Is your organization placing enough emphasis on training and development for 2024? Are you making sure to include it in your roadmap during 2023 end-of-year planning?
Once upon a time, training and development initiatives were primarily leveraged to orient new hires to an organization’s workplace environment. However, today’s L&D leaders recognize that training and development is no longer simply a means to an end for onboarding new hires but a crucial component to building strong internal connections and fostering continuous improvement within a team.
The success of training and development hinges on your organization’s adaptability and innovation throughout the entire employee journey — and the practices you have in place to achieve such goals.
Best practices in 2023 for tailoring your training & development initiatives
A one-size-fits-all approach to training and development is quickly becoming obsolete.
In 2023, Forbes reports that around 75% of companies plan to create custom learning programs. These custom programs will be designed to help employees “tailor their skills” for the exact needs of the company they work for, helping to keep these employees more engaged and prepared for their roles.
Today’s workforce is highly diverse, with dynamic skill sets and unique learning preferences.
Creating tailored learning programs has become a cornerstone of effective talent management and employee growth. Moreover, retaining talent within your organization requires a personalized touch to your learning programs. Your teams want to know that they not only have the opportunities to grow within your walls but also the freedom to expand their skills and careers in the ways they prefer.
To achieve this tailored approach to training and development, your organization needs the right tools and resources in place to effectively assess the needs of your teams at both the group and individual levels.
With this in mind, let’s look at the seven best practices organizations across all industries are using to enhance and tailor their training and development initiatives:
1. Embrace continuous learning & improvement
The concept of workplace learning no longer fits within the confines of isolated training events or one-time learning programs with zero follow-up.
To begin tailoring your training and development initiatives to be more beneficial to your specific teams, it is necessary to foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement. This requires L&D leaders to provide a variety of different learning programs to employees at all levels, allowing each team member to engage with these programs according to their learning and scheduling needs.
For employees to achieve professional growth that benefits both your organization and their own careers, your L&D strategy must diversify to allow for ongoing learning, training, and skill development.
2. Aim to achieve unity in your training and development programs
While a personalized approach to training and development is vital, you also need unity.
A disjointed and disorganized training and development strategy can easily lead to miscommunications and ineffective training, squandering your overall efforts to support your team’s growth. Instead, you need the right learning program solutions to seamlessly connect all the relevant tools, events, learning content, and internal connections.
Maintaining a sense of unity is often the key to achieving a centralized learning program that simplifies all steps of the training and development process, from onboarding new hires to recruiting mentors from your leadership ranks.
3. Leverage advanced technologies & solutions to enhance your learning initiatives
The age of digitization is upon us — and training and development strategies need to adapt fast.
Technology has revolutionized the way training and development initiatives are delivered. Virtual solutions have gained immense popularity due to their flexibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency.
By finding your ideal learning technology partner, your training and development programs can more easily evolve to incorporate a variety of digital elements, such as self-led learning guides and remote mentorship or instructional sessions.
Plus, new technologies are playing a more and more important role in helping to streamline learning programs of all kinds and in all organizations. Through a centralized learning platform, your L&D teams can more easily connect to internal experts, identify promising talent, track student progress, and more.
Not only does this enhance accessibility, but it also provides employees with the agency to take ownership of their learning journeys and advocate for their needs.
4. Involve business leaders as mentors in your training & development strategy
The leadership at any organization — especially those serving in managerial roles — can have a significant impact on the growth and development of the entire business team.
Your leaders play a pivotal role in shaping your organization’s learning culture.
Finding ways to incentivize more high-level team members to actively participate in training programs as either instructors or mentors (or even as students) sends a powerful message to your entire team on the value of continuous improvement and learning.
Moreover, your leadership can provide valuable post-training support by offering feedback, mentoring relationships, and guidance on how employees can best apply their newly acquired skills. This not only reinforces learning but also integrates it into the daily work routine for your entire team and encourages collaboration between team members of all levels.
5. Choose the right methods for measuring your team’s performance
The adage “what gets measured, gets managed” holds tremendously true for training and development.
To optimize your learning initiatives, it is of the utmost importance to implement a robust system for tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics that reveal the effectiveness of your programs.
Having the ability to simplify your performance measurement strategy with automated data and analytics capabilities is key. This often requires a platform solution with built-in and customizable metrics that allow you to track, assess, and act on insights with speed and precision.
As a result, you can identify the biggest areas for improvement in your training and development initiatives, all while refining your approach.
PlusPlus drives the training & development results you want
Implementing a solid set of best practices within your training and development programs is vital in today’s ever-changing business environment.
By embracing a flexible approach to L&D tailored to your team’s specific needs and supported by advanced learning technologies, you can optimize your training and development initiatives and enable your team members to expand their professional skill sets to their full potential.
At PlusPlus, our Unified Learning Platform is equipped with everything you need to improve your approach to training and development, from automated onboarding and performance measurement capabilities to centralized interpersonal features that help you connect with team members across the entire business with ease.
The PlusPlus platform stands out thanks to its unique features designed for building a culture of learning.
By unlocking tribal knowledge and creating a central hub for your L&D teams to work from, PlusPlus enables you to craft learning programs for your employees that grow their skills and expand your organization’s knowledge.
Get started with PlusPlus today by booking a demo and discovering all the powers our platform holds.
