knowledge of the field. He regularly writes compelling content that captivates readers and works to spread awareness of learning solutions.

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Workforce Quality In Remote Work

Organizations are trying to preserve an innovative hybrid work model. Collaborating with futuristic tech tools like Learning Management Systems [LMS] is the first step to creating a creative and engaging work environment. However, research suggests a ‘large gap’ in the execution of hybrid work technologies in companies. So let’s discuss on the topic Workforce Quality In Remote Work Settings.

How can companies overcome this gap? How can LMS solutions help your company get there? Here is what we think…

The basic purpose of an LMS is to assist your employees in acquiring new skills at any time, anywhere and from any device.

An LMS facilitates the creation and remote distribution of your company-specific course content. LMS also simplifies employee onboarding and helps analyze learner data while building a strong employee-employer relationship. What you get in return will be a workforce constantly acquiring new skills additionally boosting employee engagement and retention.

Read more: Powering Corporate Training with SCORM Compliant Learning Management System

Importance of Ensuring Workforce Engagement in Remote Work Environment

Are the remote and hybrid work models changing how your workforce collaborates and engages? 

Your workforce efficiency largely depends on the ease of collaboration and engagement. When employees engage better, they are well-equipped with knowledge, skills, and resources to perform their jobs effectively. Although remote and hybrid models have jilted traditional desk-to-desk conversations, technology is helping maintain effective engagement systems. Here’s why ensuring workforce engagement and motivating them in a remote work environment is essential!

1. Promotes Employee Efficiency and Accountability

Tracking employee capabilities and skill gaps can help better utilize talents for organizational growth. Optimizing the workforce structure will help motivate your employees, encouraging them to acquire more skills. Regular training and ensuring those skills are put to use will make your staff feel valued and in turn strengthen your workforce. 

2. Boosts Learning as a Team

Like working should be collaborative, learning should also be collaborative. We say so because your employees are inherently social, and learning as a team can bring them closer and nurture the spirit of collaboration. Learning as a team through team activities can get your employees to experience beyond meetings and lectures. Make your employees solve quizzes and problem-solving questionnaires together. 

3. Improves Problem-solving and Spurs Innovation

With a collaborative approach, employees with diverse knowledge and skill sets will be in the mix, which improves competence and experience. When your employees with different skill sets come together, a more creative and efficient way to solve problems will exist. It is not just that! When in a team, there will always be a handful of employees updated with new technologies, which helps maintain the team’s momentum. This will spur innovation, creating a continuous loop of ideation and innovative solutions.

4. Increases Employee Satisfaction

Employee collaboration creates an open work setting where people feel valued and heard. When employees are happy and satisfied, it reflects their contribution to the company’s culture and outcomes. Employee satisfaction is, in fact, one of the driving forces for employees happily going to work, tending to be more accountable and less likely to leave the company.

5. Aligns Remote Teams

We are in the remote and hybrid working era. Your company might even have distributed teams. How can such teams be aligned? Even if yours is a global company with multiple offices spread across the globe a simple learning tool or Employee GPS tracking apps can ensure that all your employees are up-to-date, aligned, and connected through collaboration. We are pointing to your workplace turning into an environment where no employees feel siloed, adversely impacting their productivity and employee retention.. 

Ways to Engage Employee Engagement and Collaboration

First, evaluate your tech stack and see what is missing in assisting your employees in achieving tasks that promote company culture. Your company’s tech stack indicates whether your workplace has a good communication and collaboration setting at your workplace. Irrespective of whether your company has a good tech stack or a remote, hybrid, or distributed team, we share a few ways to facilitate a collaborative work environment. 

1. Streamlined Virtual Onboarding

Onboarding solutions develop the framework for enhanced employee experience right from the beginning. Onboarding backs combining training resources from different departments into a unified platform, thus making it easy for new hires and considerably reducing costs. Onboarding can reduce the redundancy in training materials.

A 2021 Toggl survey revealed that 60% cited onboarding employees remotely as the biggest adjustment to the pandemic. A streamlined virtual onboarding implies that your employees have a grasp of their responsibilities, their colleagues, and the company culture. 

Onboarding should give the new hires a good idea of their team members, training agenda, and, most importantly, how much your company values collaboration.

