Corporate Training Material’s 2020 Wrap Up
There’s no doubt that 2020 was an exceptional year for everyone both personally and professionally. Organizations had to adjust almost every aspect of how they function due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As we enter the new year, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on 2020 and what we learned from this year full of unique circumstances.
Highlights
In 2020, thousands of instructors started their training journey with us to fast track their material and provide quality, professional workshops. Our trainers came from a variety of sectors including tech, non-profit, finance, and more.
Like businesses everywhere, our team’s day-to-day routine of working together in the office was flipped upside down. Our staff made the switch to working remotely, and explored changing the ways we meet our customer’s needs. An increase in remote working for all meant we needed to assist our clients in more specialized ways by showing them how they could use our training materials to accommodate their unique organizational needs at that time. This included providing support for our eLearning and Learning Management Systems, so trainers could still continue to educate their participants and work towards their organizational goals. By using our line-up of online courses, trainees could participate in self-paced remote learning that can be fully customized by their organization to their specific training needs and branding guidelines. By being able to quickly add learners, track progress, and create detailed reports, instructors could continue to keep up with their training needs. Furthermore, businesses were also able to use our materials to provide virtual instructor led training via zoom.
Despite the challenges we all faced during 2020, Corporate Training Materials experienced significant growth through three new hires in various departments to meet our latest organizational goals:
Sales Department: Our Sales Department has hired Hailey Conley as our Junior Sales Representative. Hailey holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, majoring in Management from Mount Saint Vincent University. With over 5 years of experience in customer service from a diverse range of industries, Hailey makes an excellent addition to our sales team.
Content Department: We are pleased to have hired Glenda Fulton as our latest Editor/Writer. With over 30 years of teaching experience, Glenda has an excellent eye for quality educational content and expert writing/grammatical skills. Her role consists of editing all of our existing courses to ensure our training content is modernized and relevant to our client’s needs.
Marketing Department: Our marketing department has expanded with the addition of Katelyn Roy, our Marketing Coordinator. Katelyn is a recent graduate of the Bachelor of Public Relations program at Mount Saint Vincent University. With experience in content marketing and communications, Katelyn will be focusing on informing our clients of our products through social media, email, and web content.
Current Trends in the Training Industry
As 2020 wraps up, there are some clear trends in the training industry that are worth reflecting on. While online learning was already growing at the start of 2020, it became even more prevalent due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Trainers had to completely rethink how they delivered their material, and trainees had to adapt to learning in ways they may not have been used to before. Corporate learning has been shifted from in person in the boardroom, to our home offices on our computers via Zoom or Windows Teams.
Virtual Instructor-Led Training (vILT) was the number one option to continue to train employees while people worked remotely. vILT proved to have various benefits that went even beyond the safety and wellbeing of both trainers and trainees. By using the many tools available through online training, trainers were still able to provide effective workshops with high levels of engagement and participation. Beyond vILT, eLearning was used to provide efficient, high quality training for remote participants or for refresher of previously learned content. The experience trainers gained in providing online training with good retention provided them with skills that they can take with them for years to come.
We have also seen trends in various different training topics over 2020. These included:
Emotional intelligence – Emotionally intelligent employees can adapt quickly to unexpected changes, a skill that was more crucial than ever in 2020. Organizations who used our Emotional Intelligence training were able to help their employees improve their social skills, self-awareness, social awareness, and self-management.
Diversity and Inclusion – Many organizations have implemented diversity and inclusion training as a start to raising awareness in their employees to concepts such as unconscious bias in the workplace. By providing these workshops, trainers can encourage diverse perspectives and collaboration. By encouraging diverse workplace teams, organizations benefit from having a better problem-solving skills, reduced bias, and increased accountability.
Communication Strategies – Having clear communication within your organization plays an essential role to the success of your employees. When working remotely meant employees can’t simply walk over to their colleagues’ desk to communicate, there needed to be an extra effort to provide clear communication either written or orally through video conferencing software programs.
Change Management – Being flexible to change was a skill many employees had the opportunity to work on in 2020. Trainers have been finding opportunities to help their participants adjust to organizational changes. Change management training allows employees to have a better understanding of how to prepare and support themselves to adopt change for the success of their organization.
What’s Next for the Training Industry in 2021?
There are many developments that transpired this year in corporate learning that will continue to be prevalent for organizations in 2021. Employees will continue to need to keep up with their continuously changing organizational needs. There may be changes in roles during 2020 that will remain going forward, such as permanent transitions to remote working. Perhaps other employees are getting reacquainted with coming back to the office on a part-time or full-time basis.
Soft skills will continue to grow as the most crucial topics to train on. Investing in these skills for employers is a major factor in long-term organizational goals and employee retention. It is more important than ever that employees and trainers are emotionally intelligent and strong communicators.
An increased need for productivity in fast-moving organizations means that trainers will need to find strategic ways to save time, while still providing excellent training. We anticipate a continuation of trainers delegating content heavy tasks – such as their training materials - to third parties to fast-track their projects.
At Corporate Training Materials, we are looking forward to continuing to provide our fully customizable training materials to give a head start on your 2021 training needs. Check out our full course list today to see how we can help set your employees up for success in 2021, and get started with a free course today!
Posted by Zachary Myers on