7 Must-Have Corporate Training Programs [And How to Get the Most from Them]

Choosing which corporate learning and development programs to run in a year can feel like taking a shot in the dark. 

You know that all the corporate training programs on your list are valuable for employees, but which one will be most beneficial? Which ones are vital to cover this year, and which can sit on the back burner?

In short, you have tons of material you want to cover with your employees, but your training budget is only so big. How can you properly prioritize your training options, separating the programs you need from the programs that would just be nice to have? 

This post covers the top seven corporate training programs your business needs. We’ll discuss programs for both hard and soft skills. Finally, we’ll give you the tools you need to guarantee maximum effectiveness from your training efforts. 

Corporate Training Program Basics

Before we dig into our list of the top corporate training programs your team needs, let’s discuss corporate training. 

What is a corporate training program? At its heart, any organized method of educating employees can be considered a corporate training program. Effective programs help employees gain vital knowledge and skills that will help them as individuals and help the organization as a whole.

Related Read: Top Business Soft Skills Competencies (And How To Measure Them)

The goals of a corporate training program will vary depending on the subject matter of the training at hand. However, the overarching goals for every training program are to impact the organization positively and gain a return on investment by improving employee performance or behavior. 

Corporate Training Providers

You’ll need to work with a corporate training provider to conduct top-notch corporate training. Some options for corporate training providers include:

• Aptara: Aptara offers innovative VR-based training that promises to carry learners through the entire education process. You can use Aptara to develop custom training content for programs like IT services, customer management, and more. 

• Capsim: Capsim can help you transform your workforce with the help of proven simulation and assessment technology. CapsimInbox offers either out-of-the-box training or custom-build simulation options, enabling you to provide the perfect training for your team regardless of your business’s needs. 

• Talespin: Talespin’s extended reality training service includes a no-code authoring tool, allowing you to customize your training materials to fit your business needs. Talespin works with enterprise customers and may be pricier for smaller businesses. 

Top Hard Skill Training Programs

When we think of corporate training, we often think of hard-skill training programs. Hard skills are vital to any position in any organization. Hard skills are the abilities that allow workers to do the tasks they need to perform in their day-to-day job duties. 

Though hard skill training must be specific to a role to be effective, there are a few categories of hard skill training programs from which every employee in your organization can benefit.

New Technologies

The first type of hard skill training program you need for your organization is training centered around new technologies. Technology is constantly changing and evolving; if your workforce cannot develop alongside it, your organization will struggle to keep up with the market. 

New technology training may focus on a few distinct areas. You may use technology training if your organization implements a new software solution, application, or tool. Employees will need targeted training designed to teach them how to leverage the latest tool in their day-to-day job duties. 

Another area in which you may use new technology training is when you upgrade one of your current tools. Even if the upgrade doesn’t change the tool’s functionality in a significant way, this can be an excellent opportunity to refresh employees on best practices related to the tool or technology in question. 

Upskilling and Reskilling Opportunities

You may also want to leverage a corporate training program to help your workforce take advantage of upskilling and reskilling opportunities. Let’s look at each of those terms in a bit more detail.

Reskilling refers to programs that help employees develop new skills they need to take on a new job function in your organization.

Upskilling, on the other hand, provides employees with the tools and knowledge they need to perform their current job more effectively or efficiently. As technology advances, employees frequently need upskilling to keep up with the modern work environment. 

Upskilling and reskilling training programs are vital to keeping your workforce flexible and building a pipeline of future leaders in your organization. 

Deeper Dive: What are Upskillling and Reskilling?

Job-Specific Skills

Lastly, you’ll need corporate training programs centered around job-specific hard skills. These training programs will better prepare workers to do their day-to-day job duties. For example, you may use a corporate training program to help your sales team improve their cold calling skills. 

It’s important to provide corporate training programs on job-specific skills because you need to take opportunities to align your team and ensure everyone is adopting best practices in their duties. Additionally, you’ll need job-specific training programs to set new hires up for success in their roles. 

Top Soft Skill Training Programs

Soft skills are vital to your organization's culture and your business's success. Over ninety percent of surveyed hiring managers reported that soft skills were as important as or more important than hard skills in their hiring decisions.

Hard skills refer to what a worker does on the job, and soft skills are more about how they do what they do. Since soft skills are often related to interpersonal skills, it’s a common misconception that some soft skills cannot be trained.

With the right program, employees can improve their soft skills just as they would improve their hard skills. Let's look at some of the most important soft skills training programs you may want to consider for your organization. 

Time Management and Remote Work

The first soft skill corporate training program you should consider is a program centered around time management in the remote work environment. The COVID-19 lockdowns of 2020 led to an ongoing spike in remote work. Though remote work has many benefits for workers and organizations alike, it requires different soft skills to succeed in a remote environment. 

Focus your time management training programs on how workers can effectively manage their time and effort remotely. Find programs to help them learn how to work through distractions and separate their home life from work hours.  

Communication

The second soft skill training program you need in your organization is communication training. When we think of communication-heavy positions, we often think of customer service or sales roles. However, every employee in your organization needs to be a skilled communicator. 

Communication-related soft skills show up differently in different roles. Some roles may benefit more from strong active listening skills, whereas others may need to strengthen their presentation skills. Every leader in your organization should be trained to skillfully offer feedback and criticism.

Without great communication, your organization will struggle with a lackluster company culture and suffer from communication breakdowns resulting in missed deadlines and targets. 

Adaptability and Problem-Solving

Next, you’ll want to explore a corporate training program to help your workers with adaptability and problem-solving skills. You don’t want your workforce to be a team of mindless drones: You need each individual in your organization to adapt to a changing environment and solve problems independently when they arise. 

Adaptability and problem-solving soft skills training may include focusing on skills like:

• Mental agility
• Ability to adapt to unfamiliar situations
• Solving unfamiliar problems on the spot
• Decision-making skills

Training workers in these skills is vital because change is the only constant in the business world. If your workforce isn’t ready and willing to adapt to a changing environment, your business will struggle to find continued success.  

Teamwork and Conflict Resolution

Lastly, you will need to leverage a corporate training program to foster skills in teamwork and conflict resolution among your team members. This type of soft skill training works to help employees work with team members and customers who have different personalities, goals, and ways of expressing themselves. 

Conflict resolution training is also essential for all leaders in your organization. Every good leader should be able to assist with settling conflicts that arise among members of their team. Training all employees in teamwork and conflict resolution can help you build your leadership pipeline, preparing lower-level employees for future management roles.

Getting Maximum Impact from your Corporate Training Programs

Focusing your corporate training efforts and budget on these programs will help you get the best results in the modern corporate environment. 

However, your training program needs to be more than just appropriately targeted for it to be effective. To get maximum results from your corporate training and to maintain the training concepts, employees need to be engaged and involved.

Simulation training offers learners the opportunity to engage directly with the training material, helping them to apply it in a real-world setting and giving them the tools they need to retain the knowledge. 

With the help of a simulation like CapsimInbox, you can also get clear, measurable training results, helping you to identify skills gaps in your team and individual employees. To see how CapsimInbox can help your team, take a self-guided demo today!