Define the term education training and development

Training and development programs typically involve educational activities that advance a worker’s knowledge and instill greater motivation to enhance job performance. These initiatives help employees learn and acquire new skill sets and gain the professional knowledge that is required to progress their careers.

Training programs can be created independently or with a learning administration system, with the goal of employee long-term development. Common training practices include orientations, classroom lectures, case studies, role playing, simulations and computer-based training, including e-learning.

Sometimes, an organization's Human Resource Development (HRD) function drives most employee training and development efforts. These efforts are roughly divided into 2 types of programs:

Employee training and development
A strategic tool for improving business outcomes by implementing internal educational programs that advance employee growth and retention.

Management training and development
The practice of growing employees into managers and managers into effective leaders by the ongoing enhancement of certain knowledge, skills and abilities.

Find out how HR leaders are leading the way and applying AI to drive HR and talent transformation.

Register for insights on SAP

Successful businesses understand that it’s more beneficial and cost-effective to develop their existing employees instead of seeking out new talent.

The top ten benefits of employee training and development programs include:

Increased productivity: When employees stay current with new procedures and technologies, they can increase their overall output.

The corporate marketplace is quickly changing, and businesses must be flexible and easily adapt to change. Technology is one of the key drivers in this rapid change, with automation and artificial intelligence (AI) in the forefront.

Here are four key trends impacting how organizations must rethink training and development.

Today’s corporations have discovered that it’s no longer just about what employees need to know, but also when, where and how the development experience enables performance. With the advancements in mobile technology, companies are relying more on mobile workforces. Training is migrating to mobile devices where apps provide “just-in-time” information and recommendations to workers across industries.

AI systems can process unstructured information in a similar way to humans. These systems understand language patterns and sensory inputs, including text, pictures and auditory cues. AI-based software can customize how training content is delivered to a learner based on their learning style, suggest content based on a learner’s past performance and predict what information is most important for them to learn next.

Agile learning is a process that encourages employees to learn by doing and iterate often, inspiring organizational change and buy-in. For example, IBM® has introduced IBM Garage™, a tool for executing, scaling and managing an organization’s multiple transformation initiatives. Companies like Ford Motor Company and Travelport are using IBM Garage around the world to create cultures of open collaboration and continuous learning.

While distance learning has been around for a long time, the COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the need for companies to have resilient, flexible, mobile workforce management. Organizations have learned that remote workforces need to be productive, engaged and continually working toward learning and improvement.

Recent articles and industry surveys suggest that too much corporate training might be ineffective. Most training won’t be fully retained by learners. Businesses must build a culture of ongoing self-directed, self-motivated learning with focused distance learning programs and mobile "just-in-time" training.

Organizations also must rethink the larger framework of what skills will be needed soon. A recent metalevel IBM study predicts that more than 120 million workers in the world’s twelve largest economies might need to be retrained in the next three years because of AI-enabled automation.

Several insights from the study include:

Skilled humans fuel the global economy: Digital skills remain vital, but soft skills have become more important.

The study concludes that traditional hiring and training are no longer as effective and that different strategies and tactics can have a strong impact on closing the skills gap. Several strategies and tactics include:

Make it personal: Tailor career skills and learning development experience uniquely to your employees' goals and interests.

Enhance employee engagement and productivity, reskill your workforce faster and reimagine ways of working to become an adaptive, skills-based and AI-powered organization.

Maintaining a competitive edge in a dynamic economy demands faster innovation. Your challenge is having the right people with the right skills and tools to drive digital transformation.

The IBM training and certifications offer you the ability to earn credentials to demonstrate your expertise. It is designed to validate your skills and capability to perform role-related tasks and activities at a specified level of competence.

With recent market changes and disruptions, organizations need a workforce with digital skills and innovative processes to respond to both customers’ and employees’ evolving needs.

Creating a future proof workforce

Key areas of focus will ensure that your workforce is empowered to be productive today, while strengthening your business resiliency strategy to aid in re-entry to the new normal.

Advance AI skills in your organization

The enormous opportunities and benefits artificial intelligence can bring to an organization require skills development programs designed to ensure consistency and intentional outcomes.

The rise of the digital learning ecosystem

Discover a new approach to training and development based on partnership networks, user experiences and emerging technologies.

Strategies for building and maintaining a skilled workforce

Find out how to close the skills gap with a modern three-pronged workforce strategy to quickly reskill an organization’s workforce.

Building the cognitive enterprise

Discover how training and development fits into the larger scope of next-generation enterprise transformation.