Staying focused on your corporate academy?

Maybe your organization already has its own corporate academy or maybe you are currently exploring the possibilities. Wherever you are in the process, paying continued attention to your corporate academy has a positive influence on the development of your employees and organization.

One of the benefits of a corporate academy at SkillsTown is that employees can explore for themselves what is the best way for them to learn. Do they learn best through e-learning, podcasts or perhaps webinars? They are also free to work on this on their own time.

Because you leave development to your employees with this self-contained academy, you do run the risk that it will be forgotten or not prioritized with some employees. How do you ensure that your employees remain curious so that they keep development at the forefront of their minds? In this article, we list some effective ways for you!

Own content in your platform

The beauty of the corporate academy is that you can fully personalize it. You can therefore format the platform so that it fits perfectly with your organization and your goals. For example, choose to create a separate heading with custom content that employees should view anyway. Think product presentations or e-learning modules that are directly related to the employee's job.

For example, if you present physical training courses, you can also link them to online modules on the platform. Perhaps employees need to obtain a certificate from a training course prior to it or find the reference work afterwards in the online corporate academy. This way, they regularly visit the platform to review things that are already of interest and you have a good chance that they will click further. The threshold is then also lower to pick up other trainings that also seem interesting to them.

Record a webinar on a regular basis

Webinars have become wildly popular in recent years and this has only increased since the corona era. Why? Because they work! A webinar is a digital video that you broadcast live and can watch back afterwards. This is a low-threshold way to share knowledge with your target audience. During the webinar, you can easily interact with viewers thanks to polls, questions and a chat function. Delivering a message with images, sound and interaction ensures that your target audience remembers about 80 percent of your message!

By regularly recording a new webinar on a regular basis you ensure that your corporate academy remains interesting for your employees. You regularly discuss topics that are relevant to your organization at that time. Think carefully in advance about what topic is of interest to your target audience. Make sure the webinars are well communicated and that way employees will be able to find the platform regularly.

Not sure how to go about this? We can support you in creating fully personalized interactive webinars under professional guidance. 

Monthly newsletter

Does your organization have a regular communication moment with employees? For example, a weekly or monthly newsletter? Consider how you can communicate your corporate academy through this newsletter. For example, highlight an interesting training course every month, share a top 3 of most followed courses or let colleagues enthuse each other by sharing their experiences about the courses and the platform. That way, you generate interest among other employees.

If your internal newsletter has a different theme each time, for example, you could tailor the communication about the academy to this. Think of subjects such as: happiness at work, collaboration, health, corporate culture, etc. Look, of course, at what is relevant within your organization at that moment.

Make certain training courses mandatory

It is not always possible to predict what will and will not work for your organization. That is precisely why it is important to try different ways. For example, some organizations find that it works well to make certain training courses mandatory. Employees then enjoy getting a leg up. Think about this. Does this fit the culture of your organization and do you think it will motivate your employees? If you make training mandatory, make sure it is managed. You want to prevent employees from getting the feeling that they followed the training 'for nothing'.

Encourage your managers to start managing employees and include their progress within the online academy in development conversations.

Developmental interviews

Ensure that the responsibility of directing employees to work on their development does not rest with one department but that you distribute the support throughout the organization. Encourage your managers to start directing employees to take online courses in the corporate academy and include these results in development conversations. Then results from trainings that the employee has completed can be used to build the conversation. These results immediately provide a good basis to see how your employee is doing. 

At SkillsTown, for example, you also have many trainings in the area of career development. Think of trainings on personal leadership, work happiness and time management. On the basis of these trainings you can see if employees are on the right track and where you can give them extra support.

Remember that as a result of this development conversation, you can also recommend online training courses that you think might be good for your employee. You can then discuss those again in the next development conversation. In addition to development conversations, you could also discuss online training during a recurring team meeting. That way, you can go through training sessions together and make development agreements with each other.

Need help deploying your corporate academy?

Our implementation team is happy to help you improve the focus of your academy. Or do you not yet have a corporate academy and would like to deploy it to your employees? Through an online demonstration we show you all the possibilities to set up your own corporate academy.