Hot in 2023: The Latest Training Trends to Follow

Did you think you knew everything about the latest types of professional trainings? About every format? The role of participants? Remote training? Well, don’t you worry, because 2023 is getting full of new ways to experience lifelong learning, including personalised ways to gain more skills. 

Agility, culture, and leadership are part of the fields that need to be included now in your training program, so are training methods to involve your  collaborators. And to go further, we’ll also introduce you to advices from an executive in the Enterprise Advice market, Fabienne Speck, Expert in Change  & HR Transformation.  

Wemanity Learning Center, from the Wemanity Group, is there to bring you along into this evolution and enlighten you on trainings you must implement! 

1. Why Is 2023 Such a Crossroads for Professional Training? 

Three years after the health crisis, new habits emerged within entreprises, leading to more remote and hybrid work. New trends also came to corroborate some  certainties, like the 4-day week, which is growing popular from smaller entreprises to bigger groups.  

In the meantime, negotiation power is shifting more and more to job applicants, who are now looking for broader collaborator experience: Even if remuneration remains essential, it must now come with salary add-ons related to well-being, inclusion, and learning.  

For example, the Wemanity Group’s entreprise culture has always been fixed into its DNA. 

Indeed, Wemanity has always kept close to their heart the value of their ecosystem’s human resources, and has therefore been giving many advantages such as training days, peer-to-peer meetings, or lighter events in order to improve their collaborators’ well-being. Placing the collaborator at the heart of the activity is  also a key element in Wemanity Group’s reputation among their partners.  

However, the 2022 edition of Cegos’ Baromètre international, dubbed as ‘’Transformations, Skills, and Learning’’, reveals 40 per cent of HR managers are finding hard to ‘’coincide their organisation’s needs in skills with their training offer’’. In the meantime, employees, quite the contrary, think they have enough  training.  

Are HR managers more aware than their collaborators in the latter’s needs in training? It’s likely. They also pay close attention to current evolutions which could turn a job obsolete in a short time if upskill safeguards are not put in place.  

This year 2023 looks more and more like a crossroads as the precursor of technological and organisational change, which might come faster than we expect.  Training is more than ever becoming a launcher to rather than a wall against new jobs or new approaches. The latter tend to be more agile, have a liking for  leadership and change management, and, naturally, looking towards green IT,  data, and innovation as a whole. 

2. Training Methods to Look into in 2023 

Co-creation of learning and teaching 

Co-creation of learning and teaching assembles the entreprise and its collaborators, along with the trainer. Together, they work beforehand to: 

1. Identify learning goals: Understanding and adapting to a new technique,  experimenting new tools, preparing for a new job, etc.
2. Define the format and the content necessary to reach those goals
3. And finally, put in place those activities in a collaborative way

Co-creation of learning and teaching allows the entreprise and learners to play an active part in the learning process, as well as to take part in the definition of their own experience. In 2023, those aspects are key to face the job market’s evolutions.  

In parallel, this model favors the learners’ motivation and strengthens their involvement in the training.  

For example, at Wemanity, we co-create each of our trainings with our clients with the help of our co-creation matrix. We fill it in together to understand the goals and target audience, highlight their expectations, and identify blocking points. Each training is therefore adapted in their format and content.  

Learning by doing 

As the saying says, practice makes perfect. Learning by doing is a training approach that focuses on gaining skills and knowledge by placing learners at the heart of the training process. Practice and collective intelligence are central elements to link theory with the daily life’s reality.  

This method encourages them to learn by managing concrete projects or solving  problems. Learning by doing therefore gives them the possibility to apply their acquired knowledge, even if minimal, while actually understanding it, bringing new reflexes along the way. In other words, the goal is to motivate new practices. 

This model is already used for recruitment in order to detect hard and soft skills, and owns a place in lifelong learning.  

Learning from experienced, field-oriented trainers 

Being a good trainer in 2023 means having gained enough experience about  entreprises’ and teams’ problems. In that way, trainers who go on the field and  involve themselves into the transformation of organisations bring added value and  expertise. Those are experts who are in direct link with entreprises, for example for consulting missions, and apply their own range of expertise. Then, they are sharper to understand the real stakes for learners during the training.  

