Virtual training

7 Key Benefits of Training Software for Employee Development

Annie Reiss

Dec 27, 2024 - 3 min read

Compare today’s workplace to the office of five years ago, and you’re looking at the products of two different worlds. Over the past few years, companies have increasingly shifted their focus away from job-based hiring — emphasizing relevant experience — to skills-based hiring. Leadership, meanwhile, has realized the importance of upskilling and re-skilling in the face of emerging technology like generative AI.

The right software is essential in supporting such initiatives for many reasons.

1. Lower Learning and Development Costs

First and foremost, using employee training and development software means you can start transitioning away from in-person training. That means no more travel expenses or venue bookings. Instead, you can start handling everything online.

For a smaller business with a minimal headcount, these savings might seem negligible. But larger organizations could easily end up saving several thousand dollars or more per virtual session. That kind of money adds up fast.

2. Improved Accessibility

Cost isn’t the only thing online training has going for it. A virtual classroom is also a whole lot more accessible than a physical setting. People who might otherwise be unable to attend a session due to distance can simply access the course from the comfort of their own homes.

This benefit really shines when distributed workforces are in play. Companies can expand and expedite onboarding processes since everyone can attend training sessions no matter where they’re based. Continual professional development can also be offered to employees anywhere in the world.

3. Access to Training Analytics

Like so many other mission-critical activities, learning and development are now increasingly data-driven. As they say, you can’t manage what you can’t measure. Employee development software gives you access to a wealth of insights into your training which were once matters of conjecture. In addition to tracking basic metrics like attendance rate and completion rate, you can monitor everything about how participants engage with your training.

This becomes especially valuable for self-paced training, as it allows you to identify potential bottlenecks and weaknesses in your training content.

4. Support for New Training Modalities

When you’re running your training out of a physical classroom, you’re obviously a bit limited in terms of what kind of training you can provide. But with the right software, your training and development initiative can expand far beyond traditional boundaries. We’re not just talking about supporting virtual instructor-led training alongside self-paced training, either. It’s much more than that.

Let’s say that you’re training your cybersecurity team to use a tool you recently deployed. Rather than having them go through a conventional onboarding process, you decide to get creative. You spin up a sandbox simulation of your ecosystem with the software installed… then unleash ransomware into the environment and watch what happens.

Your team gets to learn by doing, and you get to see how well they — and the new tool — perform under pressure.

5. Increased Engagement

A good instructor can make a world of difference where engagement is concerned. The thing is, you can’t always rely on an instructor’s charisma to keep people focused. Especially if you’re delivering training content online, you need to make that content compelling.

A good employee development platform makes that easy, providing you with a ton of engagement-focused features such as support for gamification and microlearning, digital whiteboards, breakout rooms, and hands-on simulations. In short, you’ll be able to focus as much on the learner experience as on the training material.

6. Reduced Training Time and Better Outcomes

Delivering training content through an employee development tool also opens up a new avenue for engagement: adaptive learning. By using artificial intelligence, you can deliver hyper-personalized training materials to each course participant. Because those materials are tailored to the participant’s learning style as well as their level of expertise, they’ll find the content a lot easier to get through.

You’ll be looking at reduced time to completion, a higher completion rate, and higher performance across the board.

7. Streamlined Workflows

The best employee training software not only makes content more compelling for trainees. It also makes life easier for instructors who can configure and deploy unique training environments in just a few minutes.

You can also have the software automate everything from enrollment to scheduling and email notifications. Basically, you can remove all the legwork from your learning and development program so that your instructors are free to focus on what they do best.

Next: Explore Some of the Best Software for Training and Development

The case for training software is pretty much open and shut.

So, when you’re ready to start shopping around for options, check out our blogs on the 8 Best Training Management Systems for 2024 and the 5 Best Remote Training Tools for 2024.