Corporate training: The worm must be tasty to the fish, not the fisherman

Continuing education is a topic that is becoming increasingly important for companies. In this area, educational technologies are indispensable. The range of what digital learning can look like in companies is broad.

Widely used applications are, for example, online learning platforms. Austria’s largest employer SPAR Österreichische Warenhandels-AG developed its own platform where all employees – from the branch to the head office, from HERVIS to INTERSPAR – can find courses for onboarding and further education. Currently, the learning platform is also being rolled out to the SPAR countries, reaching over 84,000 employees.

Blended learning for continuing education

“It’s quite a challenge,” admits SPAR E-Learning Manager Michael Fally. Since 2011, he has been developing digital learning methods in-house at SPAR headquarters as an interface between human resources development and IT. Without digital offers, the further training of employees in such a large group no longer works. Nevertheless, Michael Fally believes that face-to-face seminars are indispensable. Therefore, there is a blended learning concept for all positions in the company, which is constantly being improved and refined.

“Content is king,” says Michael Fally of SPAR, meaning that an online platform is not enough to support learning. The learning content also needs to be presented in an appealing way – multimedia and broken down into small learning chunks. Therefore, SPAR is working intensively on making the learning content exciting and entertaining, for example with videos.

Audio is fast and personal

Since many companies cannot develop their own solutions, they rely on existing applications from EdTech providers when it comes to e-learning. AustrianStartups relies on the audio service Audvice. With Audvice, users can record audio tracks and share them with others. “Audio is ideal for sharing knowledge and information because it is fast and also has a personal touch,” says Hannah Wundsam, Managing Director of AustrianStartups.

When implementing new EdTechs, it is important to slowly introduce the users to the application. “We first let the employees get to know Audvice in a playful way so that they would lose their inhibitions about hearing their voice on audio tracks,” says Hannah Wundsam from Austrian Startups. The AustrianStartups team was allowed to get creative and, for example, record a Christmas song together on Audvice. Audvice not only contributes to the transfer of knowledge, but also to team building.

Digital education for stakeholders

The non-profit company not only uses Audvice for employees, but also for its start-up community, which can use it to share workshop content or important information, for example on founding a company. Further use cases are still being tested at AustrianStartups.

Salzburg AG also uses digital methods for the training of stakeholders. This is particularly suitable for digital natives – children and young people who have grown up with digital applications. This is why the energy service provider has developed an application with the Salzburg VR start-up Polycular for high school students to give them an understanding of the topics of energy production and efficiency as well as mobility. In a virtual Escape Room, the children have to solve tricky quizzes and puzzles on the topic. They experience energy and mobility and learn in a playful way. “You have to make the bait attractive to the fish. That means we want to adapt to our target group when imparting knowledge to make learning as easy as possible for them. The children love the Energised AR app and don’t even notice that they are learning,” explains Hermann Grießner, head of energy consulting at Salzburg AG. “That’s also how knowledge transfer works.”