01 Sep Way Forward for Corporate Training Industry

Corporate Training industry is growing at quick pace and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 14% in the next five years. This has happened on the back of increased competition due to the entry of smaller and regional players.

Organizations now set aside a significant amount of their revenue for employee training. Because of the ongoing pandemic, corporate training programmes may hit a roadblock, but in the medium and long run, quick growth is more or less certain in this space. As work from home becomes the new normal, online training solutions will see a surge, as seen in the early days of the lockdown.

Fuelling Factors

• Growing Skill Gap: The proportion of formally skilled workers in India is extremely low, at 4.69% of total workforce, compared to 24% in China, 52% in the US, 68% in the UK, 75% in Germany, 80% in Japan and 96% in South Korea.
• Personalized Experiences: Trainees now demand a personalized experience more than ever. A live and interactive session, where questions can be asked in real time is always preferred over one-way communication.
• Increasing Labour Force: At 53.5 million, millennials in India are on track to become the largest living generation and may make up 75% of the labour market by 2025.

Above listed factors show that there is ample room for the corporate training industry to grow in India. A proper blend of online and offline training can help in capturing the yet unacquired market share.

Way Forward

For maintaining a considerable presence in the training market, companies should keep in mind a few considerations:

• Future Forward solutions: Solutions should be built in such a sense that they should not just cater to the current situation, but they should also help them deliver learning to employees in the new normal of work from home
• Visibility: Because of the ongoing problems, companies should not disappear from the market. Continue to publish content, remain visible on social media, and hold meetings with clients. These activities will help in gaining momentum and move the business forward
• Offer something useful: Companies should not just address the Covid-19 pandemic. They should focus on challenges of virtual work, change management, and then connect solutions with the problem

Business Idea

 Corporate training industry is a low barrier to entry space where anyone having the knowledge of a specific tool can enter. So, we have devised a three-step process which can certainly help new entrants in acquiring the market share:

• First step is to find healthy start-ups in the economy, start-ups which will require sizeable man force along with potential to grow. This will help us in shortlisting our prospective clients who can be captured at an early stage of their business
• Second step is to run on cash burn model which is being done by many companies such as Swiggy, Zomato, etc. to acquire customers. There focus is inculcating habit of ordering food in customers from there portal. But our focus would be to build long term relationship with these start-ups by giving lower than cost training to capital seeking companies
• Third step is expectation of start-ups to get funding. This will be based on first step. Our well thought research earlier would increase the probability of this step. As soon as start-ups reach this phase, it will result in increased manpower and then we can charge them accordingly and start earning profit.

This is not a full proof/tested way but based on what is currently being done by companies in other industries.

Conclusion

With clouds of uncertainty, organizations are trying to explore multiple digital channels to get back the training on track. We cannot be very sure of the future timeline of the current situation, so transiting to digital solutions will be a good move.  Corporate training companies can either opt to shift their classroom training completely to eLearning or go with middle-of-the-road solutions such as webinars and VILT sessions. Going digital enables companies to offer self-paced training which is of utmost importance currently. Moreover, companies can offer employees better performance support to the employees along with digital learning assets as it allows learning in the flow of work.

This is an extremely scary and unseen situation in the industry, but this helps in bringing innovation in the way corporate training companies will be offering training solutions in the future. Highly adaptive organizations will use their creativity and talent and evolve to meet the needs of a changing market.