A company that is serious about sustaining their business knows that developing their corporate training programs is not just because it is traditionally part of any human resources task but a business imperative.
In PWC’s survey Annual Global CEO Survey, leaders put creation of skilled and adaptable workforce at the top of their priorities when it comes to their people and productivity. In the end, the skills of the workforce need to be elevated into “fixers” instead of the routine work that can be transferred to automation functions, as the trend these days. Moreover, learning isn’t a format that is separate from work. Learning and development need to be a culture, a seamless integration into an employee’s work process.
To address this priority and increasing trend, the learning and development functions will need to be more discerning about the types of corporate training they bring to the table. Other than skills-based programs, HR will need to balance these with soft skills as well.
If you look at the training landscape in the market, there are corporate training programs that can be adapted to the context of companies. And in this pandemic, even training companies have adapted their delivery to provide online corporate training, to ensure continuity.
From a business perspective, there are a few that can make a difference on how organisations conduct their businesses like how they’ve never done so before.
5 TYPES OF CORPORATE TRAINING PROGRAMS
Table of Contents
1. Brand Strategy Mastery program
Mastering brand strategy isn’t as easy as some people thought it is. A lot of people think Branding is just the aesthetics of a brand. This could not be far from the truth. Branding affects the entire business. From the look and feel of a business, from finances to messaging, from HR to CXOs, it affects one department to another. In short, it is everyone’s business to know what Branding is all about. It’s about the business, looking at it in its entirety and not as a siloed element of a business.
What is a Brand Strategy Mastery program?
In a Brand Mastery program, a trainer will teach participants to understand the basics but moves them towards creating their own strategy for their business.
Specifically, in a Brand Mastery Program, the content may include:
- Brand Research
- Market Segmentation
- Developing your Brand Strategy
- Positioning, Differentiation, Architecture and Portfolio Management
- Brand Communication
- Experience Branding
- Internal Branding
- Branding Metrics
Depending on the status of your organisation, this program is highly customisable to relate to your organisation. An exceptional Brand Mastery program is meant to help you stand out, so your target market will choose you, keep you top-of-mind, and prefer you over your competition in the long run.
Who is it for
Some organisations worry that Branding is only for the multinational organisations. This is a misconception. Branding is all about growing your business, this includes SMEs and startups. Companies of all sizes and industries benefit from keeping branding at the onset of their business.
What are the expected outcomes
At the end of the Brand Mastery program, your entire organisation and its employees should have a better if not an advanced understanding of what Branding is and its role to the entire company. The outcome is a ready-to-execute branding strategy that your organisation can hone according to additional information that you can chip in after the program. Lastly, at the end of the workshop, your team members will each know what their roles are to ensure that the strategy is effective.
2. Personal Branding Program
With the likes of Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Elon Musk and charming leaders on the rise, Personal Branding is becoming an essential program, especially for customer-facing employees. This is no surprise seeing what it has done for Apple, Virgin and Tesla.
And with today’s pandemic, it’s become even more of a necessity that every employee take this program. Offline and online engagement are highly different. With face-to-face interaction, it’s easy to position yourself to the person you are conversing with. After all, you are sure that all your gestures, tones and visual tools are clearly seen. But when you are online, it takes an exceptional method to give off that confident charm, when all the person you are talking to can only see half of your body.
Enter Personal Branding, where it’s always personal but you’ll need to give off a particular individuality to ensure that your audience is also engaging with you. With Personal Branding, it takes half the difficulty of online engagement.
What is a Personal Branding program?
Remember that YOU are the CEO of your brand. Instead of throwing just about anything out there, copying what’s trending, or playing it safe, a Personal Branding program brings out what you stand for, who are you to your audience, how can you craft these to your audiences, how can you build trust and credibility, and how do you communicate all these things to your audience.
In a Personal Branding program, look for the following elements:
- Discovery of Yourself
- Researching about your audience
- Developing your position
- How to demonstrate your capabilities
- Communication plan
Who is it for
A Personal Branding program is for anyone who wants to be self-aware so they can project their best to their audience. Whether you are a leader or an employee starting your career, this program is for you. It’s one of the most basic corporate training courses that every learning and development department should provide to their employees.
What are the expected outcomes
At the end of a Personal Branding program, your employees should come out more confident of their newfound self-awareness and ready to intersperse this with your company branding strategy. In addition, Personal Branding, like its title, is always personal, so it’s a program that is carefully attuned to the individuality of the employee. This targets the employee’s preferences, not the usual group or organisational goals.
3. Internal Branding
As corporate training consultants, most clients we have worked with look for external branding and forget about their internal audiences. A strong branding starts with the internal team. Because it simply follows the adage that “if you don’t believe in your own brand, you won’t convince others to believe in it.”
What is an Internal Branding program?
An Internal Branding program is a culture building program. It is focused on creating a branding strategy for the internal team. This process includes your culture, your people and how you communicate and how all of these are seamlessly tied together to drive immense loyalty among your employees and how they influence other colleagues to do the same. This is extremely a customised program, in that it involves a deeper understanding of your organisation and employees.
In this program, you should be able to see:
- Principles behind Internal Branding
- Components of Internal Branding
- A methodology for creating a branded culture
- Process of understanding your organisation’s status
Who is it for
The Internal Branding program is usually run by the Corporate Communications or Marketing team of an organisation. In some cases, Human Resources is also involved in support of organisational learning.