2. Focus on efficiency and accountability

As everyone who’s ever spent three hours spinning their wheels in a meeting room can tell you, spending more time together on a task doesn’t equate to collaborating better.

One way to improve employee collaboration is to stay on top of how much time is spent on each task and how efficiently people work together. Project management software that includes time-tracking capabilities like Hubstaff and Toggl can help.

What can help even more is setting up a time limit for meetings and brainstorming sessions and setting clear deadlines for tasks—and a script about the next steps when an employee struggles with all or parts of the process.

3. Encourage Hybrid and Asynchronous Brainstorming Sessions

Employee collaboration and brainstorming collectively matter a lot for a company’s progress. Such collaborative approaches ensure that all your employees have opportunities to share ideas and raise questions irrespective of where they connect from. Employee collaboration can be further encouraged through asynchronous brainstorming sessions, particularly when you have distributed teams. For instance, your company should have a common platform in place where employees express their ideas and suggestions and where your employees can build on an employee’s input. 

4. Train Together, Learn Together

Employee collaboration should be a primary focus whether your team is distributed or remotely working. Team synergy among your workforce can be enhanced when employees train and learn together. It will bring them closer when employees learn together rather than attending scheduled conventional Zoom meetings. Including group activities like quizzes and other gamified learning, approaches can create a positive environment for your team’s problem-solving. Team training is the optimal option if you aim to build a strong team and improve employee collaboration.

Read more: Why Consider LXP over LMS for Employee Training and Development

How a Platform Like Skill Lake Can Help

When you have remote working employees, it is essential that they carry out their routine tasks hassle-free. Employee collaboration is one aspect that your company cannot compromise in such a setting. This is where Skill Lake can help. The key features of Skill Lake are eliminating time and distance barriers and promoting employee collaboration through a unified platform. 

Skill Lake LMS can take the wheel in the hybrid work revolution by:

  1. Boosting learner engagement
  2. Creating a positive onboarding experience
  3. Facilitating real-time visibility
  4. Considerably reducing training time
  5. Offering flexibility to employees
  6. Providing easy access to learning content
  7. Improving employee retention
  8. Encouraging discussion and debate 
  9. Simplifying assessment process
  10. Backing competency mapping
  11. Creating transparent feedback loops

The hybrid work revolution results in a diversified, engaged, and, most importantly, satisfied workforce. Even so, it necessitates refreshed skills and the implementation of digital technologies like Skill Lake. This would make your company pivotal in this brand-new hybrid-first work environment.

Skill Lake aims to increase flexibility and autonomy and make your employees choose positive outcomes over presenteeism. This is one of the reasons why you need to refurbish your tech stack with Skill Lake. While you sit back and focus on your other primary business operations, Skill Lake will support employee collaboration which is primed for these new kinds of operations. Connect with us now!

Aarathy Jayakrishnan

Aarathy is an e-learning professional and enthusiast with a keen understanding of learning and development concepts. She writes insightful content, unraveling the possibilities that e-learning holds, and strives to make education open for all.

Instagram|Twitter | Facebook

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SCORM Compliant Learning Management System

Employee training is an essential part of any corporate. With the rise of digital technology, offering employees access to training through online learning management systems, or LMS has become easier and more convenient. These systems give corporate organizations the power to quickly deploy high-quality training, ensure data security, and provide an intuitive user experience. SCORM software is a powerful tool to help you with that. 

Did you know: Corporate e-learning is expected to rise by 250% by 2026 – Industry Analysis, Market Trends, Market Growth, Opportunities and Forecast 2024

With the right system, businesses can easily create, publish, and assign eLearning courses. This can help ensure that each employee is receiving the same level of training and that everyone is up to date with the most current information. The right online training management system can help corporate organizations increase efficiency and effectiveness. 

Did you know: Compared to traditional learning, corporate e-Learning takes 40% to 60% less time to complete. – Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Outlook 2017 Survey

But to identify the right training management tool or LMS is undeniably tricky and strenuous. That’s where SCORM comes into play. A SCORM-compliant learning management system has been known as the de facto standard of eLearning. However, SCORM LMS can be confusing because of its technical nature. To ensure they recognize its value and use it to its fullest potential, trainers and developers must understand what SCORM LMS is and how it can enhance their learning programs. 

This blog will help you understand everything you need about SCORM-compliant LMS and how to leverage it to power your corporate training process. 