At Wemanity, every trainer alternates between training animation and accompanying the transformation of organisations. This way of working gives them the field experience necessary to picture examples accordingly.  

3. Innovative Training Formats to Adopt 

1. Serious Games 

The Serious Game emerged 10 years ago and slowly appeared as a must-go-to for enterprises looking for innovative and involving trainings. Mind however not to choose a Serious Game whose fun aspect overshadows the learning aspect. Serious Games in 2023 tend to be even more immersive and will put forward the learner’s role even more, allowing them to hold the reins of their own in-game universe and move forward on concrete cases. It will also be possible to generate stories from your own work experience.  

In 2023, it’s important to vary your approach by using flipped teaching and leaning on digital learning.

2. Digital Learning 

If MOOCs and online courses were already popular before the Covid crisis, this one  sped up online professional training, as training became more hybrid in order to adapt to the new ways of working, which also tend to go that way. When organised in-house through a special structure, digital learning leans on very specific skills and high attractiveness. This allows for more involvement and follow-up. So much that 80 per cent of entreprises globally use digital learning, according to Statista (2020). It will inevitably increase even more in 2023.  

Several models will make digital learning shift to a new, even more interactive phase, with the likes of synchronicity in hybrid learning, virtual reality without headset, or the emergence of live-learning platforms.  

Digital learning via an LMS platform 

Digital learning via an LMS platform is a learning model using online, in-person, or remote training (also called blended training), which allows trainers and learners to log in and interact in real time during courses.  

Well, that’s nothing new. Except there are new functionalities within that make this  hybrid way of learning more attractive, while leaning on a training process as well.  

The way such a platform works is close to online or hybrid B2B webinars which emerged during the lockdown. Interactivity functionalities have a huge role in  maintaining the public’s attention, which is the same goal here.  

Those functionalities might include: 

• Screen-sharing tools and live-chat functionalities
• Live quizzes
• A possibility to applaud or react anytime
• Polls
• Brainstorming tools
• Summaries of key points with visual effects
• Training models
• Exchange and collaboration modules 
• Etc. 

The goal of such platforms is to give learners the opportunity to ask questions and take an active part in the learning process. So much that, despite their pure e-learning aspect, they adapt pretty well to in-person training. Trainers can actually use those functionalities to offer both online and in-person courses, or to expand the teaching possibilities in a traditional environment. 

For example, at Wemanity, we can build a customised module that fit directly into our clients’ LMS. 

Educational videos 

You can also train your collaborators with the help from short videos. They can therefore discover or deepen a concept or a tool in a short amount of time, easy to fit in their schedule.  

At Wemanity, customized and on-demand educational videos are available for various themes: Management 3.0, Scrum Master/Product Owner, Role and  responsibilities, Facilitation, Leader Storytelling, … 

Train the trainer  

One of the first main trends of 2023 is the training of in-house trainers. Indeed, despite their expertise and knowledge, they don’t necessarily have perspective on their way of teaching and motivating participants to learn.  

Yet, this appears to be essential for their own upskill and makes the next trainings easier to animate. It’s not a matter of teaching them their own job, but a focus on their way of teaching and involving learners: In flipped teaching, in an agile way, and  therefore to bring something new and fruitful. Two ways are: 

1. Optimising the trainer’s posture and practices: Make your in-house talents grow so that they can show a new posture and new practices in order to  become talented and skillful trainers.
2. Practising with experienced trainers: With the use of the SHU-HA-RI method, Wemanity will help you prepare the educational support, to experiment the training with a peer, to adapt the support if necessary, and to improve your posture according to feedbacks.  

Inspiring speeches and seminars 

Inspiration is a way to awaken curiosity and learn even more! Organise inspiring speeches every week and seminars on a regular basis to open your organisation to the world and to transformation. That way, you’ll put forward exchange and openness, which are the heart of a full and plain learning culture! That’s what we advocate for at Wemanity, doing so through 3 pillars: 

1. Team work and involvement: Activities are organised in sub-groups, allowing participants to collaborate and express themselves in a safe environment. 
2. Agile culture: All our seminars are crafted following agile values and principles, which participants live and experience. Activities are adapted to your context to implement new behaviours. 
3. FUN: The key to success for a memorable seminar! 

In Summary