The Importance of Personalized Training and How to Use It

As technology advances, so does our ability (and expectation) to enjoy personalization in many aspects of our lives.

Whether it be ads displayed on social media, suggested stories from your favorite search engine, or even the "For you" section of Netflix, technology enables us to hone in on the things that interest us.

So it comes as no surprise that personalized training has emerged as a game-changer in the realm of learning and development. 

Organizations can unlock unprecedented levels of engagement and performance by tailoring training to individual needs, skills, and goals. 

But how can you apply this concept effectively?

This article will:

• Dive into the significance of personalized training.
• Explore how it enhances learning experiences, promotes engagement, and improves outcomes. 
• Share proven strategies and tips to help you implement personalized training in your organization.

💪 What is personalized learning?

Personalized learning is an educational approach that aims to customize learning for each trainee's strengths, needs, skills, and interests. 

The idea is simple: curate content and teaching methods to suit the subject rather than offering cookie-cutter learning material for everyone.

In this model, the learning pace, instructional approach, and learning context are tailored to provide unique, individualized experiences. 

The goal is to enable trainees to become active participants in designing their learning paths, making education more relevant, engaging, and effective.

"Simply providing technology to learners doesn't necessarily make their learning personalized. To achieve the satisfaction of being connected with content in meaningful ways, the learner must be at the center of the experience." Peggy Grant, Personalized Learning: A Guide to Engaging Students with Technology.

💡 Personalization doesn't necessarily mean one-on-one customization, though it certainly can. 

Focusing on smaller groups or individuals results in valuable personalization and better results.

🏢 Is training personalization feasible in corporate learning?

The word "learning" is often associated with academics. Common examples of personalization in this setting include class size (teacher-to-student ratio) and tutoring (specialized one-on-one attention). 

These same concepts apply to professional settings.

Technology is the key to unlocking the benefits of training personalization for your workforce without hiring dedicated trainers or putting undue burden on your existing management or people operations team. 

By implementing a software solution for training, people operations can do more with less, including improving personalization in training. 

🔍 Discover the differences between LMS and LXP solutions for aiding your corporate training.

What is the role of tech in personalized learning?

As computers were adopted into offices to increase efficiency, the same goes for tech and personalized learning. 

Technology offers ways for people operations to drastically improve their capabilities and efficiency, especially when curating customized training programs. 

Learning experience platforms (or LXPs) are the best example of where learning meets tech. 

For example, Zavvy's people enablement platform includes:

• A centralized learning repository.
• A user-friendly feedback system.
• Self-enrollment options for self-driven training. 

Plus, Zavvy utilizes automation and intelligent (AI) tools to handle the heavy lifting when it comes to employee training and upskilling.

👨‍💼 Does personalized learning work for employee training?

The simple answer to this question is a resounding YES. 

In no situation does generic training offer benefits over opportunities curated specifically for the learner. 

Personalization means the material is more relevant, engaging, and advantageous to its beneficiary.

Other benefits of personalization for employee training include:

• knowledge retention;
• training effectiveness;
• job performance;
• goal alignment;
• employee satisfaction.

In fact, customized learning paths are the highest priority among learning & development pros. 

Self-paced virtual training even ranks higher than coaching or mentoring and instructor-led training. 

➡️ Learn more about performance management trends and best practices. 

🏆 6 Benefits of personalized learning

Personalized learning isn't just a training tactic. 

It is a paradigm shift that reinvents how students learn, and professionals train. As a result, it requires a new way of thinking about organizational learning from the ground up.

That doesn't mean you must scrap your entire training process or learning materials.

Just that you should take a step back and reconsider your strategy as a whole.

Personalized learning needs to be student-centric, flipping the top-down approach of traditional learning on its head. 

Reinventing your teaching system may sound daunting, but the benefits are many. Here is what you can expect.

Improved training engagement

One of the most immediate effects of personalized training is a leap in training engagement. 

Personalization ensures that the learning material is relevant to the user and provided in a way they find exciting or convenient.

Training engagement is vital to effective learning in the workplace, improving knowledge retention and nurturing a desire to learn. 

Providing highly relevant and curated content improves user experience and employee satisfaction.

👨‍🎓 Discover 19 easy learner engagement strategies to implement for effective training. 

Better ROI and resource utilization

Although personalized learning requires more work upfront, the result is much more efficient learning. 

With a little more investment on the front end, you can deliver much more efficient training. 

