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ATD Blog

Learning and Training at the Speed of Business

Thursday, July 6, 2017
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Speed of Business
Business is all about speed and efficiency, and finding ways for workers to get things done as fast as possible without sacrificing quality. By removing barriers and inner bureaucracy, companies can eliminate downtime, making employees more effective without using incentives.

Learning is one of the main aspects that businesses must focus on to enable and empower employees to be more effective and drive revenue growth. When the tools your organization uses to deliver learning are outdated and slow, your efforts and training programs risk being ineffective. Many companies try to funnel all an organization’s learning and collaboration through one medium. Instead, it should be allocated across the most effective and best-in-class methods that are available to the modern business: mobile, auditory, and face-to-face when necessary. 

Here are three tips on how to effectively train your employees in a fast-paced learning environment: 

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To Drive Effectiveness, Keep Training Short and to the Point 

Learning needs to be easily digestible and dispersed quickly. Learning should happen in bits and pieces; the last thing a hard-working employee doing 10 different things wants to do is spend an entire workday sitting in on a long, boring lecture or seminar. There is no longer time for traditional processes that have the tendency to be long-winded and clunky. Shorter courses and training material make the content easier for employees to learn, which allows them to easily apply it in real work scenarios. 

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Unlock Learning on the Go 

Learning experiences happen every day in the workforce, from water cooler discussions to social media interactions. Management should focus on capturing these moments and turning them into applicable lessons. Learning is ubiquitous, and learning tools must mirror the way people work and learn to be effective. Turn to YouTube or search queries to find short video tutorials to learn just about anything in 30 seconds or less. The goal is to specify what developmental needs are required, and then break them down into short learning blocks that can be integrated within the daily work flow. 

Promote Mobile Use 

Smartphones have more computing power than the laptops of just five or six years ago. It no longer makes sense to provide the majority of employee training on laptops, when there are literally terabytes worth of knowledge sitting in the palm of your hand. Content creation needs to keep this in mind as well; the content needs to be appropriately sized and generated to make consumption as easy as opening an app. The whole point is to make learning accessible from anywhere, and that purpose is defeated when the content is created for a laptop and lazily thrown onto a phone. 

Companies need to ensure they are streamlining old processes to keep up with competitors. Taking a new approach to training and learning is the fastest way to get your employees up to speed. Change needs to start from the bottom, and arming your managers with the tools they need to effectively train workers is essential to making sure a business runs fluidly.

About the Author

Rafael Solis is the co-founder and COO at Braidio. He brings 15 years of experience in strategic marketing and digital media, including marketing roles at Edmunds.com and Walt Disney. Rafael holds a BA in economics from Portland State University and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

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