5 Underestimated Benefits of Corporate Training Programs

What makes successful organizations stand apart from the rest is how they respond to change.

How can corporate training programs strengthen companies and their professionals? What do corporate training teams need to make those goals a reality?

The Corporate Training Landscape Today

Valued at an incredible $340 billion and growing, the corporate training industry today plays a key role in the success of some of the biggest brands on the planet.

Corporate training is a must-have component to the success of any organization, especially with continual developments in technology and innovation by competitors in your industry.

For professionals and businesses alike, high-value and applicable training that drives measurable results is needed for success. Why?

• Corporations need regular and continued training for their employees to future-proof their market success.
• Professionals need regular and continued training to bulletproof their careers and drive innovation.

Corporate training trends occur every year and are usually a combination of emerging learning technologies and industry shifts. It’s how L&D teams respond to these shifts that can set a company on the right path to success.

In responding to an ever-changing corporate landscape, training teams must be ready to respond and ask what methods can be delivered:

• at scale
• with efficiency
• without going over costs
• with proven ROI

For the corporate training team or training provider, the objective has always been the same since the beginning of this post:

How can corporate training teams continually deliver impactful learning experiences that benefit their companies and learners?

Among all L&D professionals, corporate training teams are resilient no matter the circumstance.

According to Brandon Hall Group’s survey on HR and the Impact of COVID-19, in-person and live online training were used by 96% of organizations to deliver learning experiences throughout the global lockdown.

Training managers know they have a pivotal role in helping their employees succeed, regardless of the situation.

Measuring the Value of Corporate Training: From Employee Onboarding to Upskilling

Corporate training can be overlooked by senior management in today’s business landscape for a variety of reasons. Regardless of what they are, one truth is for certain in today’s corporate landscape:

Training is more important than ever for organizations.

Whether onboarding new employees or upskilling to adapt to industry changes, proper training and development for your employees is a must if you’re looking to be successful in a competitive landscape.

The main challenge for today’s training managers is providing the value of learning in the workplace. As learning professionals, we inherently know that training is critical for success, both as individuals and as companies.

But how can training teams and L&D departments prove that statement to their higher-ups?

Measuring the value of employee training will rely on communicating the benefits of training and the value that the training will provide to the organization as a whole.

Top Benefits of Corporate Training and Development Programs

Corporate training is unique in that both employees and employers benefit from investing in learning. On one end, employees can develop new skills to perform better in their role and be more effective.

This increases their career potential for leadership positions in their current role or promising new roles in other organizations.

On the other hand, employers benefit from well-trained, motivated, and engaged employees in the workplace. One study by Gallup found that companies with investment in L&D for their organization reported 11% higher profitability.

At a high level, this is an amazing prospect, but the benefits of training for companies and their employees reach far beyond increased profit margins. Here are the top reasons why corporate training is a must for success.

Increased Employee Satisfaction and Retention

With over 84% of employees believing training is a necessity for job success, this is at the top of our list and for good reason.

When employees know that their organization wants them to succeed in their current role and their professional trajectory, it develops a sense of belonging to the company. The result is symbiotic nonetheless. In receiving training, employees will become more inclined to be more confident on the job, find meaning in their roles, and give their best every day.

An increase in positive employees from quality training programs positively correlates with a decrease in talent attrition across an organization. Gallup indicates that the opportunity cost of replacing an employee costs anywhere from one-half to two times the annual salary of the departing employee.

When employers see corporate training as an investment as opposed to an expense, and in turn view their employees as valuable assets, only then can companies reduce the churn rate of top talent.

Enhanced Efficiency and Productivity

As the old saying goes, “work smarter, not harder“.

Investing in corporate training can allow employees to learn new methods of doing their job better, faster, and with fewer roadblocks throughout the course of a day or an entire fiscal year. When learners have access to quality learning resources to understand new technology or communication methods that can be used on the job, it makes daily processes easier and even creates happier employees.

Cost Savings and Reduced Expenses

We’ll save you the actuarial science when it comes to the numbers, but it’s a fact that quality training for employees reduces nearly all expenses company-wide.

When employees have the skills they need to do the job, they can take on projects and tasks directly. This reduces the need for employers to source external vendors or third-party solution providers, as resources that can become quite expensive compared to solving issues in-house.

Providing training resources to guide employees through new technology or methods allows employees the chance to work faster and efficiently while saving money on overhead expenses for the company.

Adaptability to Industry Changes

Every industry is rapidly changing with new technology and new processes. When employees are prepared to meet market demands and readily adapt to change, organizations are poised for continued success in their respective fields.

