Encourage employees develop both soft and professional skills using Ayris

In this technology-driven world it is important for companies to motivate employees to accomplish new skills and knowledge.

Employees are the company! They need to know that their managers genuinely care and are committed to support their professional advancement and even their personal growth.

Employee development is a long-term initiative, but it also leads to short-term benefits like increased loyalty and improved performance and engagement.

Max DePree once said: ‘We cannot become what we need to be by remaining what we are’. It is important to understand that success begins when we start growing personally and professionally.

One of the many ways to build soft and professional skills are:

• Professional Training – Employee training may be required to ensure competency and even excellence. Being excellent at what you do is very important, but passing on this excellence to new hires then creates an outstanding team. As previously mentioned, employees are the company, so having the best means being the best.

•Feedback sessions – Being interested in your employees and sharing with them positive and negative feedback shows concern. This way managers and employees, together, can fix issues and discuss future success and growth.

• Coaching – Being there when you are needed. Some employees may not have enough experience and telling them what to do may not be the right way. The more conceivable approach would be by setting aside time to show them the process they are struggling with. Every employee is different, therefore coaching tactics may change from team to team or even employee to employee.

• Develop ‘Soft skills’ – Teaching employees how to communicate and read body language is extremely important. When the team is in harmony and they have the correct communication, work gets done more efficiently and the achievements are immense.

By helping your team develop the skills listed, you are just one step away from growing and improving your business.

Ayris can help companies by:

• Allowing managers to assigning courses, submit tests or surveys to employees to help them develop personally or professionally.

• Help them create programs and establish gradual learning plan.

• Build beautiful courses using different course formats (including SCORM).

• Take advantage of corporate branding and own storage space!

Ayris is a clever way to check how your team is doing. To be productive and develop new skills it is important to constantly learn. Ayris can help managers to connect with their team’s results, development and to be aware of their team’s achievements. And most of all, Ayris can make your employees feel free and confident in finding their way to be better than yesterday.

Author: Mariya Ivanova

The connection between company engagement and learning

In our service and information driven economy, talented people are your most precious commodity. That is why having a personal growth strategy for your employees is a foundational concept in company and employee engagement, and something you cannot ignore. An atmosphere of continual growth is no longer just a desire, it is a necessity for companies that do not want to experience high turnover. When you have an environment where your employees are engaged by their work, you will notice higher levels of productivity. Therefore, it is crucial to connect the organizations mission with everyone’s activities.

Employee engagement is the extent to which an employee’s personal goals and interests align with the vision and goals of the company at which they are employed.

It is no secret that education is one of the best ways individuals can develop new skills and knowledge that they can directly apply to their roles. That is why education is one of the most worthwhile investments your company can make. If you do not have the budget to subsidize an educational program, there are plenty of more options and tools like Ayris that offer great alternatives.

Employee learning is becoming more “consumer like” where audiences search out and choose content for themselves. Micro-learning is a way of teaching and delivering content to learners in small, very specific bursts. At Ayris managers and/or admins can create, modify and share their own learning objectives, the learners are in control of what and when they are learning, and it is a growing trend in Learning Management Systems.

Learning and development opportunities are among the largest drivers of employee engagement and strong workplace culture. Providing learning and development opportunities to individuals show that you are willing to invest in them as a person. On-the-job education has much more  impact on employee performance as formal classroom learning does and considerably increases employee engagement. The transition from passive learning to productive learning can yield significant improvement in employees analytical and social skills. By contributing and participating to the learning process, team members will be more engaged with their work and improve at working together.

With the right knowledge, the right tools, and most importantly the proper mindset, it can be a powerful way to transform your organization and improve your bottom line.

Author: Tsvetelina Kirkova

The Knowledge-Based Economy and Ayris

Heraclitus once said: There is nothing permanent except change. We live in an ever-changing environment, in a society that is transforming every second, in a world that has gradually evolved into a highly industrialized technology-reliant economy. This new era is driven primarily by knowledge, which is regarded as an important asset that leads to economic prosperity.

While technology is infused in almost every aspect of our lives, the knowledge-based economy is not just about the technology itself. It is rather about being able to upgrade your skills and adapt yourself to the constantly changing working environment. When it comes to recruiting new employees, the emergence of the knowledge-based economy puts more stress on the level of education and training. People and businesses alike are striving to learn faster and more effectively than their competitors in the jobs market. The level of one’s competence, skills, education and abilities are of increasing importance. Hence, the knowledge-based economy is global and influences everyone. Only those who are flexible enough and willing to adapt to different kinds of work will be able to handle and benefit from the constant changes happening.

According to an extensive psychological study, the most adaptive people are not those who are better educated, smarter, or have fancier job titles. Surprisingly, the ones who find it easier to adapt are those who are ready to take a step forward and embrace the change. Ayris will enable you to feel and respond to the changes around you with just a few clicks. With its incredibly user-friendly interface, Ayris makes it easier than ever to share your ideas or upgrade your teams knowledge on any topic at a moment’s notice. Moreover, by designing your own online content, you have the chance to distribute the right content to the right people and spread the wind of change in your business organization. Be the change you want, be adaptive. Take a step forward with Ayris.

Ways to Ensure That Everyone Develops Their Skills Gradually Within Your Company

It is important to hire operation specialists according to the needs of your company to ensure business processes are well handled. New hires take time to adapt to their new workspace and expectations. As a hiring manager, or team lead, you will have to monitor their performance and results while the employees are acclimating themselves to their daily workload. This adjustment period, depending upon the complexity of the job, can vary from one month to six or even nine months and beyond.

