Recent Trends in Training and Development Industry
- Big Data Training
- New Way to Build Leaders
- A Rapidly Changing Skillset
- Technological Upgrades
- Workforce Changes
As with every professional field, training and development has been experiencing some trends that are completely re-shaping it. After all, new resources and events taking place in the world are subtly remaking the landscape of almost every professional sector. Here are some emerging trends impacting the training and development industry.
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1. Big Data Training
When it comes to some common topics that training and developing teams have to address, Big Data easily takes the top of the list. The reason why is that almost all companies somehow rely on it for their operations. For instance, product-based businesses use Big Data to do things like inventory tracking, cost analyses, budgets, and more. Service-based organizations also use it for client acquisition, billing, and most of the aforementioned. So, seeing Big Data as one of the key points of every training session is not surprising, according to Forbes.
2. New Way to Build Leaders
In the past, one’s ability to be a leader was directly related to their status with the company. Although that approach is still very common, it has slowly shifted to one’s actions over their current position. In translation, if someone who does not have a lot of formal authority in a business is a natural-born leader, they will easily establish their dominance. This type of evolution is making it easier to recognize solid trend-setters and promote them earlier. It also helps recognize workers who are more likely to impact the company’s bottom line through their performance.
3. A Rapidly Changing Skillset
Another common change in almost every sector boils down to one’s ability to acquire and improve upon their soft skills. For those unfamiliar, soft skills include all intangible talents and behaviors that are difficult to teach and require much practice to master. Examples include communication, approachability, adaptability, and confidence. A lot of development sessions nowadays focus on helping people boost these skills and training teams will often use these topics to organize team-based activities that will help people step out of their comfort zone.
4. Technological Upgrades
As with Big Data, the world is constantly seeing the countless effects of the fast-paced technological field. This tends to be problematic for businesses who rely on software as their employees have to be constantly retrained in order to comprehend new resources. Nevertheless, it also allows them to achieve levels of efficiency that used to be unattainable. Thus, it is not uncommon to see businesses spend the vast majority of their capital on training workers and improving their access to technology.
5. Workforce Changes
Given that employers expect much more out of their workers, people are experiencing a lot more pressure than ever before. This is why many industries have astronomically high turnover rates and people tend to leave them relatively fast. A great example would be the public accounting sector where CPAs normally stay no longer than three to five years. Additionally, some unpredictable changes in the economy are causing the workers to be skeptical about their employment. This leads to an increased sensitivity as people do not tolerate job risk as well.
In the future, some or most of these trends could be fixed to where the workforce is thriving and the businesses are bringing in unparalleled profits. Until then, however, the training and development teams will have to find ways to address these five topics.