Key Highlights

  1. Corporate training is important for employee and organizational success.
  2. Learning Management Systems (LMS) help manage and deliver training content.
  3. SCORM standards ensure e-learning content works across different LMS platforms.
  4. SCORM-compliant LMS enables engaging and interactive e-learning courses across multiple platforms.
  5. SCORM-compliant LMS provides analytics to track employee progress and make data-driven decisions.
  6. SCORM-compliant LMS saves time and money by streamlining the training process and enabling access anytime, anywhere.
  7. Consider ease of use, customization, security, and customer support when choosing an LMS platform.
  8. SCORM-compliant LMS is crucial for powering corporate training and achieving training goals.

What You Need To Know To Get Started With SCORM-Compliant Software

To use SCORM, you must first locate a learning management system (LMS) compatible with SCORM. After this is done, you can begin to build SCORM e-learning courses. Here are the basics you need to know: 

  • What is SCORM LMS, and why is it important for corporate companies?
  • How you can combat the challenges related to issues and limitations subjected to SCORM software?

What is SCORM LMS?

SCORM, or Shareable Content Object Reference Model, is the most commonly used eLearning standard. It is a content-agnostic technical framework for eLearning and is designed to help people create, share, and manage digital learning content and learning experiences. 

It is designed to help eLearning software work together by creating a common language that allows them to communicate. It also provides a way to track data, like when a student has completed a course or is struggling with a particular concept. With SCORM development tools, developers can write code to ensure their software elements work harmoniously.

Did you know: The corporate e-Learning market could increase by $38.09 billion by 2024. – Industry Analysis, Market Trends, Market Growth, Opportunities and Forecast 2024

Why is SCORM Absolutely Essential?

Corporate training is a rapidly growing industry, worth $44.6 billion and growing each year. As businesses invest more in content creation and course design tools, the complexity of their Learning Management Systems (LMS), knowledge bases, and local storage increases. 

This is why SCORM-compliant LMS is essential for managing this complexity. By adhering to SCORM standards, businesses can ensure their corporate training solutions are consistent and reliable across different platforms. SCORM also ensures that all content is secure and user data is tracked and stored accurately. Through SCORM training, businesses can be confident that their corporate training solutions are efficient and effective.

What SCORM Gives You

  1. Compatibility: SCORM training courses offer students various compatibility options, enabling them to learn through almost any Learning Management System (LMS). 
  2. Save and track: SCORM training courses also provide a convenient way to save and track student progress. This means that students do not have to finish an entire course at once and can work in short bursts, taking a break and resuming their work from the same point at their convenience. This is especially useful in cases where the system fails or the course is temporarily shut down. As a result, SCORM 1.2 compliant learning management system is an ideal choice for tracking student progress.
  3. Feedback Content: When students complete an e-course, feedback is invaluable for assessing progress. A student, for instance, will be able to see how many points they scored. This type of feedback allows educators to judge student performance and adjust their teaching methods accordingly quickly. 
  4. Structured course: Creating a course using a SCORM 1.2 compliant learning management system can benefit trainers and their learners. A SCORM elearning course allows trainers to structure the course clearly and set rules for moving between its sections. For instance, learners may have to study for a lecture, watch a video, and take the final test. 
  5. Independent modules: SCORM courses are independent modules that can be used in any other LMS course. This means that course content can be quickly and easily reused. In conclusion, SCORM solutions offer trainers many advantages, including the ability to create a clear structure and the convenience of modularity. By using LMS SCORM software, trainers can create effective and efficient courses.

What Are the Usability Concerns with LMSs That Comply With SCORM?

Here is a checklist of questions that you need to ask that can help you mitigate usability issues:

  1. Despite the fact that all versions of SCORM are supported, which LMS supports which SCORM version better?
  2. Which level of SCORM RTE (Runtime Environment) does LMS support?
  3. How long was SCORM software integrated with the LMS?
  4. What kind of reports are available for SCORM courses?
  5. Do you have a tool for content updates that allows you to preserve previous statistics?
  6. How is the content of SCORM-compliant LMS imported? 
  7. Do you have a content version control system?
  8. How are the reports presented in a SCORM training course?
  9. How is the user data submitted to the LMS?
  10. Does the SCORM LMS need the installation of plugins or extensions to function?
  11. What debugging mechanism do you have in place?