Rather than having everyone in your organization waste time in the conference room daydreaming during a generic seminar that isn't relevant to them, they receive hand-picked training courses that make them better at their job. The result is fewer hours wasted and more effective upskilling.

Tip: By leveraging software solutions, you can automate and expedite the upfront work while reaping the rewards of improved engagement and knowledge retention.

Promoting personal growth and success

Personalization should consider the individual's wants and needs whenever possible. 

Training will make people better at their job, align with company goals, and accelerate them toward personal goals (such as promotions and career progression).

By listening to employees and helping them pursue their dreams, you show that you care about them as more than just a cog on the wheel.

Personalization can do wonders for employee happiness and retention.

Performance optimization

Personalization is one of the best ways to boost knowledge retention when training. 

Ensuring the learning material is highly relevant makes subjects more interested. Plus, it sets the precedent that any training you provide is meaningful (boosting engagement).

Better knowledge retention and engagement are two key factors that lead to long-term performance enhancement, not to mention that the additional skills employees acquire through training will inherently aid performance.

Individual agency and autonomy

Many LXPs (such as Zavvy) have user profiles that make distributing personalized training material quick and easy. 

Another benefit of such a system is that the individual is empowered to register, set preferences, and even self-enroll in courses.

This user-centric approach takes much of the burden away from people operations, so no one has to assign each course or content for every user. 

💡 Tip: Users who control their learning will also have more ownership and agency when following through on their chosen training. 

Data-driven results

Another positive side-effect of training personalization is that you can extract insights from individual users. 

Zavvy's platform, for example, has easy-to-use people analytics features and allows administrators to track users' progress.

This data can be invaluable for monitoring the success of personalization and improving future training material to continue that success. Having data showing the results of training on individual and organization-wide scales can also be a great motivator for everyone involved.

➡️ Find out why data is the key to building a high-performance team.

🪜 8 Steps to creating a personalized learning strategy

Adding personalization to learning isn't an overly complex or tricky endeavor. 

It requires an open-minded approach and someone willing to assemble the puzzle pieces.

Once you have all the pieces arranged, the trainees, trainers, and the organization will all benefit from an efficient, cooperative learning strategy.

Step 1: Define the goals of your training strategy

One of the major pitfalls of learning in a professional setting is a lack of purpose. 

Too often, training is provided and accepted out of a sense of obligation rather than an actual need or want. 

An easy solution to this problem is collaborating with the target audience about goals and objectives. 

Understanding what employees want to learn and achieve in their careers is a surefire way to boost engagement.

Finding opportunities where company-wide objectives intersect with individual goals is key. 

Creating a culture of continuous learning ensures that a workforce is skilled, flexible, and ambitious, which are all powerful adjectives for a business.

Step 2: Conduct a training needs assessment or skill gap analysis

Once you have goals, you need to establish your starting point. 

A skill gap analysis will help you understand a subject's current proficiencies so you can devise how to bridge the gap between where they are now to where they need to be.

A training needs assessment gives you insight into how best to deliver training. 

For example, does the individual prefer hands-on learning or research? 

Would they benefit from a mentor or self-driven learning? 

What pace would suit their schedule and workload? 

Understanding how people want to learn is a major aspect of personalization.

Once you know what needs teaching and improving and how best to teach it, the rest falls into place. 

All you need to do is create or acquire content to bridge that gap.

Step 3: Define various learning journeys

It is an excellent idea to offer a variety of learning journeys for employees to choose from. 

But you should consider the trainees' circumstances: How much time does this individual need to devote to training each day?

For example, an individual who prefers learning in a group setting will attend group training seminars. 

Meanwhile, individuals who opt for self-paced microlearning should set goals for what material they want to cover in a given timeframe. You will put learners in control of their progress and personal development to ensure they are efficient and satisfied with the process.

Step 4: Gather learning materials and create new ones 

Providing quality learning materials is one of the most challenging and vital steps to personalized training. 

In many cases, you can acquire content from external sources. But you may also need to create content from scratch. 

An LXP or LMS is invaluable here: A centralized repository of training materials makes it easy for anyone to add and access relevant content. And don't feel like you have to provide every bit of information. 

Allow others to submit content they find valuable and build a database of knowledge as a team.

Your database will change and grow over time, so don't stall the process waiting for your information to be "complete" (Pro tip: It never will be). Instead, prioritize what is most needed, and find or create that content. Again, submissions and input from subjects are vital here. 

