Level Up Your Onboarding; Say Yes to Everboarding!

Quiz time! How much do you remember from your onboarding training? Not much, right? How much of it do you apply in your day-to-day work? Not significantly, right? Well, you will be glad to know that you are not sailing the boat alone. According to the famous Ebbinghaus theory on learning retention, 90 percent of learning is forgotten within a month if not put into practice. Traditional onboarding doesn’t align with this as it aims at imparting training for the first three months upon recruitment of an employee and treats it as a one-time affair. The information overload in the initial days could be overwhelming and doesn’t leave a lasting impact. Time to evolve! Level up your onboarding to a dynamic and ongoing learning approach to offer a better employee experience — Say Yes to “Everboarding”.

First Things First — What is Everboarding?

Everboarding is an evolved approach to onboarding. While onboarding is a one-time affair for most organizations that aims at imparting training to new hires for the first 90 days, everboarding has a comparatively broader vision wherein, learning is not an event, but rather a continual process that evolves with time depending on rapidly evolving dynamic business landscape. Everboarding offers a plethora of benefits for modern businesses, some of them are:

- It helps you build a future-proof workforce that is always ready to face      challenges and embrace and adapt to change.

- Your workforce will be always abreast of new trends and look forward to innovation, thereby paving your path to a winning edge over competitors.

- Your employees will be happier and willing to contribute their best services as they feel you care to invest in their learning and growth.

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Why Should You Adapt Everboarding?

Remember the famous quote by Steve Jobs? “Learn continually — there’s always ‘one more thing’ to learn”. Lifelong learning is indeed the secret to success in any field and the concept of everboarding aligns with it. Here are a few reasons that explain why you should say yes to everboarding:

• Need for Continual Upskilling and Reskilling

The modern business landscape is revolutionizing at lightning speed with rapidly evolving customer tastes and preferences. Naturally, processes, trends, and go-to-market approaches should evolve accordingly. This calls for continual employee upskilling and reskilling to bridge the skills gap and keep up with fast-changing business requirements.

• The Pace of Innovation

Innovation is the key to counter cut-throat competition in today’s world. Organizations are embracing innovation and striving to cater to modern trends and customer needs to gain a winning edge. Naturally, training your employees on the new market trends and competitors’ approaches is crucial to upgrading their knowledge and skills to innovate and produce unique offerings and solutions that stand out competition and help businesses thrive.

• Growing Impact of AI

AI is omnipresent. Its growing impact on businesses can’t be overlooked. Organizations are embracing technology with open arms and this fuels the need to train the workforce on the latest tools, technologies, and software. With the rapid technological advancements, it’s crucial to train your employees continually and everboarding aims just at that.

Watch this insightful video to explore the future of corporate training with AI.

How to Foster Everboarding and Ensure Unforgettable Learning Experiences?

Build a Learning Culture

Onboarding does not mark the end of learning. Think ‘everboarding’ and build a culture of continual learning. Offer your employees continuous and consistent opportunities to upskill and reskill and stay in tandem with the ongoing changes. This assures your employees that you are genuinely invested in their learning and growth and wins their trust to deliver their best and go the extra mile. Mastering acquired skills and knowledge requires practice. Reinforce learning with continuous practice to instill confidence in your learners. Periodic refresher training incorporated into the workflow acts as a performance support tool and helps learners perform better.

Craft Personalized Learning Journeys

The one-size-fits-all approach is a story of yesteryears. With the advancements in technology, changing customer needs, and evolving business processes, a static onboarding program doesn’t serve the purpose. Moreover, an employee who is just beginning his/her career and the ones who have noteworthy work experience are entitled to a different set of training. For instance, freshers might need detailed process training to learn how to perform a task, while the experienced lot might be given advanced skills training to master their domain.

Time to evolve! Craft a personalized learning journey for your learners to space out learning through the complete employee lifecycle. Conduct regular one-on-one meetings with learners to understand their learning needs and build competency models to analyze skill gaps correctly. Chart personalized learning pathways to cater to unique learning needs and ensure meaningful learning.

Focus on Creating Accessible and Engaging Learning Content

When it comes to delivering online training, learner engagement is a crucial factor. Make sure your content is updated and aligned with the current trends and standards. Keep your learners posted with current happenings and update them from time to time with the ongoing market trends and competitor highlights. Involve subject matter experts, senior leaders, and department heads to curate top quality content. Use interactive instructional design strategies like storytelling, scenarios, and gamification to breathe life into the content and deliver an immersive learning experience to learners.

Accessibility of courses is another key element. Make sure your courses are multi-browser and multi-device compatible to ensure anywhere, anytime learning. Having an efficient and modern learning management system (LMS) in place is also necessary to maintain a learning library for your learners. AI-enabled LMS platforms are extremely effective in hosting, delivering, and managing training. The reports and insights generated using AI algorithms can help you modify and improvise upon the course content if needed.

Try the Blended Learning Approach

“Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say”, says American author Rob Malda. So true! Creating an awesome course is just half the job done. Choosing the right training format is equally important to deliver the desired message. In today’s scenario, where a hybrid work model is prominent, finding the right balance between classroom and online training is the secret to effective training.

You can blend different online learning formats like microlearning, eLearning modules, virtual instructor-led training (VILT) sessions, and AR/VR-based simulations to cover various topics and craft a holistic and comprehensive training program to ensure effective training that boosts learner retention and enhance employee productivity and performance.

Give Your Onboarding a Modern Makeover — Think “Everboarding”!

Traditional onboarding doesn’t fit today’s workplace needs. It is time to give your onboarding a modern makeover. Broaden your new hire training horizon with everboarding. Investing in a long-term ongoing training program that spans through the complete employee lifecycle can build a highly engaged and competent workforce and fetch higher profits and business success.

Looking for deeper insights to evolve your training initiatives? Get your hands on this comprehensive eBook to discover how L&D and business can align to conquer the future of work. Grab your copy now!