Bottomline: Simplify Your LMS With Skill Lake’s SCORM Complaint Standards

Making an informed choice can be tricky, but it does not have to be intimidating. Asking yourself three simple questions can help you keep track of details and make the right choice:

  1. Which SCORM version do I plan to use that is relevant to my content?
  2. Does my authoring tool create SCORM-compliant courses?
  3. What level of SCORM support will I need from a platform?

Skill Lake provides the perfect solution with support for SCORM versions- SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004. One of its key benefits is an integrated authoring tool, making creating SCORM content easy and uploading it directly to an LMS in just a few clicks. You will also get extended statistic reports to help you make better decisions. 

Skill Lake integrations will help you maximize your productivity and reduce complexity when introducing new initiatives. With Skill Lake, you can ensure a smooth transition and an effective learning process. Seeing is believing so why don’t you request a demo and see how it works for you. 

Sachin Krishna

Sachin is a passionate advocate of e-learning with a profound knowledge of the field. He regularly writes compelling content that captivates readers and works to spread awareness of learning solutions.

Instagram|Twitter | Facebook

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Employee training and development solutions like Learning Management Systems (LMS) and Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) represent the new world of corporate training. Both learning platforms have engaging and impactful features to exploit digital content with no access barriers.  

But there are a few factors that differentiate both!

This blog will explain the major differences between LMS and LXP and why LXP is better at enabling effective employee learning and development. But first, let’s look at the top challenges faced by L&D teams.

Learning & Development: A Look at the Top Challenges

The pandemic and the switch to remote work environments has increased the need for employee development programs and platforms that suffice it.

Companies are pushed to frame L&D strategies that reskill and upskill their workforce for whatever may lie ahead.

With organizations heavily invested in the latest L&D trends, the following are some of the main challenges the L&D teams face: 

1. Quick Digital Transformation

Rapid adoption of new technologies and processes puts your L&D teams under great pressure. Reskilling an entire workforce on how to best utilize newly framed organization-wide practices, alongside keeping their productivity high, is a real challenge. New practice can make certain job functions outdated, and therefore your L&D team has to face these challenges around changing job responsibilities. 

Understand your workforce well. Learn their behavior individually, team-wise, and department-wise. This will help you support them in falling at the ideal stages of the technology adoption curve. The success rate of this quick digital transformation heavily falls on your L&D team’s migration strategies.

2. Change Management

Modern companies must constantly change to stay ahead in the ‘survival of the fittest’ race. Managing these migration phases is what is referred to as change management.

Organizations often feel challenged as they must create cross-functional teams for frequent communication of such changes. Change management is usually employee-centric and must be backed with sufficient employee onboarding and employee development programs. 

Organizations must pull an effective strategy backed by a powerful learning management system to drive a company-wide change and successfully manage their business.

3. Data-centric L&D Decisions

Assessing employee performance and productivity nowadays is not as easy as it was during the traditional workways. The lack of one-on-one interactions with L&D leaders implies the need for new tools to assess levels of employee development, performance, and productivity. On the plus side, with assessment turning more data-centric, organizations are finding opportunities to set benchmarks, enabling personalized training and development programs for employees, and monitoring and even onboarding the right talents much more effectively.

4. Imparting Company Culture for Virtual Workforces

Companies put in a lot of effort to create a vibrant work atmosphere valuing the employees’ satisfaction, fostering better communication, and encouraging team collaboration. However, it is difficult to extend such environments to those working remotely. Effective collaboration and staff management takes a toll on companies with a globally scattered workforce. However, an L&D tool makes imparting work culture and company values to the virtual workforce easier.

5. Hybrid Workforce

Hybrid work culture is here to stay. With organizations shifting to hybrid and remote working models, the need for L&D teams to incorporate digital learning solutions has become more crucial. E-learning solutions like LMS and LXP cater to virtual and distributed teams’ specific employee training and development needs. 

What is LXP and What are Its Advantages?

LMS are administrative tools that help your L&D teams manage employee development programs, choose and assign content to learners, and assess their progress. On the contrary, LXP is a user-friendly tool that provides a more personalized learning experience.