A report by the World Economic Forum found that 75% of corporations are poised to invest in big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence implementation to increase productivity and stay ahead of industry competition. Five years ago, an organization would have been foolish not to invest in AI implementation training in some capacity.

Today, McKinsey reports that over 79% of US companies use AI technology for daily processes, and another 96% of all companies worldwide rely on cloud computing. With time and innovation, there’s always something to learn to get ahead of the curve.

Pitching the Value of Corporate Training Programs in 5 Steps

While not a part of the sales department, training teams are sales-oriented as much as they are solution-oriented for their organizations.

While training teams are responsible for instructional design and developing the learning operations strategy, none of these will come to light unless it has the full support of upper management.

An organization-wide training program that extends to all employees will be expensive, and it’s safe to say there will be a good share of doubters.

1. What’s the impact of employee training programs?

Start with a high-level business case that answers:

What is the effect of corporate training programs on the entire organization’s success?

Deliver concise statements that can be backed with industry-supported evidence:

• Employees who receive company-sponsored training stay an additional 3.5 years.
• Employees who regularly attend training in person are 78% less likely to submit support tickets.

2. What are the right solutions for delivering our corporate training program?

Josh Bersin, John Leh, and many other training industry analysts will concur that there are four main methods to delivering a corporate training program:

• Instructor-led training (ILT) or traditional in-person training is conducted face-to-face in a physical setting.
• Virtual instructor-led training (vILT) or live online training that occurs in real-time via the internet.
• Online training, sometimes called eLearning, delivers learning modules through software, namely an LMS.
• Blended learning, which uses a combination of face-to-face instruction and online training to meet learning objectives.

Training teams will need to find a balance between efficiency, cost, scalability, and effectiveness when choosing between these options.

3. Set objectives and expectations for corporate training

Training teams must align achievable training milestones to their North Star objective, or their overall objective with deploying the training program. For example:

By defining the milestones:

• With the X learning method, we expect a Y increase in attention and engagement.
• After X on-the-job training sessions, learners will be able to implement Y skills in the workplace.
• Within X weeks, learners will attain Y certification, which will develop trust with clients and lead to Z percent more business.

We expect that at the end of training, the following will be true:

• The company will expect X increase in efficiency, Y % of reduced costs, and Z profit growth in the next fiscal year.

4. Measure employee training in real-time.

Here’s another corporate mantra to drive the value of corporate training home:

What can be measured can be improved.

Training metrics will vary from one employee training program to another. The KPIs used in training are up to the training team.

Regardless, monitor the effect of training as employees attend learning sessions and complete assignments to understand the impact of your learning strategy and adjust where needed.

5. Deliver Results and Refining Training Processes

Corporate training doesn’t stop, no matter what, for L&D teams.

There is no R&R for training teams in the largest of corporations unless those “R’s” are results and refinement.

Training teams must now process the impact of their training programs company-wide and understand:

• What went wrong with the training?
• What went right with training?
• What can we do better with training?
• What can we do differently with training?

The problems and solutions to these questions post-training program deployment will, of course, stem from information-rich data collected along the way.

Corporate Training Strategy: In-Person Training, Online Learning, or Blended Learning?

As mentioned earlier, there are three primary methods to deliver a corporate training strategy — instructor-led training, online learning, and blended learning.

Among them, there is endless debate as to which method is the most effective in ensuring corporate training programs are a success.

Online vs In-person training has been at the center of the corporate training landscape in balancing ease-of-use for learners and organizational cost with training ROI and application of learned material.

On the other hand, trainers who want the best of both worlds may opt to utilize a blended learning program that applies the convenience of self-paced online learning with hands-on instruction guided by experienced facilitators.

For both learners and providers, it’s important to understand one rule when it comes to corporate training:

Training Strategy = Learning Experience

What do we mean by this?

The most effective corporate training strategies are determined by how well employees (learners) interact and retain information in the training experience.

As corporate trainers, we are looking for how well our learning experiences can:

• drive learner engagement and enthusiasm
• increase knowledge retention from lessons
• apply lessons learned in the workplace
• are applicable for professional growth
• can build on organizational success.

Given our goals for learning experiences, it’s clear that the corporate training providers of today must emphasize the importance of in-person training experiences more than ever to be successful in their industries. Why?

