In any organization, employees proficient in soft skills are essential. But how do you provide effective training in soft skills to large groups on a budget? And what if you have to train employees in multiple locations? Online training is the solution.
Recruiters and employment experts often talk about a soft skills gap, particularly among young workers who are more familiar with texting than talking, forcing organizations to recruit many candidates who lack interpersonal skills, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.
Soft skills include any talent that involves human contact, including partnerships, collaboration, teamwork, and so forth. In contrast, an analytical or technical skill is concerned with job-related activities and skills. Soft skills can be effectively taught in organizations through online learning.
Even when trying to instruct so soft skills with a suitable learning management system, your eLearning program can be just as efficient as face-to-face training with the right approach. (Click here to learn LMS benefits, definitions, how to choose the right LMS for your organization, and everything else you need to know to help you convert in-person, soft skills training materials into full-fledged training eLearning programs.)
Let’s take a look at what it takes to convert in-person training to eLearning:
- Understand what goes into creating an eLearning course.
Several things must be understood before creating a soft skills training eLearning course or any other course:
- To complete the course objectives:
The course objectives specify what the trainee will learn by the end of the course. The entire course should be designed and implemented to achieve these goals.
- To create the course’s instructional design:
It includes the plan for how the course will be developed. The course is created by instructional designers who are aware of the learners’ needs and who base it on their goals. In some ways, the entire training program is based on this blueprint, known as instructional design.
- Making a storyboard:
When the instructional design is complete, the storyboard will be formed topic by topic.
- Design creation:
The design development process begins after the storyboarding is completed, thoroughly reviewed, and finalized. The course will be created according to how the instructional designers and storyboard writers see it. The design team improves the course through their creativity and innovative ideas. The design team can further develop what the storyboard author imagined.
- Course evaluation:
Once the training course has been developed, the quality assurance team must review it to make sure it satisfies all of the requirements for quality.
- Proceed with the course:
Once the course evaluation is complete, it is ready to be made available to learners. As a result, the training program will be fully prepared for implementation.
- Determine whether or not to update the storyboarding.
If the traditional learning program was created a long time ago and is required to be updated with new information, the storyboard must also be updated. This decision must be made now because making content changes after the course has been built might require a significant amount of rework. There is no need to upgrade the educational training materials if you are happy with what is currently available.
- Finalize the authoring tool for the course.
Once the storyboard for the course has been completed, it is time to select an authoring tool for developing your course. There are numerous rapid authoring tools on the market. You can start building the course with any tool that meets your needs.
- Consider how you want the design to look.
The trainer would use a PowerPoint presentation and a whiteboard to demonstrate the concepts covered in the instructor-led sessions of the training program. However, when converting instructor-led training to eLearning, there may be visually appealing changes to the course in the form of animations, videos, or graphic effects. Concepts are best explained through the use of scenarios and interpretation of data, and effective graphics, making the learning experience more engaging and interactive for the learner.
- Use assessments to their full potential in an eLearning course.
A test would be administered at the end of the learning program, during the in-person training sessions. The trainees will be given exam papers with questions to answer based on their understanding. This assessment activity is best included in the eLearning course.
How are these soft skills and abilities effective in project management and learning management programs?
Soft skills training is a program that nearly every company has been implementing for decades. Companies consider soft skills training as an additional activity that benefits both their employees and the organization. The soft skills training program has proven to be extremely effective and beneficial in preparing employees to deal with clients professionally while representing the organization. Some of the soft skill abilities that are very effective in project management are:
- Communication abilities
- Teamwork
- Addressing issues
- Thinking deeply
- conflict management
- Negotiating
They benefit greatly from soft skills training programs in their long-term personal careers. As a result, it has almost become standard for all companies to have a soft skills training program. After the newly hired employees have completed their onboarding, they typically begin the soft skills training course.
Training activities have evolved in response to changing trends and technological advancements. Online training sessions are gradually replacing conventional training programs. Online training has proven to be more beneficial than traditional classroom training in terms of resource management, time management, and training efficiency.
Online training has proven to be a convincing solution for a wide range of in-person training issues, such as time slot adjustments because employees can take online classes on their own time. They no longer need to disrupt their regular tasks. Furthermore, online training can reach employees via a variety of devices. They can use any device to complete the training, from a personal computer to a smartphone.
Upgrading the online training material is relatively simple. Rapid authoring tools make it simple to create a new training program and update existing content. For all of these reasons, an increasing number of businesses are converting their soft skills training to eLearning programs.
Conclusion
It might be tricky to start a training program for talents that do not have clear boundaries. To begin with, if you don’t have much expertise in designing employee training, this might make things even more difficult. Don’t just sit around and wait for soft skills development to happen on its own. Proactively pursuing this form of training may result in unrivaled benefits for your staff and the firm as a whole.
While technical skills are often the focus of most eLearning programs, soft skills may help your staff be so much more efficient, productive, and empathetic on the job. Soft skills throughout training courses give your business learners the key components they need to succeed. Such attributes can serve them well regardless of the position they occupy or how high they go up the corporate ladder. They will allow them to fulfill their full potential.
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