But more than that, it is for organisations who want to strengthen the internal culture overall. A cohesive internal culture results in happier and more empowered employees that’s ready to undertake external programs.
What are the expected outcomes
By undergoing an Internal Branding training program, employees are inducted into your branded culture. This prevents any improper or what we call “off-brand” behaviour that is prevalent on social media these days.
Your employees are expected to uphold “on-brand” behaviour that reflects the organisation’s core beliefs. An Internal Branding training program is a guide for all employees as well as an empowerment program to disseminate the organisation’s culture to the outside world.
4. Customer Service Excellence
There is brand excellence, but there is also service excellence. It is easy to understand what product excellence means but service excellence takes practice because the centre of this program involves your employees.
Customer Service Excellence is the ability of service providers to deliver service that is positively unlike no other. It is a total service experience from when a customer starts to engage with your brand until they become loyal, repeat customers. The goal is to ensure that customers are wowed over the service you provide them, every step of the way, no matter how small the actions are.
What is a Customer Service Excellence program?
A Customer Service Excellence program involves the effort of the entire organisation, in that the service that you provide covers multiple departments. It is an organisation-wide endeavour. Because it covers a wide range of territories, this program can be done in phases depending on how the organisation is set up.
In this program, expect to see the following topics:
- Research, understanding your customers, understanding what your Service is all about
- Identifying and understanding customer journey and how customers engage with your brand on any platform
- Creating a Service Experience, what do you want your customers to experience?
- How do you execute processes, plans across the board?
- How do you influence?
Customer Service Excellence follows a methodology that helps organisations create the service that they want for their customers. It also eases the employees or stakeholders into executing the steps or processes that make the service excellent.
Who is it for
All organisations must have a Customer Service Excellence culture format. Even product organisations need this. A service does not end when people buy your product. The goal of excellent customer service is to make customers happy to compel them to keep coming back to your brand. It’s a customer-centric approach to business.
What are the expected outcomes
In a Customer Service Excellence program, expect the following outcomes to happen:
- Uncover an entire process solely for service. Some companies are not aware of the entire process that gets into serving customers. This is why in a customer service excellence program, research is a starting point. A lot of organisations tend to be impatient and skip this process entirely, but we strongly recommend that this becomes the first phase. The purpose of the research phase is to get accurate data on your organisation and customers. This is no guessing game. These information must be accurate if we want to create or improve a process that involves you and your customers. The dangers of guessing are expensive, not to mention detrimental to your brand.
- Identify touchpoints. Touchpoints, in simplest terms, are points of contact. These are varied from every step of your customer’s journey and will differ from one customer to another. Identifying these are fundamental to understanding your customer.
- Solidify your Service DNA. Your Mission, Vision and Values are there to guide you in business, but in some cases, these are not translated to the service that you provide your audience. When we say solidify, you are clear what your Mission, Vision and Values are and you can reflect these in your actions to your stakeholders.
- How to drive Service. We now go into action. What are the organisational service culture habits that you should be doing and driving? These are just some of the questions that you will need to get ready to answer in the workshop.
- Customised plan according to your Service DNA. At the end of the program, you should be able to have a strategy and a plan to cascade it for implementation.
5. The Brand Playbook Program
The Brand Playbook is a unique program that we hold for organisations and individuals. It is a program that is based on 24 years of experience in branding, in 25 countries and over a thousand companies from different industries. Fit into bite-sized strategies, The Brand Playbook is a program that will give you the edge you need to grow faster and stand out in the marketplace. It’s a program that positions you to win in your industry.
What is The Brand Playbook program?
It’s a bible of sorts, but on branding. It is a treasure trove of ideas for organisations and individuals to use in any phase their business is in. There are 88 strategies called “plays”, that you can choose from. Use these plays accordingly, depending on what you want to achieve and where you are in your business.
It is both available as a customised workshop and keynote and an online, on-demand training curriculum. In the on-demand format, corporate training videos are available for download including worksheets that you can use anytime, anywhere, multiple times to accomplish or share with your team.
Who is it for
The Brand Playbook Program is for everyone! It has strategies for multinational companies, individuals, startups, and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) across industries. What’s really good about it is that it helps you decide because all 88 plays are based on successful brands that have used it to achieve their goals in business. These are not hearsay, but proven, real-life tactics.
What are the expected outcomes
In this program, organisations and individuals can expect varied outcomes, depending on what tactics you will use. But in general, The Brand Playbook program aims to ensure you:
- Make your brand reputable and instill trust and credibility in your customers.
- Start using branding as a powerful marketing tool for your business and yourself.
- Offer a better brand experience than your competitors. Keep your customers coming back to your Brand
- Learn from real-life examples of companies that are using branding as a strategic advantage
- Learn tricks and hacks that you can use to leverage your brand in the market!
- Know strategies that you can use to impact your brand growth and performance
- Actionable advice you can use right away
- How to choose the right tactics for your brand
An organisation that makes learning and development a part of everyday work wins in the market. Not only because this is a part of a traditional employee engagement format but because it allows employees better metacognition. Employees take charge of their career ladder. Your role is to help them in the process through corporate training that is attuned to their individuality while merging this with their functions in the organisation.