Getting new employees trained on their new jobs can be a long process with a lot of steps. Furthermore, keeping your existing employees trained and up to date on the most recent developments in your workplace, their profession, and with the technology they work with day to day can also be a huge ongoing task. Certainly some of this training will require hands on training that cannot be replaced, but there is a category of repetitive training where employee training tools can save you a ton of time when they are implemented well.
Good employee training software will give you the ability to speed up your corporate training programs and make them more efficient. Online employee training tools come in all kinds, so let's talk a little more about each of them.
Types of Employee Training Tools:
Learning Management Systems
An LMS is a type of employee training tool that gives you the ability to create courses and deliver them to employees. After creating the course you can assign employees to take and complete their training. Your employee training course materials may include elements like videos, documents, slideshows, and links or other resources. After an employee has completed each lesson you can use tools like quizzes to test their comprehension of the learning materials.
Examples:
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Groundwork1 - Our simple learning management system allows you to create a course and send it out via email to your employees. You can share training videos through email and allow employees to watch them on a professional branded page with one click.
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proceed.app - This mobile learning app helps you to create visual training for employees such as work instructions, safety guides, checklists and standard operating procedures.
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Eduflow - This online training tool allows for more interactive experiences where you can facilitate group discussions, peer reviews, group work and instructor reviews.
Employee Training Tracking Tools
These types of tools may not help with the actual training, but they are extremely useful for tracking all of the various kinds of training that employees have, or will receive. And while this certainly can include online courses, it can prove to be just as useful for tracking certifications or other types of employee training that may have been completed in person or outside of your organization. It acts as a specialized database for you to track and manage employee training especially when it comes to important areas such as compliance training.
Examples:
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Trainingtracker - If you are looking for a dedicated app to manage the complexities of tracking required compliance training programs, then this is one of the best options out there.
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Employee training tracker spreadsheet - If you are looking to keep things simple, then this is a nice place to start with a spreadsheet template that gets you most of the way there already.
Virtual Communication Tools
With distributed teams these days it is as important as ever to have tools for virtual communication. Personalized online employee training can be an effective strategy when onboarding new employees, especially because you can use web conferencing tools to schedule the meeting with multiple employees at the same time and present to them all at once. You can also consider webinar sort of video training tools for larger groups where you can do a presentation and record it, and then replay it for future trainees who need to be trained on the same thing.
Examples:
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Zoom - This is the de facto standard these days when it comes to remote work and meetings. It also gives you the ability to record your meetings for future replay, which could be essential for your employee training process.
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WebEx - WebEx is similar to Zoom, but also has additional features for virtual presentations which may be useful as you are doing employee training.
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ZipMessage - This is an asynchronous tool that allows you to record video messages and provide links for someone else to respond via a video recording as well. It could work well for coaches and others as a 1:1 training platform.
Content Development Tools
There are a number of ways to develop training content. A video editing tool for content creation can help to improve the quality of your video training content just by giving you the ability to do simple edits to cut out mistakes and add in a simple intro and outro to your videos. Content creation tools that allow you to create explanatory graphics or just lay out your presentation slides in a clear and descriptive way.
Examples:
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Loom - This allows you to capture your screen and make quick videos that you can distribute with a link. This could work for simplified training programs where that functionality is all that you need.
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Veed.io - Online video editors are becoming more popular and allow you to quickly upload video, make the edits you need, overlay some text or graphics, and export them to a number of different platforms or formats.
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Snagit or Camtasia - Screen recording software like these allow you to capture your screen including your mouse movements and your voice. You can even overlay a small circular video from your webcam to make it more personal.
What kinds of employee training work well work well for online courses?
As we mentioned before, some training lends itself to in person and some lends itself to an online medium. As you evaluate your training needs and choose from a wide variety of staff training tools you can think about these kinds of training and see what would work best in your situation:
HR and Compliance Training:
Important training on topics like non-discrimination, compliance and ethics, sexual harassment, and other laws could be covered. Depending on where your business is located, some may be mandated by law, while others may simply be in line with your company's values and what you want your employees to be aware of.
Industry Specific Training
The organizations that oversee them will set up additional rules for some industries. Continuing education programs for teachers, medical professionals, attorneys, nurses, contractors, counselors, therapists, and electricians are a few examples of this.
Emergency and Safety Training
Employee training in emergency action plans, personal protective equipment, hazard communication, and first aid is mandated by laws (like OSHA). Employees need to know these things in order for them to be aware of the hazards involved with their jobs and how to handle an emergency.
Technology Training
One of the aspects of training that changes the most quickly is keeping employees up to date with the most recent technology that they will utilize at work. It could be necessary to receive training on how to use a new piece of hardware or software within your organization. Additionally, security hazards and threat awareness training, such as phishing training, fit nicely under this heading.
Why do I need an employee training tool?
In person training can take a lot of time and isn't easily repeatable. When you use training videos and automated online training tools it can be repeated as many times as necessary without investing additional time into training employees. It also allows employees to do self paced learning where they may need additional time to repeat a section, look up additional information, or take a break and come back when they are fresh.
The best employee training tools will help you improve your employee's learning experience and save you time from having to train employees again and again on the same topic. Automated training programs allow you to do the hard work up front and then let it run itself. Of course, this still means you have to put together the training program and make sure it is clear and can work well with your employees individual learning styles. Creating online training courses is an investment that will pay dividends down the road far after their creation.
If you are looking for an employee training tool or a simple learning management system, then check out Groundwork1 to kick start your on the job training today.
