Employees are the biggest asset of any company. Thus, it makes sense to invest in their professional growth and help them reach their fullest potential. In Singapore, traineeship programs are available for fresh graduates to help them establish a successful career in their chosen industry.
Despite the availability of various training methods, many companies are still having a hard time achieving their learning and development goals for their employees. This article will talk about the common training challenges and how workplace leaders can overcome them.
Cultural differences
If you’re running a multinational company, you’re well aware that the diversity and breadth of your workforce are some of the biggest challenges faced by workplace leaders. You have to consider individual differences and adjust to a new cultural environment to carry out their job effectively.
When providing training in a multicultural workplace, it’s important to consider each team member’s language and cultural differences. It’s important to remember that learning styles differ worldwide, and some aspects of a training program in one country won’t work with another.
The best way to address this is to consider the learning needs of your potential audience and make sure training resources aren’t only multilingual but also multicultural. It’s also worth looking at the method of delivery preferred by the learners since some cultures learn more from an individual approach, while others prefer collaborative training sessions.
Generation gap
There’s a good chance that you have a workforce coming from different age groups, from Gen Zs, millennials, and Gen X. While an age-diverse workplace helps facilitate a more lively and dynamic environment, it also brings training issues at work.
Today, millennials have fully taken over the modern workplace, significantly driving technology growth at work. As a tech-savvy generation, employers have to design learning and development methods that will appeal to a tech-driven workforce and boost their engagement. As a result, millennials became great ambassadors for new digital learning techniques, such as augmented reality, microlearning, mobile learning, and adaptive learning, among others.
But what about the minority group in the workplace, particularly the older generations and non-tech-savvy learners? This is where age generation becomes a huge challenge in promoting online training opportunities.
When choosing the type of training method to provide to employees, it’s important to consider the learning style of other generations. While you can develop a variety of delivery methods to suit different age groups, you can utilize the skills of your millennial employees by turning them into a learning asset. In other words, you can deploy them as trainers or mentors to their coworkers who have a hard time using new office equipment.
Millennials can share what they have learned with their coworkers with clarity and passion. They’re especially good at passing on learning objectives, so utilize them as a part of your training initiatives.
Busy work schedules
When work, personal life, and a host of other demands are affecting employees’ performance, there’s a good chance that training will only add up to their stress and a long list of responsibilities. The worst case is interfering employees’ personal life with your training sessions, which can only make them resent and resist the idea of training.
Avoid requiring training during after-work hours and weekends. Managers should never allow employees to invest extra time and energy outside their work hours. The hours spent outside work should be allotted to their family and personal affairs and not for your company. Also, make sure to limit training that requires a lot of traveling.
Employers should consider embracing the microlearning approach in which employees receive useful, relevant content through bite-sized information. Infographics, checklists, gifs, and short videos are great samples of microlearning formats that make training easier to understand.
Another way is to use clever graphics or animated content to communicate complex concepts. Instead of wasting time absorbing a particular subject matter, consuming multimedia content, such as images, podcasts, and videos, are a valuable welcome break from reading long reports, newsletters, and emails. You can also incorporate training content in a mobile application in order to make learning more accessible and engaging. This can save a lot of time and energy for learners from learning difficult topics.
More importantly, don’t forget to provide a learning assessment before and after the training. This will help you determine the strength and weaknesses of your training and acquire feedback on how you can improve employees’ learning progress.
There’s always a solution to every employee training problem. The answer lies in exploring various training methods that suit your employees’ learning styles and needs and taking advantage of tools to improve the effectiveness of your training initiatives. Through thorough analysis, you can create strategies that make your training content more relevant and engaging for your learners.
