BizLibrary released a report on the “State of the Training Industry” which is a survey aiming to find the latest trends in the field. Online e-learning is becoming a preferred method along with micro-video trainings, says the report.
The survey was carried this summer and collected the answers of 1821 people. 55% of them were from the general public and 45% were from BizLibrary client employees. It shows that people are more and more interested in online trainings and micro-video trainings which they can read and watch at their own pace. This also leads to better results from the trainings since the people are putting in more effort and interest.
“We looked carefully at the “State of the Industry” reports that are generated each year, and we noticed an important theme. All of the data shared a common point of view. All of those reports came from data generated by organizational leaders in either HR or employee training. None of the widely published data reported any information about how employees felt about the effectiveness of $70 billion spent by American organizations each year on employee learning. This survey and subsequent report represent our attempt to change that”, said Chris Osborn, vice president of organizational strategy.
It turned out programs that clearly contained online videos outperform programs that center on any other type of training delivery method. The survey measured the effectiveness based on teaching new things, improving the performance of the employee and preparing for the future. The results showed that programs without online video suffer sufficient drops in effectiveness. “The difference in results is so huge, that it’s not a coincidence or a fluke of the sample being too small. The differences are real”, the company claims.
BizLibrary also says some traditional training methods may be a bit questionable these days whether they are as effective as before or not. “Emerging research in neuroscience and behavioral science are confirming the wisdom of the training consumers we surveyed, too. Short bursts of content on a single topic work best. Video images are great for encoding and helping us build the connections we need to make within our brains between new learning and exiting knowledge. Long-form training delivery isn’t effective, and employees don’t like it. The data in our survey is spot on consistent with the emerging data about how humans really learn. It’s time we listened to both our consumers and the science of learning and make adjustments to our employee learning programs”, the company says.
It advises that the content should be made in practicable online videos that are 5 to 7 minutes long. Companies should also “diminish as rapidly as possible the traditional classroom approach to employee training”. Or.. “IF we choose to use classroom training, adopt scientifically proven methods to raise its effectiveness (interleaving, reflection, testing, etc.)”.
Another benefit, the company says, is that these new types of trainings give more possibilities to the employees who want to succeed. It also makes it easier to improve the overall performance.
Image credit: Flickr (CC) / Michael Coghlan