6 Ways a Director of L&D Can Improve Training Standards With a DAP

When employees join a new company, their goals are clear: develop their skills, contribute to the organization, and advance their careers. Helping employees achieve these goals is essential for businesses, as it can significantly boost engagement and productivity. While companies typically invest in training programs, many realize that traditional methods only provide a temporary solution.

74% of employees feel unable to reach their full potential at work and seek learning opportunities to advance their careers. Additionally, over 40% of employees leave a job if they receive poor training.

This creates a challenging environment for Learning & Development (L&D) Directors. Crafting the perfect training program is no easy feat, and ensuring employees succeed quickly can feel nearly impossible. Numerous learning barriers exist that L&D Directors must overcome. This is where Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) can be a game changer.

Relevant Read: Learning and Development Training in the Modern Era 

What does the Director of Learning and Development do?

The Director of Learning and Development develops and implements learning strategies and programs. They consider the needs of the organization and employees to align them with L&D activities to drive business outcomes in the available budget.

The job of the L&D Director is complicated they have to analyze the organizational needs, create training programs, and identify the employee skill gaps. Based on this, they have to choose beneficial training tools and design the roadmap to achieve success.  

Here are six ways a DAP can help L&D Directors improve training standards and overcome common challenges:

1. Overcome the High Cost of Content Creation

Creating high-quality learning content on a tight budget is a major challenge for L&D Directors. With limited resources, they must produce effective content quickly, often for diverse departments and roles.

A Digital Adoption Platform simplifies this process by enabling the creation of self-guided walkthroughs tailored to specific job roles. These walkthroughs take significantly less time to develop than traditional courses and can be easily repurposed into different formats such as PDFs, PowerPoints, videos, or SCORM files. This flexibility allows enterprises to save millions in content creation while ensuring that employees always have the resources they need.

2. Develop Custom Learning Paths

In large organizations, departments and job roles vary widely in experience, knowledge, and needs. Offering generic training programs to everyone can be ineffective and confusing. L&D Directors can start by analyzing different learner types and job profiles within the organization.

A Digital Adoption Platform helps with this by analyzing user behavior to gain actionable insights into various user groups. This allows the training team to segment employees and identify knowledge gaps, ensuring that training content is relevant and valuable to each group.

3. Create Engaging Content

The decreasing human attention span presents a challenge for creating engaging training content. If the content fails to captivate employees, they may not fully absorb the necessary skills for their roles.

A DAP enables organizations to create interactive and engaging content that keeps employees interested. By analyzing user behavior within an application, a DAP helps identify areas with the least friction, allowing for the creation of walkthroughs that guide employees through tasks seamlessly. This on-the-job training style ensures that employees focus on the essential aspects of their roles without unnecessary distractions.

4. Design In-App Onboarding Checklists

Onboarding is a critical phase in the employee lifecycle. A smooth onboarding experience can determine whether a new hire stays with the company long-term or starts looking for another opportunity.

With a DAP, organizations can design in-app onboarding checklists that guide new employees through the essential tasks and processes they need to master. This ensures that they quickly become proficient with the tools and applications they’ll use daily. The ability to track progress and revisit completed tasks reinforces their learning and helps them stay on top of their responsibilities.

Related Read: The Ultimate Learning and Development Plan

5. Reinforce Training

While traditional training remains important, it can be time-consuming and often ineffective. Large organizations are investing more in training than ever before—$22 million on average in 2020, compared to $17.7 million in 2019. However, the industry is constantly changing, and competitors are staying ahead with modern solutions like DAPs.

Using a DAP to reinforce training complements traditional methods by providing real-time guidance within the application. This accelerates the learning process, allowing employees to access content in the format that works best for them and helping them master the application faster and more effectively.

6. Understand Employees Better

The learning and development landscape is always evolving, and making assumptions about employee needs can be risky. Understanding user behavior, application usage, and process compliance is essential for designing effective training programs.

A DAP like Apty helps organizations analyze and understand how employees interact with applications. This data-driven approach allows L&D teams to create more effective content, measure its impact, and ensure that employees are following the necessary steps to complete their tasks successfully. The insights provided by a DAP enable better decision-making, reduce errors, and ensure clean data input.