New Year Resolutions for Training Managers

by CoSo

February 7, 2019

New Year Resolutions for Training Managers

So, you’ve already drawn up (and perhaps already destroyed) your list of New Year’s resolutions for your personal life. But what about your professional life? What about your life as a corporate trainer?

No? Well why not? Resolutions are meant to bring about lasting improvement in one’s life. Couldn’t your training programs benefit from the same?

Fear not. I’ve come up with a few resolutions for you that can at the very least get the ball rolling and inspire you to come up with some of your own.

#1 Become a Better Teacher

Corporate training is so driven by technology these days, it’s easy to get caught up in which tools to use and which methods to adopt, leaving little time to develop one’s teaching skills. The success of any eLearning program certainly depends on the informed, strategic purchase of technology and the capabilities those solutions bring, but ultimately the impact eLearning has on the organization depends on one thing: good teaching. Work on your ability to create not just a more successful session, but a supportive community of active learning in the workplace. If you’re not especially charismatic, work on discovering your own special voice. You may not be much of a comedian, but a patient nurturer can be just as effective in conveying knowledge in an engaging way. Learn to teach!

#2: Stay Abreast of New Tech

Sure, it can’t all be about tech, but you certainly can’t do without it. Now is a great time to make sure you’re on top of all the latest virtual training technologies and methods. Can virtual reality be used to drive deeper engagement within your training programs? How about adaptive learning, AI, or data-driven insights that allow you to track goals and demonstrate ROI? Or take your engagement to the next level by adding YouTube players, gamification and other add-ons on to your virtual training system.

#3: Go After Your Workplace’s Biggest Challenges

Sure. It’s easy to steer clear of tough workplace issues that even the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission say may be difficult to resolve with training. Rooting out sexual harassment, racial and other biases, and even everyday interpersonal conflicts among workers are lofty goals for anyone, whether you’re HR, a company lawyer, or the CEO. But training managers are uniquely positioned to help companies do more than implement and enforce policy. They can actually help stamp out the human tendencies that create the need for such policies to begin with. It may take years and your job will never be done, but who said your job would ever be easy anyway? 

#4: Protect Your Data

Compromised training info may not seem like a scary threat, but training sessions often contain data about an organization’s strategies, processes, customers, and products. And the security threat goes beyond corporate data. What about the knowledge and coordination being communicated among government organizations? These are details about our nation and its infrastructure that could be used by an enemy against the state. And since these sessions are often recorded, archived, and indexed for future reference, the information isn’t exposed just once. Whether the data is deliberately hacked or inadvertently mishandled, its exposure puts the organization, its people, and the people they serve at risk. Work with IT to reach out to companies like CoSo Cloud and see how your training programs can be made secure.

Happy New Year!