A corporate (or employee) coach has a powerful and influential role in every company. They are responsible for inspiring and nurturing a workforce that is one step ahead of business goals. Their remit can cover everything from onboarding to continuous development. And their sphere of influence has a lot to do with employee engagement and retention. In short, the organization has a lot to thank them for.
But many corporate trainers you don’t have a training (or HR) background. In some cases, they are senior employees who may not have actively sought the role. Instead, they are absorbed into a position to meet an emerging and often unplanned business need. Or, conversely, they are employees who are interested in training and have proactively sought a move to create a new and fruitful career in learning and development.
Stepping into an unfamiliar environment means learning on the job. And getting up to speed quickly. Ambitious beginners, corporate trainers without formal qualifications quickly master the basics, organize and even deliver training for a potentially large and diverse workforce.
But despite their confidence and motivation, many corporate trainers (especially those without formal training) ask questions: How am I doing? And… What’s next?
In this guide, we help business or employee trainers (you?) assess their role and effectiveness. We offer tactics to improve results and accomplish everyday tasks. And offer advice on how to make a career in training.
Building Better Courses: Your Questions Answered
With the help of an LMS with a built-in content authoring tool, as an employee trainer, you’ll likely establish good routines when it comes to designing courses. You’re probably already reusing existing material in different modules, importing content from the web, and finding ready-made courses using content libraries.
Despite this, our research reveals a number of pain points experienced by training professionals looking to develop a specialist career in learning and development. And most of them relate to the transition from design courses to design Great courses.
Let’s take a look at some of the most frequently asked questions by L&D professionals. And see how they relate to one big overarching question: How to become a training and development specialist?
How can I edit the content better?
Organizing and storing content so that it is available to students when they need it fosters culture continuous learning. And it’s key to cultivating an effective coaching career. But it requires a strategy to ensure that learning resources are relevant, up-to-date and continuously enriched.
To do this, it is important to:
- Set up forums to get feedback and input from students and subject matter experts
- Create communities of practice
- Establish a resource filing system based on meaningful and intuitive classifications
- Start with areas of training that directly link to a clear return on investment
- Form a team of people responsible for keeping content accurate, relevant and timely
- Regularly review and revise the original strategy taking into account subsequent feedback, analytics and reports on usage patterns
- Ensure that learning resources are available on multiple devices, especially mobile
- Publish and promote selected content
- Ask users to share “success stories” to build momentum around usage
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How do I know that what I found online is good enough to be included in the course?
A research tool, Google is a limitless repository of knowledge. But it is not exclusively so.
In fact, it contains as many inaccuracies as informed insights. There is an art to first finding the information you want and then knowing if you can trust what you find. And it is this art that gives one answer to the question: ‘What does a training and development specialist do?’
When using the Internet to source content for training programs, try the following advanced search skills to fine-tune the search strategy:
- Use Boolean operators and symbols such as “AND”, “OR” and “NOT” to get more targeted and relevant results. Add quotes to search for a specific keyword. And use the minus sign to remove evidence of the previous search term.
- Scan the footer for the date the page was last updated.
- Analyze the domain name to put the content into context. For example, established institutions are often more reliable. This includes educational (.edu), government (.gov), or non-profit (.org) organizations. They can (but not always) be more reliable. Commercial sites (using the “.com” suffix), such as reputable news outlets or highly ranked industry-leading service providers, can also be good sources, but may require additional investigation to confirm reliability.
- Be precise. Look for websites that specialize in the type of information you are looking for.
- Research the author. What are their credentials? Avoid unattributed content.
- Look for links that support opinions with independent research.
- Check the information by cross-checking against other reputable sources.
- Rate the layout of the page. Is it well designed? Is the content well written?
- Check out the links on the page. Reputable websites usually link to each other.
*Advice: Copy “link:http://www.[WEBSITE].com” in Google, replacing “[WEBSITE]” with the domain of the site you are researching to see what site it links to.
How can I work with subject matter experts (SMEs)?
Many training programs benefit SMEs that apply deep technical knowledge to a specific topic. But the truth is that even though they are experts in a particular field, they are not necessarily experts in training. Nor will they have ‘Subject Expert’ as their official job title.
So how do you find an SME? And, more importantly, how do you ensure that their knowledge is optimized?
A key aspect of a successful training career, let’s dive deeper into the skills surrounding sourcing and onboarding for SMBs.
How to find SMEs:
- Activate the referral scheme. Referrals are a great way to find SMEs as they already come with an element of credibility.
- Look inside. Most organizations have employees who have achieved a higher level of experience and accreditation in a particular field.
- Go online. LinkedIn, professional associations, other social networks, and specialized industry forums are good ways to find experts with specific areas of interest.
How to work with SMEs:
- Use training application forms to structure SME intake and apply instructional design to content suggestions.
- Clarify from the beginning what specific topics your SME plans to cover and identify any gaps in service delivery.
- Assess the experience level of your SME in designing and conducting training courses. And provide training or guidance as needed.
How can I increase adoption and interest?
To keep the training top of mind, create an internal communication campaign that covers all the different stages. Use it to generate initial buzz, follow up with actionable information to get users started, then find and share case studies, success stories, statistics and quotes to maintain interest. To reinforce this, set up discussion forums so students can share tips and advice at work.
Diversity is key to keeping courses interesting and attractive to a wide range of learning types. So when designing a program, it pays to take advantage of all the different formats available (from videos, audio files, and presentations to surveys, assessments, and quizzes). Third-party integrations available within the LMS are also an effective way to create visually appealing, dynamic and interactive content of the course which raises the experience to a higher level.
Gamification is another tool for increasing engagement and retention. And don’t forget to cater to your remote or on-the-go employees by providing mobile-optimized microlearning modules.
Internal tenders. Badges. High score boards.
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How can I measure performance?
The more data (qualitative and quantitative) associated with individual training programs, the easier it is to prove the importance of training and its effectiveness. And this, in turn, is the only right way securing and increasing future investment in training.
A good LMS will have built-in reporting functionality with enhancements such as custom reports, a training matrix that provides a 360° view, activity logs, and infographics. Post-training quizzes, discussion and feedback forums, employee surveys, participant case studies, and official certification exams are other ways to measure training effectiveness.
But what about business results?
That is a question that the senior management team must ask. It is both fair and reasonable. To be in a position to respond, remember that set specific benchmarks or KPIs for training designed around the objectives of the relevant departments. Then track and evaluate them to determine tangible ROI.
Whether it’s converting leads for your sales reps or reducing customer wait times for customer support teams, your employees and your stakeholders will appreciate the hard data and training behind it.
How to make a career in training—and succeed
As we have seen, not all coaches have identical, linear career paths. And that makes them such great role models because he says: “Try to be what you want to be, not what you are.”
Of course, being a training hero can’t just be about student development. It must also be about self-development.
The good news is that as a corporate trainer there are many rich opportunities for self-improvement and learning. And just as much tools and training courses support this ambition.
For some, the art of coaching and the soft skills surrounding this provide a good focus. For others, the interest and need might be related to practical competencies such as instructional design or networking, evaluation or project management.
In any case, it is important to lead by example, show a love for learning and set standards for a rich and active learning culture. And believe in the right training because, as you know, training will help you get to where you really want to be.