Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) like Usetiful are well-known as effective methods for onboarding users and employees to new software. However, you can also use them for employee training and support. Let's explore the best ways to use a DAP in employee training.
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| Image by diana.grytsku on Freepik |
Differences between employee training and onboarding
Before we look at the best practices for using a digital adoption solution for employee training, we need to define some terms. Employee training and onboarding have plenty of crossovers. However, they are different things.
Employee onboarding: Onboarding happens over the short term. It involves a set of steps to help a new hire bed in. Typically, it involves things like:
Registering with HR
Signing employment paperwork
Learning company policies
Setting up accounts and logins
Meeting the team
Learning how to use work tools
Many forward-thinking companies use a digital adoption platform for some of these steps. In particular, these tools are perfect for teaching new hires to learn the tools they'll use for their job. Read this article to learn more about how Usetiful can help drive employee onboarding.
Employee training: Training, on the other hand, is a more long-term process. There are similarities with onboarding in terms of learning about new software tools. Many businesses only offer training during the onboarding phase. However, ongoing training is essential if you want to provide a great digital employee experience.
The other noticeable difference is that training is for everyone, not just your new hires. It's a huge part of overall employee engagement. If you want to hold on to your employees — and you definitely do — ensuring they know how to get the most from their work tools is an important step.
Research from the Harvard Business Review suggests that an emphasis on learning and development boosts employee engagement and retention by around 30% to 50%.
OK, now that we know the difference between the two, let’s look at how a digital adoption tool can enhance employee training.
How using a digital adoption solution helps with employee training and support
Using a digital adoption solution for employee training and support has several fantastic benefits. So let's look at some of these game-changing advantages and how you can use a DAP to unlock each one.
#1. Enhance productivity with interactive product tours
Modern companies have pretty extensive software stacks. Even small to medium-sized enterprises use hundreds of applications at one time.
There is a reason why investment in software tools has increased over the last decade. These applications can help employees and businesses save time or money or enable them to accomplish various business-critical tasks. However, these tools can't perform to their maximum unless your team knows what they do.
As you introduce new software to your team, you must ensure that your employees are comfortable unlocking their features and benefits. Building product tours is a reliable way to help employees learn and quickly adapt to new software.
Using a digital adoption solution like Usetiful means you can create a simple step-by-step product tour that shows your employees how a particular app can make their job easier. You can do this for the overall app, new features, or a business-specific workflow.
The best thing is that your team can replay these product tours anytime. And because all the learning happens in-app, it’s easier for your staff to pick up and remember.
#2. DAPs allow for personalized learning
Employees who want to learn how to use new software have several sources to choose from. For example, there are tutorial videos, forums, blogs, and even app documentation. However, these sources are often too general or unrelated to their roles.
Digital adoption platforms allow you to segment your employees. As a result, you can offer more personalized training based on job roles, experience, or even preferences.
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| Usetiful checklist for personalized employee training |
You can build product tours for the same app based on how your different departments will engage with the product. Training becomes more relevant, which will increase employee engagement.
There is another side of personalization that digital adoption tools allow. For example, if you have a particular tone of voice within your organization, you can add to your training materials via a digital adoption solution like Usetiful. Everything can stay consistent and on-brand.
#3. DAPs accommodate the trend toward self-service
Self-service tools have exploded in popularity in recent times. Modern software users want to keep person-to-person interactions to a minimum. Instead, they like to solve issues on their own.
These same users are also your employees. Instead of scheduling a training day that gets in the way of core business tasks and meetings, you can offer a self-service approach that lets your employees learn on their own time. What's more, your employees can repeat these lessons anytime, meaning they are constantly refreshed.
This process is also helpful for remote employees. Management can feel confident that everyone is up to date on new software or practices.
#4. Break training down with checklists
Pulling your team together for a day of software training is a relic from a bygone era. These training days are expensive and inefficient. And your employees dread them anyway.
However, the reason why they were popular in the first place is that they allowed structured learning. Teams could learn about new software in a pre-designed, logical, step-by-step style. But how can you get the best of both worlds when teaching your staff about complex tools?
Checklists are one of the best features of digital adoption solutions. You can use them to break down complex product tours into digestible chunks that your employees can deal with one at a time.
Gamifying your training does wonders for employee engagement. Surveys suggest 89% of employees feel happier and more productive when it's part of training. People enjoy feeling a sense of progress by checking off each task as they go. So use it when you want learning and development to feel fun.
#5. On-demand support
Learning by doing is one of the best ways to understand and retain information. Tools like Usetiful accompany your employees on their quest to master new software tools through an active learning approach.
Most applications are built to be intuitive. However, it's easy to get stuck trying to learn how to do a particular task, especially when dealing with software with a steep learning curve.
Usetiful offers a range of different features that provide on-demand support. Tooltips and beacons are excellent ways to highlight features and functions of the software and trigger supporting text.
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| Usetiful smart tips offer undisruptive contextual hints |
Of course, that's not the only way you can offer on-demand support. For example, you can link something like Usetiful Assistant to help documents, FAQs, and knowledge bases, etc. Your employees can find the help they need when they need it.
As a bonus, it reduces IT support tickets and employee downtime.
#6. Don't let anyone fall through the gaps
Automating your employee training is a fantastic way to boost efficiency. However, everyone learns in different ways and at different speeds. So, what happens if some of your employees don't engage in training and fall behind? Thanks to analytic and reporting tools, you'll know where everyone is at.
Features like Usetiful Reports let you keep track of the number of users who have engaged with your product tours and other training materials. You can see which steps your users got to and where they got stuck.
You can use this data to intervene and get them back on track or offer more support for users who need extra help or prefer to learn in different ways. With remote and hybrid work on the rise, this data has become even more essential. No one needs to fall between the gaps.
#7. Augment your training
While digital adoption platforms can replace your training, that won't work for every team. Some products require hands-on education. However, you can use a digital adoption solution alongside your training to enhance and augment learning.
One of the most significant issues with structured learning is the forgetting curve. People can grasp an idea while being trained, but they forget 90% within a week!
Supercharge your employee training with ongoing active learning through an interactive product tour so your team retains everything.
#8. Improve through feedback
We discussed above using Usetiful Reports to get feedback on how your employees are advancing through their training. However, that's not the only feedback that you need. It's also essential to get an idea of how your staff feels about their tools. For that, you can employ in-app surveys.
These surveys can collect a variety of data. For example, they can give you helpful feedback on your training materials. However, you can also ask more general questions about your work tools. You can use this to estimate employee engagement or get opinions about what works and what doesn't.
Leverage this information to improve your training and enhance the employee experience.
Final thoughts
Digital adoption is critical for productivity, employee engagement, and achieving ROI on software spending: training forms an integral part of the process. We built Usetiful to make it easy for anyone to learn and adopt new tools.
When you want to enhance your digital employee experience, try Usetiful.