5 Ways to Supercharge Employee Training with Big Data

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Employee training has been around for centuries in one form or another, from blacksmiths training their sons to take over the family forge to noble-born boys learning how to be knights, to new workers in a factory or an office being shown the ropes by an experienced colleague.

But although the concept is age-old, the methods and tools used in employee training keep being updated as new technology and ideas appear.

One of the more recent innovations to make an impact on employee training is big data. Big data has been moving across the business ecosystem, affecting workflows and work patterns in one department after another. It may have begun with marketing and sales, but now it's reaching HR.

As well as using big data to understand employee work patterns, HR managers are beginning to apply big data to make employee training programs more engaging and fruitful. Here are 5 ways that big data can help your enterprise improve employee training.

1. Address skills gaps before they become chasms

Employee training is an excellent way to fix skills gaps and help employees to reach their maximum potential, but it's most effective when you apply it early. Big data helps you identify skills gaps among the workforce quickly and correctly, so you can produce employee training programs that address them while they are still just cracks.

The longer employees try to muddle through without the right capabilities, the more it will undermine their confidence. There's even a risk that you could end up losing highly talented employees because you - or they -  mistakenly think that they aren't up to the job, when all they needed was a targeted training program to bring them up to speed. Big data helps you roll out employee training before things reach that point.

For older employees who just need to master new tech, you'll see better results when you begin training early. Tech changes happen fast and tend to be cumulative, so if you wait too long, your employees may feel overwhelmed by the massive amount of knowledge they need to acquire and simply opt for early retirement, taking all their expert business knowledge with them.

2. Deliver the right training, in the right way, at the right time

The best employee training programs are customized to the needs of each individual employee. Different employees have different learning styles, begin with different levels of background knowledge, and learn at different speeds, but without big data it's difficult to offer individualized learning at scale.

Big data helps you to understand which formats to offer, like video, audio, written texts, and/or interactive; the ideal length to make each training module; and which topics need to be covered the most urgently, among many other issues.

Additionally, with big data analytics you can adapt the timing of your training sessions so they won't interrupt your employee's work schedule. Instead of disrupting the flow of work, you can deliver a popup suggestion that they run a training module at just the right time.

3. Continuously improve employee training programs

The business world is continually evolving and tech is rapidly changing, so your employee training programs can't stand still. If you're trying to run a 20th-century training program, you can't expect it to have much success among 21st-century employees.

But it can be hard to see the wood for the trees. If you've been offering employee training for years, you might not realize that it's not really working any more. A Deloitte study found that although 74% of employees believe their organization values developing worker skills and capabilities, just 34% are happy with the investment they make.

Big data can help you to pick up on which employee training procedures are the most effective, which need some refinement, and which should be thrown out to make way for better approaches. Your employees are your most important resource, so they deserve at least the same CI/CD practices that you bring to product development.

4. Anticipate future skill needs

Employee training plays a crucial role in enabling organizations to stay ahead of their future needs. McKinsey found that 87% of executives are either experiencing serious skills gaps now or expect them to arise within a few years, and a PWC survey reported that 55% of CEOs see that skills gaps are holding them back from innovating successfully.

With the help of big data, organizations can forecast new market trends, predict emerging consumer demands, and identify which new skills or capabilities they'll need, so they can develop the appropriate employee training programs and be able to meet those changes head-on.

5. Open up opportunities for employees

Large organizations are taking employee training to the next level and establishing internal opportunity marketplaces. These initiatives allow employees to try out different roles, develop different talents, and join the projects that feel most relevant to their interests.

Opportunity marketplaces rely on big data to keep track of project options and employee preferences so they can suggest the potential roles to the right employees. Employees rarely keep track of options within the organization, and instead rely on HR personnel or their managers to bring them to their attention.

With effective use of big data, employers can match workers to opportunities, making employees feel appreciated, noticed, and valued. Additionally, when employees feel that training programs bring them to new challenges, it increases their motivation to engage with them.

With big data, employee training can go further than you think

Combining big data with employee training only strengthens your organization. It means that you can keep improving your employee training programs to offer personalized training and opportunity marketplaces that keep employees motivated and engaged, and bridge skills gaps to be ready for new opportunities before they arrive, so as to drive growth and increase profitability.