Employees want training, and employers want to provide it. But there's a major gap between what employees want and what their bosses are providing.
According to a Society for Human Resources Management report, a survey conducted for Axonify, Inc., a Waterloo, Ontario, Canada-based firm specializing in employee-learning platforms, found 90 percent of respondents say it's important that training is easy to complete and understand.
In addition, 87 percent say it's important to have access to training information anytime and anywhere they need it in order to do their jobs. This is a big one for employees; 51 percent say this is very important.
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Oh, and no boring curriculum for these respondents: 85 percent say it's important training is engaging and fun, and 39 percent say this is very important. Not only that, it should be personalized and relevant to employees; 85 percent say this is important, while 42 percent say personalized training is extremely important.
And 30 percent say they received no formal training on the job.
Carol Leaman, president and CEO of Axonify, says, "Far too few organizations offer training programs that are actually designed to help employees build knowledge and translate that knowledge to performance." Leaman adds, "It's time for companies to wake up and adopt modern, intuitive and engaging training methodologies that meet the needs of today's workforce."
Leaman says in the report that learning management systems (LMSs) have not kept up with changes in the workforce over the nearly 20 years since they were introduced. Workers have different expectations than they did then, and don't want to sit around with a bunch of other people who are at different places on the training scale — and they expect their companies to respond accordingly.
Modern LMSs should not only capitalize on gamification of training materials to engage workers, but should also be able to track how well employees do and what they know. In addition, companies are more attractive to workers — particularly millennials — if they offer opportunities to learn new skills.
For LMSs to be effective, they also need to be tied to corporate goals over the next few years, to ensure that they provide the training needed to achieve those goals.
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