ILT learning experiences have grown at the forefront of preferred learning experiences in a corporate setting for their benefits of both:

• Instructor-led training (face-to-face) accounts for over 70% of training budgets amongst the largest industries, according to Brandon Hall Group.
• Another report by The Training Associates magazine found that 65% of companies utilize in-person training in some capacity due to its effectiveness for both skills comprehension and delivering greater Training ROI.
• On the business side of training, 83% of companies use a learning management system (LMS) or other form of online training to provide learning to employees. However, of those companies that do, 93% are regularly in the market for a new platform due to poor user experience and learner feedback.
• For learners, 67% preferred instructor-led training in an in-class setting compared to just 22% who preferred pure online training experiences.
• Even in the age of AI use in corporate learning, learners and trainers alike still prefer the use virtual instructor-led training over eLearning or AI for new skills development.

Training managers need to address that disparity to justify the value of their teams and the true value of corporate training. Even as organizations switch from face-to-face training to virtual instructor-led training, the benefits remain the same.

According to Deloitte, “Today, all around the world, businesses—and their talent—are learning to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate on virtual platforms, and understanding the increased efficacy and efficiency such modalities of work can provide.”

For corporations looking to develop or improve their L&D altogether (online and in-person), they may consider looking into establishing a corporate training academy.

The benefits of establishing a focused training center exclusive to corporate employees are astounding, as it gives learners access to hands-on learning with instructors and numerous resources.

Learn More: 13 Benefits of Instructor-led Training in an Online Learning World

Fine-tuning Training Operations for Successful Learning

Training Operations are the systematic processes developed by an organization’s L&D to ensure learning is planned, delivered, and improved for the benefit of all.

However, large-scale training programs for organizations cannot exist without routine work to be successful. This is the case for most companies utilizing instructor-led training and blended learning programs.

Most companies may think that because they have a back office of seasoned training managers and L&D specialists, they’re running a tight ship.

The issue is that most ILT-based programs run using a disconnected system of third-party software, calendars, and spreadsheets to schedule in-person learning sessions. This perpetual scenario leads to increased administrative time for training back-office staff and reduced time for training optimization and new project planning.

To perfect, or as we at Training Orchestra prefer, “fine-tune”, training operations for corporate learning, L&D teams, and providers need to be empowered by their supporting organization and have the right system in place to handle multiple training programs.

Learn More: 8 Tips for Successful Instructor-led Training

Optimizing Corporate Training with a Training Management System

Organizations need to minimize further disruption to their business and training operations by embracing technology to maximize their resources. If companies are seeking to stay on top of their industry and looking to utilize the benefits of instructor-led training, they need to empower their teams to implement the right platform.

A training management system (TMS) helps streamline the logistics involved in deploying ILT-based experiences for corporate employee training programs.

As a complement to your LMS, a TMS serves as the back-office tool for learning, automating, and optimizing functions such as session scheduling, resource management, and cost tracking. With globally dispersed teams and employees, this means efficiency and collaboration are more important than ever.

How does Training Orchestra streamline processes for Employee Training Programs?

There are 4 ways training managers can benefit immediately:

1. Maximize and Preserve Training Budgets

It’s never a good time to waste money. Not today and not ever. Track, forecast, and control your budget at all times. Through precise cost computation, proactive budget planning, and real-time monitoring, organizations can save up to 25% on their training investment. What would your organization do with the extra savings?

2. Optimize Resources

Get the most out of your training resources with a course management software system. Identify the best available trainers, rooms, learning materials, and how best to deploy them, either in-person or live virtually. Do more with less by managing training resources with ease through online graphical schedules, occupancy-rate maximization, and conflict monitoring. Improve productivity and training performance.

3. Get Productive

Stop wasting valuable time on routine tasks for corporate training management. Enhance the productivity of your operations and logistics by automating processes and scheduling, collaborating on tasks and to-do lists, and visualizing your milestones at a glance. Collaborate as a team across different business units.

Define clear roles and responsibilities. Accelerate the delivery of training by launching the planning and registration for events with minimal effort. Protect confidential training operation details in a secure system.

4. Analyze and Improve

Consolidate your training operations in a single system. The Training Management System has advanced measurement, analytics, and reporting features so you can better measure, manage, and interpret your data to prove the value of corporate training.

Get all the data you need to make smart decisions with shared dashboards, real-time KPI tracking, and customized reports. Share best practices learned with team members. Automate reporting and share key metrics with executives to justify the value of corporate training in ILT/vILT.

What’s Next?

For training managers and L&D leaders, now is the time to embrace the changes in our workplace and use this opportunity to make a bigger impact both in our organizations and with our employees.

As the need for skilled training increases in every company around the world, training teams must utilize a platform that allows them to improve operations for learning continuity and allows them to showcase the value of corporate training altogether.

Effective Corporate Learning Strategies Start with Training Orchestra