Top Training Automation Strategies For Upskilling And Reskilling Programs [Latest 2022]

According to McKinsey, nine in ten executives [1] say their organizations struggle with skills gaps or expect them in the next five years. This means that approximately 87% of companies have to cope in one way or another with skills gaps.

In this context, reskilling and upskilling training is of critical importance. However, efficient skills development programs take work to design and deliver, and ineffective training leads to losses of $13.5 million per 1,000 employees [2] annually.

Trainers must find better methods to teach employees the skills they need to keep up with technological advancements and new responsibilities while saving time and resources. One of the best ways to do both is through training automation strategies that help deliver personalized, engaging, and efficient upskilling and reskilling training.

What Are The Benefits Of Training Automation In Upskilling And Reskilling Training?

According to the World Economic Forum, 50% of all employees will require reskilling [3] by 2025 as technology adoption increases. Reskilling training offers employees the abilities needed to adapt to new business requirements. Upskilling training is equally important when internal candidates want to embrace new roles in their career development. In both cases, training automation helps save time and optimizes skills training by providing benefits such as:

Streamlined L&D Processes

Time-consuming manual work such as grading assessments or enrolling employees in online courses can easily be done automatically.

Training Personalization

Automation is the underlying technology that allows learning systems to offer personalized content recommendations, guide individual learning paths, and tailor learning content to already acquired skill sets.

Instant Feedback

Getting results right after submitting a quiz or finishing a course is a great way for learners to understand their current skills level and determine areas that need improvement.

Higher Learning Flexibility

With training automation, the content trainees need is readily available at their fingertips—they just need to choose the skills they want to acquire and embark on personalized, self-paced training journeys.

Training automation will see a significant increase in the next few years as companies will need to scale their programs and offer more of these benefits to all levels of employees.

Using Training Automation Strategies For Upskilling And Reskilling Programs

How can L&D professionals automate training to make it more efficient, personal, and memorable? Here are just some of the most popular training automation strategies.

Automated Training Workflows

There is so much instructors can achieve with the right learning platform. Many training processes can be automated, which saves time and money, allowing learning professionals to focus on pinpointing the skills employees need. The tasks streamlined via automated training workflows include:

Enrolling employees in courses based on their roles and goals
Gamifying training with progress-based points or badges
Evaluating learners via auto-graded assessments that offer instant feedback
Sending reminders and notifications based on learners’ actions
Awarding course completion certificates

Self-Directed Learning

Self-directed learning allows employees to take the reins of their skills training. A recent study shows that 89% of workers consider lack of flexibility [4] a deal breaker when looking for new jobs. The ability to work from anywhere is highly appreciated in the post-pandemic job market. But so is the ability to train from anywhere at any time, which personalized learning paths can enable.

These are custom content sequences based on skill-building goals. Trainers can associate job titles with competencies and turn them into goals employees achieve by completing courses and assignments.

Personalized learning paths are automatically customized based on learners’ skill gaps, goals, and progress. Trainers can mix different types of content, such as online courses, videos, or ebooks.

Automated Recommendations

Learning content recommendations automate the process of providing employees with the learning materials they need to acquire new skills. This process is driven by algorithms that study learners’ preferences and actions to offer tailored suggestions and are a cornerstone feature of intelligent learning platforms.

This saves trainers a lot of time while enabling learners to choose from a wide range of materials suited to their skill level and objectives. For example, if an employee engaged in marketing upskilling training wants to study branding strategies, the system can suggest various resources on this topic, such as articles, studies, third-party courses, and in-house content.

The employee can take a quick look at the content recommendations, some of which might even be rated by their colleagues, and choose those they find more useful to consolidate and develop their branding skills.

Scenario-Based Learning

Training automation gives learners the content they need when they need it in a structured way that helps develop new skills easier. Instead of having everyone go through cookie-cutter training, automated tools tailor content based on learners’ performance.

An upskilling or reskilling training course can be divided into modules, each with distinct learning goals and assessments. According to how learners perform in those assessments, they can unlock different content.

Two employees doing the same web design course can progress at different paces. As a result, learner A can already access the content in module number four while learner B is retaking the quiz in module two. This type of scenario-based learning makes skills training more relevant and efficient by focusing on each learner’s capabilities. More so, it reduces decision fatigue and cognitive overload. Learners are automatically steered in the right direction to focus on overcoming obstacles and acquiring new skills.

Reward Systems

Gamifying work and training leads to a 60% employee engagement increase [5]. Gamification allows instructors to create engaging upskilling and reskilling programs where learners earn points and badges as they progress on their individual paths. To further boost engagement and foster a competitive spirit, trainers can rank employees based on their number of points and make this information available in leaderboards.

Furthermore, they can organize collective games by grouping learners into teams that compete against each other to earn points while acquiring new skills. Gamification makes learning more appealing and memorable. Skills learned through play are more likely to be remembered in real-life situations because employees have had a positive learning experience when acquiring those new skills.

Conclusion

Training automation allows organizations to save time and money, optimize learning, personalize it and increase its engagement while providing employees the skills they need to meet new responsibilities.

Today’s learning technologies offer many training automation features, such as automated assessments, personalized recommendations, individual learning paths, and gamification.