As any thriving organization knows, learning and development (L&D) lies at the heart of business success, and for good reason. A highly skilled workforce feels empowered, is more efficient, makes fewer costly mistakes, exercises more discretionary effort, and ultimately stays longer with the companies that develop them.
Effective L&D initiatives require a blended approach. That means incorporating classroom or face-to-face learning, digital/online learning, social or on-the-job learning (coaching), and elements borrowed from the motivational or behavioral sciences — things like team building, time management, and communication styles.
And it all starts with a complete learning needs analysis (LNA).
Good practice usually requires you to conduct an in-depth, company-wide LNA once a year. That’s because the slightest change in business structure, operations, regulations, or other factors can have a profound effect on your L&D collateral.
Depending on the size of your organization, your LNA can be a daunting document to write. Fortunately, that is precisely where we excel. We’ll work with you as you define your employees’ skill levels then identify and close any skills gaps, and we’ll write all your supporting training materials.
Classroom Training
Even though there has been a significant shift to online training in recent years, not all corporate training can be delivered online. For one thing, classroom training offers significant benefits that can’t be achieved through a screen. There’s really no substitute for personal interaction between new hires and your trainers and senior executives. This is the best time to ask questions, get feedback, and build rapport. And, when new employees have the opportunity to meet their peers face-to-face, they start forming those crucial bonds and relationships necessary for effective teamwork.
When you consider all these great benefits, it may be worth exploring your classroom training portfolio from a different perspective. When you work with The Writers For Hire, you get a dedicated team of writers that assists you in writing all the content for your classroom training portfolio. Depending on your industry and needs, that may include:
- Induction/orientation training modules on
- On-site health and safety.
- Workplace and IT information.
- Your organization’s history, structure, senior leadership, products/services, strategy, etc.
- Customer service policies and quality systems.
- Culture and values.
- Payments and benefits overview.
- Role-specific information.
- Mandatory and voluntary future L&D opportunities.
- Probationary period skills acquisition workbooks.
- Legal and compliance training. Many companies choose to train their staff on legal and compliance issues in a controlled environment, often due to the costly and serious nature of any breaches in, for example, data protection laws.
- Technical and equipment training, which often require step-by-step how-to documents or standard operating procedures that include visual aids and instructions.
- Soft skills training that upskill your workers in communication, teamworking, time management, problem-solving, email and phone etiquette, and other non-technical abilities.
- Management development programs. These courses are fundamental in teaching future managers how to improve their leadership skills and better manage their teams. Ideally, these programs are written at the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. They usually include modules such as
- Performance management.
- Coaching and mentoring.
- Team building and development.
- Transformational leadership.
- Strategic planning.
- HR foundations (absence management, grievance procedures, investigations, etc.).
- Strength-based management.
- Bespoke business-specific training. Many businesses have specific training requirements to move their business to the next level, including courses such as
- Introduction to operations management.
- Managing capacity and people.
- Financial analysis and forecasting.
Online Training
The online training realm is expanding at a phenomenal pace. From tried-and-true earning management systems (LMS) to newer, trendier interactive learning experience platforms (LXP) to webinars, microlearning, and gamification, training departments have their work cut out for them. We’re here to help you continuously develop fresh and engaging content, every step of the way.
We work with large organizations, many of them multinational, that need to produce huge volumes of daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly training content to keep their workers engaged on various online learning platforms. We are great at writing:
- Bespoke training modules delivered in daily bite-sized bits on your microlearning platforms. We’re experienced with EduMe, Axonify, and 7taps, to name a few.
- Training modules for your LMS or LXP on such topics as
- Health and safety.
- Fire awareness.
- Diversity and inclusion.
- Equal opportunities.
- Anti-discrimination and gender equality.
- Cybersecurity training.
- Tailored continuous professional development webinar content and PowerPoint presentations.
On-The-Job Training
Although both classroom and online learning are essential in the modern organization, they do have their limits and some learning can only happen in action on the job. Our multi-skilled team of writers works with you to develop the content for your necessary workbooks, manuals, coaching documents, and standard operating procedures.
We work with you to identify your target learning objectives and overall corporate goals to create engaging training materials, procedures, and company manuals that your staff will actually remember.
Corporate Universities and Accreditations
Corporate universities (CUs)— an independent educational institution within a corporation, often offering accredited courses — have become very popular. Many of our large clients have embraced implementing CUs due to the enormous benefits they bring such as leader retention, culture reinforcement, cultivating innovation, and professional recognition.
Whether you are at the beginning stage of implementing your CU or busy with an overhaul of your courses and content, we can help develop content for your entire curricula to deploy on various channels. Our writers have experience working in (and writing for) higher education and corporate training. We’ll ensure that your training content is aligned with your corporate culture and goals, and we can map your CUs learning modules onto any quality standards and frameworks provided by an accrediting body such as a business or vocational school. In other words, we’ll help your employees get the training qualifications they deserve.
We do the difficult work of deciphering your message so your learners don’t have to; the objectives will be clear to them from the get-go. We have experience writing instructional copy that boils down the essentials into training materials that are quick to read and easy to understand by:
- Writing for your audience. Keep their needs and characteristics in mind, write the copy to them using “you” throughout the instruction, and stick to an appropriate writing level accessible to all.
- Using terms your entire audience will understand. Realize that new employees might not yet know the specialized language of your field. If jargon is the only option, make sure to explain it fully – don’t assume it makes sense.
- Using conversational language. While using a formal style might seem to make sense, it’s harder for the audience to read.
- Avoiding big words and complex sentences. Why use a big word when a shorter, more familiar word will do? Why opt for complex sentence structure when it can cause confusion?
- Keeping it simple. Only include as much as necessary to reach your learning objectives. Most people can only keep 4-7 snippets of information in their short-term memory, so don’t overload them.
- Telling stories. People like stories; people remember stories. Engage your staff by telling a story – better yet, place them within a learning scenario.