Step 5: Make sure your learning strategy covers multiple learning styles and training methods 

As with the training needs assessment, you will find that people prefer to learn differently. Therefore, your content and methods must satisfy these preferences to ensure everyone can learn how they want.

Common learning methods to consider or offer include:

• articles;
• videos;
• live sessions;
• roundtables (peer-to-peer);
• self-paced microlearning;
• assessments and exercises.

Of course, it won't always be feasible to include every option. Moreover, some methods may never be requested or popular, so you are better off focusing your efforts elsewhere. 

In other situations, content may only be available in one method or another. 

Try to offer a variety of content mediums to satisfy different types of learners based on feedback and results. 

Step 6: Use relevant, meaningful exercises and spaced repetition to reinforce knowledge retention 

The goal of training is knowledge retention. 

Repetition is vital for learning, which is another major fault of traditional training methods. 

Hearing about a topic one afternoon in a conference room is ineffective for knowledge retention.

Craft your content into interactive courses with learning paths, quizzes, and a loop that revisits and applies past content.

Step 7: Measure learner satisfaction and gather feedback 

Without results, training has little value. 

If you aren't measuring the results, you can't know how much value the training is providing. 

To track the success of your training and personalization efforts, you can start by measuring learner satisfaction. 

Use a simple training evaluation form that asks users to rate specific training material's quality and helpfulness.

You should also pay attention to objective results. 

For example, you can see which courses are most effective and preferred by tracking user progress and training impact.

Step 8: Fine-tune your process

As you track progress and receive feedback about your training courses, you should use that data to inform future tactics. 

For example, if you find that most of your users prefer video content or the results of video training are better than alternatives, you might shift your focus to creating and curating more videos. For a shortcut, you can also consider leveraging an AI video generator.

By making data-driven decisions and listening to feedback, your training program will continue to evolve and improve to benefit everyone.

➡️ Enable personalized learning with Zavvy

Developing a personalized learning program isn't something you can do overnight. It requires an intimate understanding of your trainees, carefully curated content, and a learning management system for distribution. 

That said, the results are well worth the effort.

Zavvy's people enablement platform has everything you need to add personalization to your training processes. 

• Your people will get access to the training content you have curated.
• Our learning scientists have also curated a training library with hundreds of resources from multiple providers, such as Udemy, Coursera, and Codecademy.
• You can create engaging micro-courses with Zavvy AI. Just input the topic and the number of steps in your training journey. Then wait and leave the AI to work its magic. 
• Add quizzes to engage your learners.
• Our software allows users to self-enroll in relevant courses and tracks their progress.
• You can administer your workforce's training budget with Zavvy.
• Management can seamlessly add, link to, and organize training content. Plus, users can provide feedback to help direct future courses and make suggestions.

📅 Contact us today to schedule a free demo to see our 360 growth system in action.

We are happy to answer any questions about how our software can help your people.

❓ FAQs

What is an example of personalized training?

A simple example of personalized training would be providing a variety of training material on a single topic. For example, say your company is transitioning to new ERP software. Rather than dragging everyone to a conference room for a generic crash course about how the software works, each department would be given curated training based on their role and responsibilities.

Your inventory managers would only receive training on their portion of the software instead of sitting through a meeting that covers creating quotes for the sales team. 

By breaking down the information and personalizing it, you can ensure its relevance and value to every position.

Not only would the training be broken up into relevant subjects, but ideally, there would be multiple methods. You might have: 

• an in-person meeting; 
• written training manual, 
• a video series available to each team.

This way, members can use their preferred method and reference the others as needed to really master the concepts. 

What are the 5 components of personalized training?

The five components of personalized training are:

1. Learner profiles
2. Personal learning paths
3. Student agency
4. Individual mastery
5. Flexible learning environments

Zavvy's people enablement platform checks all of these boxes so you can easily provide personalized work training to your employees. 

How do you personalize learning?

Personalizing training and learning is quite simple. The goal is to ensure content is highly relevant and beneficial to its subjects rather than providing the same generic training to an entire organization. 

To personalize training, consider the individual and curate content to help them meet their personal and professional goals. 

A good first step is to run a proficiency assessment or skill gap analysis to gauge the subject's current abilities. From there, discuss their plans for the future and align their career goals with organization-wide objectives. This ensures the individual is involved in relevant and interesting training while also making them more effective in their role for the big picture.