Once the employee has settled in with their daily workload and expectations, making sure the employee can perform and execute their daily activities in accordance with the project timeline is next necessary step. But what happens when your employees are not constantly being challenged enough, their critical thinking abilities decrease, and the monotony of repetitive tasks prevail? How do you keep the interest of your employees in their current position?  How do you keep the investment you have made in their development? The answer always lies in the learning process.

Provide your employees with tools and encouragement to learn new skills. This will not only continue to push your employees to grow and develop, but it will increase the scope and capability of your entire team. Let them see that they are part of something bigger than what is needed to be accomplished today. Allow them to see that what they need to accomplish today is part of a bigger picture, not just to check off a box on a project plan, but how it impacts the end result. Employees need to be encouraged to not only think outside the box, but learn outside of it too.

With courses based on digital marketing, sales, personal finance, and other courses based on specific job profiles - you, as a manager, can strengthen the company loyalty enormously. All you need to do is select a course and assign it. From there, you may think of creating a mentoring program for your young employees, so they learn from the experience and sound advice of various professionals within your organization. Employee training programs are another direct investment in your company and serve as a proof that you value your people and want them to grow. They will get the notion that this is not just another six-month job improve resume, but a work-based university of personal and professional development.

Today you have the chance to break the work-for-salary mentality and give your employees a meaningful experience while doing their job. All it takes is to start paying attention to what their learning needs are and help them grow. You start doing that by providing them with knowledge via the right tool – a Learning Distribution System.

Ayris - the 2017 in review and what's to come in 2018

It was a grand year for Ayris! Our application matured with another amazing year of development and enhancements across several areas. In 2017, we improved many of Ayris’ components thanks to suggestions and “wishes” from our clients. Below we will highlight some of these components:

• Company branding – Now with your first login, you can transform Ayris to look as your own custom made tool. Incorporate your company logo, background color, and menu colors right from your company branding Ayris page. Changes are implemented immediately and can be constantly updated by your team to keep up with ever changing corporate branding.

• Enhanced programs functionalities – Create a learning program that Ayris will automatically assign throughout the lifecycle of the campaign. Create 30, 60 or 90-day events for your onboarding process of your new hires! Customize the timeline to fit your needs by adding multiple events in a smooth and easy way that allows you to attach and customize notifications, courses, and reports to each event on the go!

• Additional content storage for your learning materials – Load any type of document into Ayris and easily share the downloadable link with colleagues. You can even take it a step further and add these documents as reportable courses to assign to your end users! Ayris Content Storage allows you to build folder structure and set privacy settings on documents you load. Keep all of your content and source files in one program.

• Import course completions – Whether you want to quickly add completion of a course or you wish to upload mass completions to transfer learning history from a previous LMS – this simplified process is possible in just a few easy steps with Ayris.

• An improved tool – We also improved the functionalities of our video player, the reporting features, and many more features to improve the quality of the program.

As we enter into 2018, we are already excited about what is to come! 2018 will see a complete restructure of the reporting within Ayris, and we are looking for your input to make it elite!

Our current clients have been amazing with this approach, and we couldn’t thank you enough for your input! As you can see from above, we are not shy with enhancing our tool to improve our clients’ process.

What types of reports would you love your learning tool to have?

Help us help you!

How do you get your learners to focus on your content?

With so many distractions, staying focused on anything is a real challenge. At OutCons, we aim to change that and enable quality learning. Too many people get carried away by social media and their smart phone apps, which turn out to be a burden for lifelong learning and successful career development. One research suggests that the average person unlocks their phone 110 times a day! If we assume that a person’s day is 16 hours long, that accounts for roughly one smart phone pick-up every 15 minutes! And if all other activities the average working person has are added, it makes it very difficult for an educator to help someone learn, stay focused, and remember the learning material in order to implement it later.

How can you help your learners focus on the content?

1. Organize!

The key factor is the organization of the learning process. Make sure you establish an easy to understand schedule and course length. In our experience, breaking up learning into smaller chunks (5-10 minutes max) will help your learners focus and then get the break they are looking for.  A good distribution system (like Ayris) can help you distribute multiple chunks of learning, let your learners step away and then promt them to return through notifications and events. Within the calendar in the Programs menu of Ayris, you can schedule events for the upcoming weeks, months or even years. All you need to do is plan and organize the events, and Ayris will do the rest for you.

2. Set Goals/Gates

Set goals after each step of the education process. Setting an exam or questionnaire survey to supplement each course will allow you to keep track of learners’ performance and knowledge obtained. Engage all users by setting personal goals too. This will challenge the learners and they will be more willing to commit to the task and complete it.

3. Communicate the Schedule

Make learners aware of the time they need to accomplish the course.  If they are behind schedule, you have the option to send them a customized notification to proceed with the assignment when they can, by utilizing distribution tools like Ayris. All you need to do is be realistic about these time estimates and give students ample time to accomplish the course at their own pace. In this way, you will also have an indication of how committed the student is to learn and develop.

Many organizations we have worked with have giant libraries of content. One client we worked with had almost a one learning course per employee!  This client continued to post new courses in an effort freshen up their available courses, but failed to retire out dated content. This made it difficult for users to find new and releveant training. Distributions system make it so only the courses that are assigned to users are available to view.

Once your learners have gone through their program, allow for time to apply the learning and relax to prepare for the next challenge!