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

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.

Five ways to expand your course reach and grow your learning audience with Ayris

Many learning organizations own and offer valuable content but often fail to present it in an attractive way.  As a result, organizations are unable to reach a wider audience and achieve the goals they are trying to reach. What are the tricks to increase your course engagement? Based upon the OutCons team’s years of experience, here are some suggestions below:

1. Browse trending headlines to select topics

Keep up to date with the most recent developments in your industry and always try to be one step ahead of your audience and the rest of the eLearning industry. People want to learn about what is new in their business niche. For instance, if they want to start trading Bitcoins, provide them with all of the relevant information about it – what they should know before they start, what to watch for, how to mitigate their risks, etc. You can always improve your existing course list. Just try to be in line with the ongoing trends and tailor it to your audience.

2. Customize your content by interest groups

While you are adding value to your course materials, why not study your selected audience a little closer too. Group your contacts by interest and create different groups for each one of your topics. Look for branches within your learning organization, areas of professional development, or self-improvement topics. This way you can differentiate your types of audience and create custom content grouping. Pick the suitable courses for each group so you can satisfy personalized learning needs. In cases where the content is required, make sure you make it as short and as effective as possible to it peaks and holds the interest of the required group.

3. Create original content and ensure it is visually appealing

Make your content attractive and visually pleasing. This is probably the most important thing in online education today. According to The Telegraph, people have shorter attention spans (because of massive usage of the smartphone), which only lasts for eight seconds. Yes, if you don’t catch the attention of your audience within this timeframe, you probably won’t catch it at all. Be creative and entertaining, improve and upgrade your learning materials constantly.

4. Work your groups

Managing your learning group is a process, not a one-time, set-up case. You need to be active and engaged with all participants. Start an industry related community and post information, start chats, update statuses about the nature of your learning content and create a community of learning.

5. Ask industry influencers for quotes

Quote people who have taken your courses in the past, especially if they are recognized as leaders in your industry or organization. You can get creative and use tools like Canva to improve the visual representation of the quote itself. Individuals like to be associated with famous and influential people, so if you know someone appropriate, don’t forget to contact that person for a quote.

Always keep in mind that you are not promoting just a course. You are promoting your services, your company and your brand. Make sure that you present your courses well and get closer to and work with your audience groups. Do not get in a passive mode. If you do your homework and create courses of interest to your audience, your audience will grow.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Mass Upload of Course Completions is Now Available on Ayris

Good news for everyone working with course completions! Batch course completion is now available on Ayris and this means two things for all of our users - smooth course completion process and peace of mind. If you have used another learning management solution in the past or you currently need to upload course completions for existing courses, our neat new feature will help you bring all of those learning history records on Ayris in no time.

You can access this feature on the "Learning" tab and then navigate to the "Manage Course Completions" menu. From there you will be able to select the courses for which you wish to submit course completions, for as many users as you like.

The other great add-on to this menu and probably the most important feature for learning managers is the mass upload of course completions from file. The "Import from CSV" button is created to help you upload learning completions quickly and easy. Once you press the button, a pop-up window opens allowing you to download a template which shows how course completions must be entered to successfully import them on Ayris. On the same window, you can also find brief instructions to support your successful submission of course completions on Ayris. Enjoy!