The Benefits of Creating a Curated Training Program

A new type of learning brings collaboration to the equation

Bad training programs. They are out there.

Remember sitting through hours of really awkward role-playing? Watching terrible video instructionals filmed on the world’s shakiest cam? Answering questions so hypothetical, no real-world experience can ever compare?

Don’t make your team sit through that.

Sitting down in a stuffy room with materials so boring, they make watching paint dry appealing, just doesn’t work.

This kind of top down training program misses a crucial point: to learn, to really learn, you have to be engaged. You have to care. If you don’t, you’ll just forget the whole thing along with all the algebra equations you haven’t used in years.

Training is more than just another box to tick

Quality team training should be more than just another tick on the corporate to-do list. If that’s how you see it, you are missing a huge opportunity.

You put together this motivated, smart, resilient group of people because they are the right people to help you grow your business. Help them help you, by creating training that will actually make a difference.

Because, work isn’t just about the paycheck or benefits anymore. Your team wants to feel like they are using their talents and making a difference. They want to grow.

Harness that natural desire to learn and you could be unstoppable.

The power of an effective training program

Great training improves team satisfaction. And, a satisfied team member is 12% more productive, takes fewer sick days and helps you beat the competition. It really helps your bottom line and it creates a happy work environment.

An effective training program has to be informative, inspiring and grounded in real world examples.

Hypotheticals don’t cut it in today’s metric obsessed work environment.

This is where the idea of a curated program comes in. It flips the top-down training and development programs on their heads and makes learning a mutual responsibility.

How exactly does a curated program work?

A curated training program allows managers and team members to put together comprehensive training based on content that already exists and add their personal touch to it.

The idea is to draw from the wealth of information published by experts in your industry and make it available to your team in an easily digestible way. The senior members can then supplement that with notes and resources that they find particularly helpful.

As your team members grow and develop, they add relevant and helpful content to the program for others to read and share.

This way, your team get the best of both worlds. You draw in quality information from respected thought leaders and combine it with ground level knowledge.

Now, let’s break it down into the specific benefits of using content curation for training your team!

1. It has no expiration date

Learning is never done. It’s a beautiful (and sometimes frustrating) life long process.

Information is growing at an unprecedented rate. The amount of knowledge in the world doubles every year. And, with advances in machine learning and AI, it’s going to keep getting faster.

To stay competitive, you have to keep on top of it all.

A curated training program is a living organism. It grows and develops with your team.

As your industry changes, this shared repository of knowledge and information makes it easier to stay up to date with new developments.

And, that gives you a strong competitive edge.

2. Ownership gets results

Training programs struggle to inspire and get real results because they are so impersonal. There’s no real weight of personal responsibility, no inspiring call to action, no engagement.

Creating a real, living, growing training program puts the power and responsibility for learning in the hands of your team.

It shows that you trust them enough to take charge of their learning and that you care enough to maintain and add to it.

3. A variety of voices prevent silos

When you spend time with a lot of people who are on the same team as you, it’s easy to assume that everyone outside of that team thinks and acts the same way.

Just because there aren’t a lot of dissenting opinions, we start assuming they don’t exist.

That creates a bubble and bubbles burst.

Don’t do that to your business.

Draw on the unique, diverse experience of your team members and create a training program that offers a varied perspective. Curate content from passionate thought leaders that disagree and give your team access to both sides of an industry argument.

Great companies don’t settle for the status quo. They look beyond. They challenge. They stay outside the bubble.

And the only way to do that, is to stay informed.

Getting started

Creating a curated training program doesn’t have to be hard. All you need is access to a place in the cloud where you can store a variety of materials and a willing team member to take charge of the initial curation.

It’s a new approach, but one that can revolutionize corporate training.

Are you willing to burst the bubble?

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