LXP allows users to consume content in multiple formats, which comes with flexibility and other benefits like

  1. Mobile-first experience
  2. Unique learner experience
  3. Scalability as per users 
  4. Monetization of training 
  5. Secured cloud hosting
  6. Favor various content formats
  7. Usable anytime, anywhere, and from any device

Even though LMS and LXP are robust tools for training for employees, the above benefits of LXP prove that it can fill more organizational requirements gaps in companies as compared to LMS.

Let us now look into why switching from LMS to LXP can benefit companies in terms of employee development.

How Switching from LMS to LXP for Employee Development can Help in Overcoming All Barriers?

LXP supports learning content in multiple formats. The cloud hosting capabilities help to save your organization’s overhead expenses. 

Do you have a system to track informal learning? Well, LXP does!

LXP can track informal learning and harness learning analytics data for quick decision-making of organizational procedures. Not just that, it offers flexibility in terms of design, personalization, and integration with existing ERP and CRM tools.

Company revenue channels are not impacted if the ‘customer first’ approach dictated by modern business is addressed promptly and righteously. Professional development goals for managers are critical as they have to train their workforce to perform their tasks effortlessly.

Smartphones have become the new work devices for employees. LXP understands these new preferences and hence is accessible from any device. This eliminates the need for classroom training and other traditional training approaches. This mobile-first outlook of LXP thus values the time, effort, and cost of employees and employers.  

Additionally, it breaks the barriers to employee development by

  1. Allowing employees to learn to form their colleagues, managers, and even other parties
  2. Curating content based on the pages from which people often visited
  3. Meeting them from where they work without interrupting their daily routines
  4. Putting the potentiality of self-paced learning in learners’ hands and not the admins’
  5. Typically powering managers in personalizing learning more efficiently and effectively

You now know the tremendous advantages of switching from LMS to LXP. However, choosing the right LXP platform also matters in executing effective employee training and development programs. Here’s how Skill Lake makes an apt choice!

How Skill Lake Makes a Perfect LXP? 

Choosing an LXP that stands by the learning requirements and company culture is important.

Organization-wide change is challenging, and in such cases, it is better to start with a pilot group work with a new platform and then expand to adjust to the change gradually. Skill Lake is a resilient tool for tackling management changes irrespective of the size of your organization. Regardless of the training and development needs, Skill Lake can help initiate a learning culture throughout the organization with various engaging content delivery channels and data-tracking abilities.

That is not all! Skill Lake features like gamification, different learning modes, course libraries, easy setup, progress tracking, competency tracking, mobile accessibility, microlearning options, and virtual mentoring, among others; rest assured that your employee development programs are right on track!

Skill Lake has more to offer, and that includes:

  1. Competency management and tracking
  2. Quick deployment and easy usability
  3. Diverse workforce management
  4. Product and process training
  5. Maximum learner engagement
  6. Adherence to industry changes, trends, and compliances 

Is your organization ready to democratize e-learning by freeing learners from the clenches of LMS? Then why not switch to LXP with Skill Lake?  Connect with our experts today, or request a Free Demo now!

Aarathy Jayakrishnan

Aarathy is an e-learning professional and enthusiast with a keen understanding of learning and development concepts. She writes insightful content, unraveling the possibilities that e-learning holds, and strives to make education open for all.

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Training Management System

Ensuring a skilled workforce through regular and effective training management has always been a cumbersome task for companies, no doubt! But corporate learning and development innovations are on a roll now, post-pandemic! As an aftermath, it is pleasant to watch today’s companies moving forward with the idea of corporate training programs for employees through Training Management Systems. 

As far as IT firms are concerned, Training Management Systems has undoubtedly helped them to manage and track training in spectrums like project management, scrum and agile, DevOps, software product development, and testing, among others, ensuring a future-ready workforce!

Read more: L&D Trends Corporates Need To Lookout For In 2023!

Key Highlights

  1. IT firms face challenges in managing employee training due to rapid changes in technology and skills.
  2. A robust learning environment is essential for IT firms to keep employees up-to-date with the latest skills and technologies.
  3. A Training Management System (TMS) can help IT firms manage employee training efficiently and effectively.
  4. A good TMS should have features such as automation, personalized learning, and analytics to provide employees with the best learning experience.
  5. Using a TMS can result in improved employee performance and retention in IT firms.

Introduction of TMS in IT Firms and Why They Need It

Introducing TMS to your IT firm would make it the central focus of your training. It will help your company manage various aspects of training seamlessly without switching between multiple tools.

