By Brittainy Young, Learning & Development Specialist, Skyllful
Imagine it is your first day of work delivering packages. Each package you deliver must be scanned for verification of delivery. You were given a 1-day training, an online reference guide, and a mobile device to complete your job. You are nervous, and you want to do a good job.
You deliver your first package, and the customer asks for a delivery confirmation notice. You try to reference back to the 1-day training, but you can’t remember the exact steps to take. You fumble through the reference guide, and you can’t seem to find a solution. After 5 minutes of waiting, the customer calls the delivery service and tells them that the deliverer does not know how to give them the delivery confirmation. The delivery service emails the customer the delivery confirmation notice, and the impatient customer carries on with their day.
Image how that first encounter would affect your entire workday, week or month. Would you feel secure in the knowledge that you obtained from the training? Would you be motivated to do your job, especially one that has a high turnover rate?
Knowledge Does Not Equate To Skill
Scenarios like this happen every day. Mobile workers have limited time to learn how to do their job effectively with little margin for error. According to the Association of Talent and Development, on average, an employee is given 34.1 hours of training annually. Knowledge can be given, but the skill to do a job is acquired through practice.
Practice in a Simulated Environment
With limited time to train a new employee, how do you allow them to practice? You could give them more time to practice traditional methods of instructor lead training, training and reference guides or you can use a simulated training environment.
Simulated training environments are replicants of real-world business processes or job functions and can be created for computers or mobile devices usage. They provide a safe learning environment for the learner to experience possible scenarios in their work field. The employee can get feedback, identify errors, practice different scenarios as much as they need to, which helps strengthen their confidence to complete their job functions.
Now, imagine that same scenario from the beginning, but now you’ve had several opportunities to practice your job in a safe, simulated environment. Within the simulated environment, you were given real-life scenarios for cases like what to do when a customer needs a delivery receipt. How much more confident would you be your ability to do your job?
Take a deeper dive into the ROI of digital training with this visual guide. And if you’re looking for a digital training solution for your field workers, check out the first digital adoption platform explicitly designed for frontline workforces, Skyllful.
