In a sea of training developers and learning design experts, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Sometimes the most appealing, hassle-free route is the off-the-shelf option, right? Not so fast.
Here’s 4 reasons why you should resist the temptation and put forth the sweat and equity to develop a custom training solution tailored to your needs:
1. YOU KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE BEST
Although off-the-shelf training solutions can be beneficial, they are intended to cast a wide net to speak to a variety of audiences. Alternatively, a custom training solution can speak directly to YOUR learners. You know what they need, where their behavioral gaps are, and what tone or motivation they need to emotionally connect with the content.
2. YOU KNOW YOUR CONTENT BEST
In the same sense that off-the-shelf solutions can’t flex to meet your learners’ unique needs, they also often contain broad-spanning content to address the greatest common denominator. When you take a custom approach, you can use YOUR content that aligns with your values, challenges, procedures, and protocols. This allows you complete control of what behaviors your training is targeting so that you can create the exact outcomes you need.
3. MAINTAIN CREDIBILITY
Your learners trust you. By offering an off-the-shelf product that’s branded by a different company, there may be some disconnect between who is training them, and how much legitimacy that training has. This disconnect can also be deepened if they feel like the training isn’t speaking to them, or if the content doesn’t feel like it applies to them (see points 1 and 2). By owning the training, you are giving your learning confidence in the information you’re putting in front of them.
3. FLEXIBILITY TO EVOLVE YOUR TRAINING
When you invest in an off-the-shelf solution, you’re really investing in a moment in training time. You oftentimes cannot make updates, or refresh the content to reflect changes in your industry or other factors. By creating your own proprietary training, you not only use tools that allow you to edit and update training, but you allow the training to evolve over time with edits and updates, so it stays relevant and useful for far longer.
Want a customized solution but don’t know where to start? Call or email us today and let’s partner together to make something amazing.