That’s a ‘hello’ to an innovative corporate training approach!

Introducing a TMS means eliminating the coordination efforts for scheduling and running several courses for your workforce. But before we dive deeper into knowing the benefits of TMS, let’s see why your company needs it. How about we stroll through a few questions to help determine if your company needs a TMS? Here we go:

  1. Are the training sessions happening as expected?
  2. Do you have the physical space, instructors, or enough trainees to attend a session?
  3. Do your trainees receive proper communication regarding the session beforehand?
  4. Are all your training-related courses up to date?

The list can go on, but let’s stop right there.

Getting the facts straight for corporate learning and development using spreadsheets and other systems has become obsolete. There could be high risks of human error and chances that your teams’ efforts and time go in vain. 

Introducing a Training Management System shifts all your course management administration into a single space. This makes it easier to access and manage, not only for the employer but also for the employee. You will not have to go astray for the information you need across multiple sources. You have your training content right where and when you need it from any device you sign in to!

Read more: Is Synchronous Training Appropriate for Today’s Workplace?

Ways In Which a TMS Can Automate Your Manual Processes

Having TMS software to aid your firm in training employees and reducing manual effort is a 100% YES!

Your admins can skip the busy hours of planning, assigning, analyzing, and repetitive tasks through automation. That extra time can be utilized for other valid efforts like developing proper training materials or framing learning objectives.

Is automating your manual process using a TMS worth the shot? Let’s have a look into it in detail.

1. Effortless Management

Managing courses and tracking each learner’s progress might be the most cumbersome task in training management. And that’s what TMS is built to streamline. An effective and robust Training Management System can help you automate back-end course management processes like scheduling courses and allocating trainers, and can also help quickly access real-time insights on course attendance, progress, and completion, including learners’ complete information, pointing skill gaps, and task achievements. 

2. Boosts Employee Engagement 

Keeping your employees engaged and motivated in training can be challenging. Acknowledging their training efforts and progressions or a simple pat on the back can do the trick, though that’s quite time-consuming. With a TMS, tracking each learner’s progress and automating appreciation with appropriate badges and recognitions is simpler. Also, advanced training management systems incorporate gamification to make learning fun and exciting!

3. Personalized Learning

It’s difficult to get all your employees into one room for training when they have separate goals to achieve for the company. That’s why companies with the best training programs automate employee training and allow employees to follow their personalized learning paths. A training managing system with mobility, synchronous-asynchronous learning, and instructor-led and self-paced learning options makes learning personalized for all. Meeting the unique learning needs of your employees enables keeping them engaged while simultaneously allowing you to maintain a skilled workforce.

4. Immediate Feedback Mechanism

In training, providing instantaneous feedback helps progress better. This will give employees a hint that they are on the right track. It can be a little discouraging when your employees know from their final assessment that they haven’t understood the shared training content. TMS ensures your IT firm’s corporate training programs for employees have been effective by motivating and engaging them by keeping open a transparent feedback loop. 

What Skill Lake Offers as a TMS!

You might have run trial-and-error approaches with many tools and techniques for corporate governance training. But when it comes to the best training for IT managers for your firm, Skill Lake is one of the best. 

Skill Lake is

  1. A platform that automates repetitive course management processes like scheduling, assigning, and analyzing training programs.
  2. An online corporate training solution that supports user management through digitized contact info of trainer and trainee, course enrolments, and user activity.
  3. A Learning Experience Platform (LXP) that offers custom learning paths to get trained anytime, anywhere, and from any device.
  4. An online corporate training platform capable of generating insightful reports on training attendance, progress, and completion that quickens management decision-making.
  5. A corporate training and development solution that facilitates secure payment gateways for transferring and refunding course payments.
  6. A platform for the best training for IT managers to study any course through easy integration with external systems or tools, assuring top-notch training experience.

Investing in a cost-effective TMS solution like Skill Lake is the finest option if you are looking for a solution to reduce administrative and learner efforts.

Skill Lake saves time by automating repetitive tasks and makes you carefree about the daily routines regarding training. So we say automate training and benefit your business with Skill Lake!

Request a Free Demo now!

Ashmitha Chatterjee

Ashmitha is a learning and development enthusiast who shares her insights on e-learning. She loves to create engaging and informative content and is dedicated to helping people learn and grow through her deep expertise in the field.

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