There was a time when employee training was considered the best investment with a 30 to 1 return on investment. Employee training was budgeted, required employee training hours were publicized, and used as one of the employees’ performance criteria. Corporation invested in employees and employees felt valuable for the company.

I remember that many years ago professional workshops for effective listening were commonly available that later changed into effective presentations. As giving presentations became more important than listening and learning from a presentation. Thus, change is inevitable.

This is what has happened to corporate training, which has changed into employee learning. Earlier corporations would invest in good training management software systems to track the training attended by each employee, number of training hours against the corporate training goals for hours and budget and assessing training effectiveness.

However, the coin has flipped here too. The training has been replaced by learning, and training management systems have been taken over by Learning Management Solutions (LMS). Even the American Management Association (AMA) website offers Corporate Learning Solutions to develop employee talent and skills needed to achieve business objectives.

A typical migration from training to learning follows the process from instructor led training to online training, then into self-managed learning or skill development tools. Typically, an employee decides to take certain online classes necessary to learn a new skill for a job.

A new learning platform (www.dsprz.ai) for skills development has identified five learning methods. In delivering a training program, the content, instructor, and the environment matter. However, in a learning environment, the technology-based methods to make the content effective matters. It has identified the following learning and development trends:

1. Role-based Skill Mapping & Assessment
2. AI-Powered Personalized Learning
3. In-Depth Learning Analytics for Assessing Training Impact
4. Social and Collaborative Learning through Technology (360 learning)
5. All-in-One Learning Platform, called LMS (Learning Management Systems)

The Covid pandemic had a significant impact on relationships, be it personal, professional or business. The pandemic highlighted the need for distance and technology-dependence or remote learning. However, post-pandemic remote work is reducing but has made a long-term presence at work and social levels. A certain percentage of activities will remain remote in all aspects of business, including learning.

A recent McKinsey report highlights that corporate executives believe there will be a critical need for retraining and upskilling employees. The Training Magazine’s industry report shows some budget contractions, and a reduction in the number of training hours per employee by about 20%. On average 25% of the remote training in person has been returned to in-person training, and about 25% of the delivery will be instructor-led classroom. Other delivery methods include virtual classroom, online, mobile, social, virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, or a combination of these methods. Only less than 10% of the training programs will be totally in-person training, otherwise, about 90% of the training programs have some online delivery. About 40% of training programs will be delivered mostly online. About 90% of the companies utilize Learning Management Systems and 80% of the companies use virtual classroom or webcasting methods.

We’re seeing shifts in workplace training from scheduling a class when needed to having a training department with scheduled in-classroom training programs, to committed to mandatory learning or a number of required training hours per employee, using training for employee development, and even training suppliers for alignment. Evolving hybrid or remote work schedule due to the pandemic have the biggest impact on employee training and development. Under these circumstances, online communication, work and training became the necessity. This became an era of distance-related innovations, including distance learning. Even before the pandemic distance learning was growing, but the pandemic accelerated it.

In the case of training and development, the corporate resources were needed to provide the knowledge and skills for learners through primarily instructor-led training consisting of knowledge, skills and hands-on practice. In online learning management systems training content is delivered by either an instructor in a video or online. But, in learning-systems, the training programs are made available to learners. Learners can pull the information when needed or desired.

With emerging technologies and their contribution to economic growth, their approaches to recruiting new employees and developing their skills have become pervasive. Of course, technology has become a major contributor and equalizer to their practices. For example, the recruitment process for technology companies is based on their knowledge, skills and motivation to learn versus education, skills and experience. Given the rate of change, a particular technology avails for a limited time before it is replaced by innovations. Similarly, knowledge and skills also become quickly outdated and replaced by new skills. This requires rethinking corporate investment in employee training. Instead of offering costly classroom training, training is availed using technology, including Learning Management Systems (LMS).

The burden of developing employee skills has shifted from the training being managed by the corporation versus learning ensured by individuals. This also provides a sense of freedom or flexibility to employees versus the required instructor-led training with restrictions.

With universal access through a cell phone, everyone feels empowered to learn freely and personally customized. Social media, online courses by universities and content online have become sources of learning on demand from self-improvement to professional certifications, work related skills development or even college degrees.