Elizabeth Millard, The Daily Record Newswire
Law firms often have to keep their associates and partners sharp with updated education, focusing on frequent changes in the law and legal precedents. Fortunately, technology makes it easier to hit the e-books.
Online training tools, mobile quizzes, webinars, video tutorials: it seems that there’s no limit to the ways that corporate education is delivered, thanks to technology. An associate can catch up on legal issues from a laptop during a courtroom break, or watch a new employee orientation presentation from home. But with choice can come hesitation — with such a breadth of options, it can be challenging to find a solution that fits your company and its needs.
In order to create a more effective technology-based training strategy, it’s sometimes helpful to focus on features rather than specific applications, since that approach assists the comparison process. With that in mind, here are some features that can help any training effort, no matter what your focus areas or practice size:
Determine your outcome
Are you offering training for a specific purpose, or simply because employee feedback indicated that they’d like more training options? No matter what the impetus, make sure you have a concrete goal in mind when establishing a training program, advises Dan Riley, Chief Operating Officer at Minneapolis-based Modern Survey, provider of employee and customer surveys.
“When you’re looking at technology-based training tools, ask yourself: what’s the outcome?” says Riley. “How does it measure effectiveness, and how can you determine if it’s successful enough to be repeated across the company?”
He recommends pilot training sessions, in which just a few employees use the tools and have their knowledge tested at later intervals, to make sure the training sticks. Also, employee performance can be measured based on the training materials. “If you can link the training to business success, then it makes sense to pursue that,” he says. “There are a lot of bad training courses out there, so you really want to make sure you’re measuring what’s been learned, and that the individual is using that training.”
Focus on engagement
The most important aspect of any training program or app is engagement, because if employees “drift off” during the training, important information will be missed, according to Jason Hoffrogge, Training Director at Golden Valley-based Orion Associates, which provides training services.
“People need to be involved, or you’ll lose them,” he says. “We’re becoming a multi-tasking society, so if you don’t keep them focused on their training, you’ll lose them to email or something else.”
To boost engagement, look for training materials that make employees part of the action. That might mean training done in real time with a trainer who’s either in the room or sharing a screen virtually. Hoffrogge adds that Orion has had success with non-linear training, in which the employee picks the direction of educational efforts, in a “choose your own adventure” kind of format.
Consider your employee base
Maybe you have an office rife with Millennials who could run the firm through their iPhones, or maybe you’ve got Boomers, who know the location of every paper-based file in their department. Most likely, you’ve got a mix of generations, and training solutions will need to be tailored to those different groups.
“People are really paying attention to the diversity of age groups in a workforce and how it affects training,” says Karen Wichmann, President of Edina-based training firm Knowledge Disseminators. “They approach technology differently, but they also approach training in unique ways. For example, Boomers or Xers will take computer-based training seriously when they’re asked to do it, but Millennials tend to question the need for it more often, and they need more engaging materials.”
When comparing training options, Wichmann recommends seeing training as a lifelong learning opportunity for a firm’s employees, rather than a one-time shot at educating them on a specific legal issue. Tailoring materials for your practice areas from the start can be helpful for setting training directions for the future.
When making the choice, consider employee accountability, which often involves setting metrics or benchmarks that need to be passed in order to advance to the next training level, advises Ann Sweeney, Technical Writer Lead and instructional designer at Minneapolis-based Healthland, a provider of healthcare information technology solutions.
“The need for training continues to grow,” Sweeney says. “If you have good, intuitive technology-based tools that boost engagement and provide an interactive learning experience, it can provide major benefits for any company.”
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Elizabeth Millard writes about technology. Formerly senior editor at ComputerUser, her work has appeared in Business 2.0, eWeek, Linux Magazine and TechNewsWorld.
