As a successful training manager, you face a major challenge at the heart of your company's transformation. Your actions have an impact on every employee, and you need to harmonize your training strategy with that of the company, while developing new skills in response to fast-changing practices.
Your role is profoundly strategic: you shape the future of your organization. So, to succeed in this complex role, you'll need to follow a few golden rules. Almost like commandments...
1. Thou shalt align training strategy with corporate strategy
You need to have a relevant skills base
Increasing employee skills implies knowledge and mastery of existing skills. Most often, this reality is represented in the form of a skills matrix (aligned with the skills repository defined by your organization). If, however, you don't have these tools, you'll need to develop them before moving on to the next stage!
💡Tip Get your employees involved in skills assessment. Not only will you improve the accuracy of identified needs, but you'll also strengthen their commitment to their own professional development
If you have a good grasp of the existing stock, you can move on toidentifying the skills you need to acquire or reinforce in order to remain relevant and competitive in your market. As a Training Manager, you'll need to keep up with both the major trends in your business market and those of the labor market in general (the rise of telecommuting, the advent of AI...).
Don't hesitate to rely on managers who are fully aware of the operational reality of your teams. This collaboration between CLOs and managers is too often neglected, even though it provides a global understanding of training needs.
Only 34% of training managers use informal feedback from managers as a source for collecting training needs.
Source: Edflex 2024 Training Barometer
You will know how to integrate training strategy with HR strategy
Training not only impacts the operational reality of your teams: it is a strategic lever for talent retention, internal mobility and a sense of belonging. Your training initiatives must be aligned with your HR challenges. Close collaboration with human resources also means that training can be integrated into employees' career cycles, with training tailored to each phase (new position, promotion, internal mobility).
Ensure the profitability and productivity of training courses.
Training is a strategic investment governed by budgets, which have an unfortunate tendency to decrease, forcing training managers to anticipate and optimize their department's expenditure. But the complexity surrounding profitability and productivity is not limited to costs alone: team availability, operational reality, human constraints...
The training ecosystem is vast, as it affects the entire company. The Training Manager must integrate all these constraints to propose the most profitable solutions for the company, at every level (pedagogical formats, chosen tools, training catalog, training plan...).
2. Thou shalt frame training actions with a strategic roadmap
Thou shalt identify existing and future training programs
To structure your skills enhancement program, it's essential to take stock of existing training programs. This will enable you to identify the training paths to be maintained and transformed, as well as those to be developed.
💡Tip You can classify your training courses into three main categories: the development of technical skills (hard skills), human skills (soft skills), and those linked to key moments in your employees' careers (onboarding, internal mobility, etc.).
Offering new training courses on a regular basis is essential to meet market needs and keep learners engaged. In fact, according to Edflex's 2024 Professional Training Barometer, 66% of training managers renew their offerings at least once a quarter.
Here again, budgets and staff availability are critical factors. You'll need to design optimized itineraries to offer your employees the best possible experience, while meeting the constraints of your organization.
You will define a training roadmap
You've got the training paths, but any good Training Manager knows that the work doesn't stop there. In fact, in a way, it begins here. All that remains to be done is to prioritize and structure the training actions over the medium and long term: define the resources to be brought on board (material, human and financial), the stakes and objectives of each course, the sequencing of training courses, their duration... The roadmap is essential to the smooth running of the training strategy.
❗A word of caution Flexibility is key, and your roadmap will need to evolve to adjust and adapt to the reality of your company and your employees.
3. Thou shalt not forget to keep abreast of educational trends and innovations
One of the golden rules of the Training Manager is "change is not a threat, but an opportunity". But to seize this opportunity correctly, you need to follow and master evolutions in learning practices.
In recent years, the digitalization of training has had a strong impact on the advent of new practices, but face-to-face training has also undergone significant transformations.
Some examples of practices and methods to follow:
- Gamification
- Social Learning
- Microlearning
- Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR)
Psst We have compiled and deciphered for you the major changes and trends in the training market in a dedicated dedicated article !
4. Thou shalt adopt the right tools
You will choose LMS, TMS and LXP
It's no surprise that we're talking (again) about the solutions that have transformed training in recent years. Whether it's creating and distributing digital training courses, optimizing content, monitoring learner performance and progress, or keeping costs down, their added value is unquestionable.
💡Tip : if you're still hesitating to invest in these tools, or don't know what to expect in terms of impact and functionality, our our special LMS content can shed some light.
You will invest in training planning
Often relegated to the background, planning is nevertheless the backbone of any training plan. Many of the issues surrounding training emerge at the planning stage: availability of staff and trainers, complexity and hyper-personalization of training courses, room and equipment reservations, and even the cost of training activities.
Central to the success of training projects, good planning requires good tools. Or rather, the right tool.
Imagine a world where you could train more people with the same resources (rooms, trainers, equipment), or even less. Better still, a system where you could adjust your schedules at the click of a button to deal with unforeseen events, while respecting constraints. Not bad, eh? This is whatAdesofta training activity planning solution that (simply) manages complexity.