Adaptive Technology Makes New-Hire Training Easier and More Effective

Companies and organizations face numerous challenges when training employees. They must handle compliance issues with industry regulations, upskill and reskill existing workers, and most importantly, train new hires.

A traditional training program can create serious problems when it comes to new employee training. This can have adverse effects for years to come, as a poorly trained new employee will have second and third-order effects on the company. 

Adaptive learning programs, on the other hand, solve this issue by taking a different approach. They leverage Personalization, AI, and Machine Learning to create granular, individualized training maps. This means new employees can be trained on precisely what they need to know, and managers can accurately measure their competence.

The Importance of a New-Hire Training Program

New worker training is the foundation on which all new employees build their performance in their roles. It can either make them competent and successful or leave them poorly trained and confused. Companies that have a strong new-hire training program set themselves up for future success through their own employees.

More than just the starting point for workplace skills, new-hire training is also an employee’s initiation into the company culture. Properly integrating new hires into the workplace requires training them to recognize the values, missions, goals, and methods of the company.

Few companies, however, have a personalized onboarding process that aligns with organizational goals or is linked to the learning and development environment. Brandon Hall Group’s Strategic Onboarding¹ study suggests that less than half do.

Deficient new-hire learning causes problems during the onboarding process while setting off a domino effect throughout the rest of an employee’s tenure. But it doesn’t have to be that way— effective new-hire training with personalization can ensure that a streamlined program meets the needs of your company.

When New-Hire Training Goes Wrong

New-hire training often suffers from several difficulties. Workers may have different backgrounds, new hires require large upfront investments, and predicting their success is hard.

Varying backgrounds create uneven learning paths. People enter jobs with different work experiences, yet most traditional learning patterns are one-size-fits-all. The result is a situation where new hires waste time learning things they already know, while occasionally missing out on information they need to learn.

New hires require a significant upfront investment. Training new hires takes time, energy, money, and attention. Often, the more important their role, the longer their onboarding process, which in some cases can last more than a year. 

But not all new employees turn out to be a good fit and wind up leaving the company early for one reason or another. Without intelligent tracking of their training performance, it can be hard to tell when a new worker will succeed. If they don’t, the investment in the onboarding process will have been wasted.

Ultimately, companies that can improve the effectiveness of their new-hire training and onboarding process can drive value by creating a more productive employee sooner. The alternative is having an inconsistently trained, poorly adjusted workforce.

How Personalization Impacts New-Hire Training

Personalization has been shown to improve outcomes for new hires in a number of ways. Brandon Hall Group performed a survey² asking business owners how they felt personalized learning affected several outcomes of the training process. The following shows the percentage that feels personalized learning has a high or very high impact on important business goals:

• 95% said it improved individual performance.

• 86% said it improved the depth and length of learning retention.

• 94% said it improved learner engagement and adoption.

• 86% said it promoted a learning-focused organizational culture.

• 92% said it improved employee engagement.

• 86% said it improved organizational performance.

While it may feel like personalized learning is an unachievable goal, especially for larger organizations, technology is readily available today that can remove any perceived hurdles and make it something any organization can make part of their strategy.

Personalized learning engages managers to play a larger role. Managers need to be brought into the learning process with less effort, and personalized learning technology gives them the insights they need to be a great coach with less effort. 

Personalization bridges learning events to learning journeys. While many corporate learning cultures are highly event focused (with courses and seminars), personalization with the right technology makes learning continuous and connected and helps break the restrictions of the course model. Formal training events can flow into ongoing learning with a single, connected journey.

Personalized learning technology integrates with your existing ecosystem. While most learning technologies that are used every day don't deliver the level of personalization needed, the right adaptive learning system will stitch into your existing ecosystem without disruption, letting you keep your LMS and LXP with a new layer that is easy to integrate.

Personalized adaptive learning technology utilizes AI and learning science without the need for experts. The technology insulates you from a sense that AI and learning science are at work, delivering a personalized experience in a natural way.

Personalized learning technology automates learning orchestration and administration. While the general concern is that personalization is a heavy manual lift, the right technology makes personalized learning scalable and speeds up the entire process for all new team members, while the system automates tasks on its own.

But How Do You Implement Personalization for New-Hire Training?

Many businesses don’t implement personalized learning because they believe it would be too difficult, too expensive, or they don’t have the right system in place already. While this may have been true 20 years ago, it is no longer the case. 

Modern adaptive learning platforms like Realizeit can scale to any size and adapt to your present circumstances. They are designed with flexibility in mind, in order to align with your goals and to fit into your existing ecosystem.

In our guide, Using Adaptive Technology To Link New-Hire Training To Performance, we explain how companies of all sizes can use adaptive learning and training technology. We also share real success stories from our clients, and how they implemented their shift to personalization. Check it out if you are interested in learning more about personalized new-hire training for your organization or are simply curious about the possibilities of this modern training technology.

¹ Brandon Hall Group, Strategic Onboarding Study

² Brandon Hall Group, Impact of Strategic Onboarding