Workforce Training and Development: The Value of Relevant Content

In the digital age, one of the most important methods for workforce training and development has to be learning & development (L&D) content. L&D content shows users helpful onboarding and training materials, giving them the ability to upskill and achieve their work-related goals. 

For their part, the analysts at McKinsey & Company link the importance of L&D to the new, knowledge-based economy. The knowledge economy is based on intangibles assets like knowledge and leadership; L&D helps control for these criteria by making folks more knowledgeable and engaged. 

L&D content is hugely important for companies that have large, distributed workforces. When your workforce isn’t managed in the traditionally top-down manner, L&D builds their skills and improves their performance at minimal cost and effort for corporate HQ. If the workforce is managed in a top-down manner, this reduces retention and costs time and resources.

The question is – how do you make sure that the right L&D content is getting to the right person at the right time? Particularly if you’re relying on workforce training solutions to assign such content, it’s hugely important to have a process in place for making sure that the content the workforce receives is the right content. L&D won’t be useful – won’t feed into your core KPIs – if it’s not employed effectively every step along the way.

That’s where relevant content comes into the picture.

What Is Learning & Development?

Let’s first define L&D. When we’re talking about workforce training and development, L&D refers to the processes by which members of the distributed workforce get onboarded, trained, and upskilled, gradually increasing their output and performance. Generally, these processes involve technology, often workforce training solutions, that will assign learning content to specific members of the workforce. The “relevant” question for us is: what kind of content gets assigned, and when? What do members of the workforce see, at which moment?

What Is Learning & Development Content?

Learning and development content for the workforce refers to any materials or resources that are designed to help employees learn new skills, acquire knowledge, and develop professionally. This can include a wide range of content types and formats, such as:

1. E-learning modules: These are online courses that the workforce can complete at their own pace, often featuring interactive elements such as quizzes, videos, and simulations.
2. Instructor-led training: This can be delivered in person or virtually and can cover a wide range of topics such as leadership, sales, customer service, and compliance.
3. Microlearning: This involves delivering small, bite-sized pieces of content that can be consumed quickly and easily on a mobile device, such as short videos, infographics, or quizzes.
4. On-the-job training: This is a hands-on learning approach where employees learn by doing, typically through job shadowing, mentoring, or coaching.
5. Gamification: This involves incorporating game-like elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards into the learning experience to increase engagement and motivation.
6. Self-directed learning: This involves providing employees with resources such as books, articles, podcasts, and other materials that they can use to learn and develop on their own.

Effective workforce training content for the workforce should be designed to meet the specific needs of the organization and its employees. It should also be engaging, interactive, and relevant to the employees’ job roles and career aspirations.

Relevant Content – What Does It Mean for Workforce Training?

L&D content is said to be relevant when it directly corresponds to the needs and goals of an individual member of the distributed workforce. In more traditional corporate structures, for instance where HR is responsible for the training of employees, relevant content might be manually assigned. As a matter of course, this content will emphasize workplace practices and norms; or else it will be used to close performance gaps in light of business results and metrics.   

For the distributed workforce, which usually does not have a managerial “center,” there is no way to manually assign helpful L&D content to everyone. Further, the distributed workforce is more directly dependent on performance output, because distributors, reps, and gig workers only net as much money as the effort they put in. They are thus more dependent on fresh L&D content to improve their personal KPIs and achieve their objectives – such content helps them make higher sales, feel more confident and engaged in their work, and drives profits for the companies with which they are affiliated.

Thus, companies must have the right technology – technology that can automate the delivery of L&D content so that it’s going to enhance the individual’s performance the most relative to the moment they receive it. This content should be fully relevant to the individual who receives it, boosting their performance and the company’s KPIs at the same time.

L&D Content, Digital Tech, and Distributed Workforce Training

The next question is: How should technology implement relevant content for optimal workforce training and development results? What should the relationship be, between training and content? Between the goals of the individual and the content she sees?

At Rallyware, our platform has been designed to deliver the most relevant content to each individual at the moment it will most enhance their performance and productivity. Our platform, a complete digital experience for performance enablement, utilizes a wide range of integrations and data analytics tools to recommend the most useful content to individuals based on their goals and needs. This digital workforce training helps jumpstart their development as workforce members by showing them content that corresponds to their objectives, their particular paths.

For example, let’s say Josephine – a direct selling rep – wants to hit her sales volume goal her first month selling beauty products. However, she has yet to explore tutorials about toners, a key product grouping for her company.

With the right technology – particularly Rallyware – in place, she will receive smart, in-app recommendations that recommend the right micro-tutorials for her development. She can even complete them on her phone. This will help her hit her sales numbers and help the company, at the individual, achieve the KPIs that matter most.   

This is digital workforce training and development for the 2020s. At a time when the workforce is changing, with the gig economy expanding even faster than the rest of the economy, training and L&D must change as well. In short, L&D must become more personalized as the workforce becomes more distributed and voluntary, populated by Uber drivers, TaskRabbit gig workers, and direct sellers. At the same time, L&D tools have to take advantage of the advances of the digital transformation, interpreting the right information – even from external systems – in the right way. 

Rallyware personalizes and automates the delivery of relevant content to users at the moment it will most help their performance. Click here to request your free demonstration today.