Embracing a Hybrid Learning Model for Corporate Training & Development

In this blog we will answer:

• Why a Hybrid Corporate Structure is the Future
• Corporate Training and Development in a Post-Pandemic World
• How to Transition your Corporate Training & Development to a Virtual Hybrid Model 

Why a Hybrid Corporate Structure is the Future

We are dealing with vast changes since Covid-19 uprooted entire systems, methods of communication and in-person expectations in the corporate world. For obvious reasons, many processes were virtualized - but that wasn’t such a bad thing. The hybrid virtual model has provided “greater access to talent, increased productivity for individuals and small teams, lowered costs, more individual flexibility, and improved employee experiences.”

The transition to a hybrid virtual model will be long-lasting in a post-pandemic world. “We all know that work will never be the same, even if we don’t yet know all the ways in which it will be different,” says Slack co-founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield.

This study revealed that 72% of employees prefer a mix of remote and office work - a hybrid approach. 

Corporate teams have realized the vast benefits of a hybrid virtual model. However, we cannot look beyond some of the new challenges the corporate world now faces in terms of social connection, employee engagement and combating feelings of isolation from a shared mission and purpose to the overall organization. 

As McKinsey & Company put it, “remote workers can soon feel isolated, disenfranchised, and unhappy, the victims of unintentional behavior in an organization that failed to build a coherent model of, and capabilities for, virtual and in-person work. The sense of belonging, common purpose, and shared identity that inspires all of us to do our best work gets lost. Organizational performance deteriorates accordingly.”

But with new challenges comes creativity and innovation around creating a positive experience for employees working remotely. We must use technology to our advantage, visionary thinking, end-to-end platforms, and provide employees with value-added experiences if we are going to maintain a positive and productive virtual workforce. 

Corporate Training & Development in a Post-Pandemic World

One of the most influential and necessary actions an organization can take towards retaining employee satisfaction and increasing their productivity is by providing them with access to professional training & development. Some data points:

• 68% of employees say training and development is the company’s most important policy according to ClearCompany

• 76% of employees are looking for career growth opportunities according to ClearCompany

• 24% higher profit margins can be the result of companies who invest in training according to the Huffington Post

• 40% of employees with poor training will leave the company within the first year according to Go2HR

It is clear that employees, millennials especially, seek out career development opportunities when it comes to finding and staying at a company. Organizations need to evaluate the value-add they provide to their employees through learning and development, and how large of an impact that has on their overall employee retention and satisfaction. 

Corporate training and development will surely look different in a post-pandemic world, in the form of a hybrid virtual model that we are all becoming accustomed to. Corporate Training & Development in a hybrid virtual world includes:

• Virtual corporate gatherings

• Guest speakers in a webinar series 

• OnDemand access to training & development 

• In-house Knowledge Bases & Media Libraries

• Certificate programs 

• Virtual & hybrid events for sales kick-offs, product launches, executive meetings & corporate summit

We are talking about the use of technology in novel ways to not just replace in-person gatherings, but compliment them in every facet of corporate processes. In the infancy stages of social distancing and abrupt transitions to remote work, the world gravitated towards video collaboration tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Hangouts. Large scale presentations might have even used tools like Webex or GoToMeeting. 

However, as we become more evolved in our WFH processes, and we begin to embrace different tech platforms for collaboration and meetings, the corporate world has realized the inadequacy of such tools for building advanced, interactive gatherings that stimulate engagement with employees and provide an added value to their virtual experience. 

The corporate world needs to look at end-to-end platforms with advanced interactive capabilities and ease of use to truly embrace and benefit from a hybrid virtual work model. In order to be effective, the corporate world will need to utilize tech platforms that mitigate manual effort, instead of ones that create additional processes to an already overwhelmed workload. 

How to Transition your Corporate Training & Development to a Virtual Hybrid Model 

The right tech partner should make transitioning your corporate training and development to a virtual hybrid model easy, seamless and should act as an augmentation to your in-house staff. 

Seek out a tech platform that can handle end-to-end processes; from hosting and recording live virtual presentations, to incorporating videos into OnDemand training & development sessions to issuing certificates of completion to learners and user tracking & data analytics to organizations. 

Partnering with a tech platform should help to eliminate the manual processes of delivering training & development, managing continuing education credits and keeping track of users & certificate delivery. That platform should work as an extension of your full-time staff who is focused on employee training & development and should enhance and streamline their delivery process. 

The largest benefit to switching to a hybrid model is that after content is created and recorded, you can re-use training webinars and videos by hosting them in your proprietary Knowledge Base for continued OnDemand access. 

As a BeaconLive Virtual Event Producer said “since Beaconlive records your original webinar, it’s a great way to offer the same content over and over again.” 

The process of delivering hybrid virtual corporate training & development will go as follows:

1. Curating, Creating & Recording Content

Whether you are recording a live presentation, or working with your speaker to record and edit a presentation, you will need to create webinar-style videos to capture the information you are looking to distribute to your employees. Consider creating additional resources in the forms of slidedecks, PDFs, podcasts or e-books to offer participants when they engage with the educational content. Read about the three different learning categories your webinar or webcasts can fall into. 

2. Hosting Content in a Knowledge Base or Content Catalog

Knowledge Bases, Content Catalogs, Media Libraries - organizations use different terminology to describe a congregate virtual location that hosts all of your in-house, proprietary training & development materials. This provides your employees with OnDemand access to webinars, training videos, educational downloads and certificate programs. 

The content within these Knowledge Bases can host registrations for live webinar sessions and recorded OnDemand webinars that the user can access at any time. Certain learning modules can be bundled into master certificate programs. Utilize methods like microlearning and Asynchronous Learning for best learning outcomes. 

3. Tracking Users & Offering CertificatEs

Provide your learners with tangible confirmation that they took part in a training & development course. Delivering certificates of completion or master certificates of continuing education courses will give them something to be proud of and give you a trackable piece of information to evaluate your employees’ progress and engagement with your professional development materials.

This is a critical point at which organizations will often get overwhelmed by an overload of manual processes; multiple excel spreadsheets to manage user progress and delivery of certificates. An advanced tech platform will help to automate those processes - like a CRM but for all of your professional development content management. Working with a tech platform should not add time and work to your schedule, it should eliminate manual processes and alleviate the burdens of your Human Resources team. 

Conclusion

Embracing a hybrid model for Corporate Training & Development can be a strategic and beneficial transition for your organization and your employees’ overall satisfaction and productivity. Getting creative with ways that you can live stream sales kick offs and product launches, integrate virtual learning methods and capitalize on a hybrid distribution of training & development materials is easy with the right tech provider. 

BeaconLive offers an end-to-end solution for virtual & hybrid gatherings, content hosting & management and certificate delivery. We augment your professional development team with our fully-managed system and team of tech professionals designed to mitigate manual processes, not add more tasks to your workload. Let us help you embrace a hybrid learning model for your professional development & corporate training.