If you want to see your company succeed, you have to invest in your employees’ skill set. This is especially important now that the pandemic has completely changed how we work, requiring employees to adapt. Indeed, around 51% of companies globally are implementing upskilling programmes in their organisations, while 47% of them will implement reskilling ones.
Of course, given current circumstances, traditional, on-site training programmes can’t be held. This is the year of remote work — which means a time for remote learning as well. But what kind of training do your employees need? To help you craft your programmes, here are some of the top eLearning trends in 2021.
Growth of microlearning
Microlearning or “bite-sized training” aims to provide learners with short bursts of information that will let them study the topic at their own convenience. This is an excellent format to explore now that most of your employees work at home.
Google Garage’s Fundamentals to Digital Marketing course is a great example of this.
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Each topic is condensed into three-to-five-minute videos. Of course, microlearning can come in other formats too, like apps, games, infographics, and more. To create your own microlearning module, you need to divide your programme into multiple learning objectives. For instance, if your sales department needs to learn how to negotiate better, the first part of your module can be written like this:
• Defining your customers
• Knowing what your customers value
• Creating a timeline for their decision
Then, easy-to-consume content needs to be made for each one. Ideally, you don’t want each session to last more than ten minutes.
A greater focus on online marketing
The pandemic has encouraged people to stay at home, leading customers to spend more time online. If you want your business to reach its target audience, all your employees need to be well versed in digital marketing and the intricacies of online media. And one way to do this is to examine what is being taught at universities. Many institutions offer online courses that provide a clear curriculum on what the latest trends are that need to be learnt.
However, the principles of digital marketing alone aren’t enough to put the knowledge into practice. Employees need a bunch of key business skills, too, like accounting and IT. This is why students taking online marketing programmes are taught the basic technical requirements top employers seek — regardless of profession — like SEO, content management, and basic UX. They’re also given a foundation on core business subjects like economics and statistics, so they can develop better strategies. In line with this direction higher education is taking, your employees need this kind of training. Global business organisations like the Digital Marketing Institute have months-long courses dedicated to this.
Importance of basic graphic design
In line with the increasing importance of online marketing, businesses should also be able to churn out eye-catching content, like posters and promotions, to engage their audience. However, knowledge of basic content creation is also useful for making infographics and easy-to-understand presentations. Any employee who needs to learn how to summarise pertinent data and present it will benefit a lot from graphic design training. It’s very useful in analytics departments. There are several basic graphic design programmes you can have your employees take, like Udemy’s Graphic Design Bootcamp and the courses on Skillshare.
Training shouldn’t stop just because you can’t gather your team in a physical location. In fact, given the increasingly competitive environment, they need the lessons now more than ever. Remember these three trends when you create your modules.
