It is undisputed that the continuing education sector has received a digitalization boost due to the Corona pandemic. But what other changes must trainers, consultants, and coaches prepare for? 15 theses on business models, job profiles, and new players.
Learning was and remains the crucial future skill, which is once again evident in the Corona crisis. Not only the continuing education sector, but the entire economy has made a huge leap in digitalization within a short period – a transition that would probably have taken years under normal circumstances. What we have all learned in a few weeks and months is impressive and will continue to shape the world, the country, companies, and of course our industry in the future – even when the pandemic is long gone.
But how will continuing education change due to Corona? Albrecht Kresse has developed 15 theses on this:
In-person training must be worthwhile
Of course, in-person training will continue to exist after the Corona crisis, but significantly less, in my opinion. Because once someone completes a good live online training, they realize: We can keep this in the future. The in-person training sessions that still exist will then really have to be worthwhile. Events where people travel from afar and book expensive overnight stays, only to then have an expert explain their view of the world frontally, perhaps even supported by PowerPoint slides, make little sense anyway. After Corona, they will have no justification at all.
In-person becomes an event
In-person meetings and training sessions have become significantly more valuable in the communication cascade due to Corona. Currently, it might still be enough to simply hold an in-person format – and everyone is happy to finally meet again in the real world. However, this will not remain the case. An in-person meeting is significantly more expensive and complex than an online meeting, and this effort must be justified. In continuing education, what has been evident in the communication industry for years will be repeated: fewer live events, but those must make a real difference. Seminars, training sessions, workshops, conferences, and congresses will therefore become more event-driven, which makes it more difficult for individual trainers and consultants.
Live does not mean in-person only
Corona has changed the perception of what a live appointment is. An online meeting in Teams is a live appointment, and a four-hour training session held online is a live training. Live-online or live-in-person will therefore be a differentiation that will remain after Corona. What do we call it when we say: Let’s meet? Currently, this usually means an online meeting.
We are still looking for the right terms. “Are we meeting in person?” we sometimes ask when we mean an in-person meeting. One thing is clear: Live does not automatically mean that we meet in the physical world.
Online formats must be differentiated
Before Corona, the term live online training was hardly known. The most commonly used live online format was webinars. Meanwhile, there is a greater differentiation between an online lecture (webtalk), a webinar, which is also more presentation-focused with a subsequent Q&A session and perhaps a few surveys in between, and a true live online training, which is interactive and requires much greater technical and didactic competence.
The combination of these different formats with self-study content in the form of PDFs, surveys, and e-learnings then constitutes an online course. This differentiation must be clearly communicated to companies as clients. The industry needs new standards, terminology, and pricing models that reflect this differentiation.
Nothing works without digital skills
Virtual collaboration requires new competencies, both from employees and managers. Offerings on virtual or remote leadership are gaining importance, as are topics like online meetings, presentations, and workshops. However, not only the employees and managers of our clients need new competencies. The same applies to trainers, consultants, and coaches. A variety of new offerings are currently being developed for this. For example, anyone who trains leadership, communication, or sales must also be proficient in using new tools for communication within companies. This is both a challenge and an opportunity. Only those who are experienced users themselves can train and help with these newly demanded competencies. Continuing education professionals without digital competence will only be able to survive in niches in the future.
Continuing education is driven by technology
All continuing education is increasingly driven by technology. Knowledge of different platforms for digital learning is becoming more and more important. Actors in the continuing education market must increasingly deal with technological standards and applications. Tools and bandwidth are important factors that play an ever-greater role in the planning and execution of training measures. Trainers, consultants, and coaches must adapt to and be able to use ever-new platforms and solutions that are used by the respective
client.
Blended Learning becomes the standard
Blended learning was a trump card in recent years and, in my opinion, will become the standard in the future. Those who already had reasonable offerings before Corona are now clearly at an advantage. Those who, on the other hand, have not yet had a blended learning strategy now need one and are probably in the process of developing digital offerings, expanding them, or optimizing and better integrating existing ones.
The trend towards blended learning will not diminish – on the contrary. However, it is also clear that expectations are rising. Because the perception of what constitutes good or bad learning offerings – especially in the online sphere – is constantly evolving. Users are becoming more sensitive; they can now compare settings and tools because they are gaining more and more experience with them professionally and privately. With a higher digital maturity level of a company, expectations for e-learning and blended learning increase significantly. Ugly, complicated, didactically inferior offerings will not completely disappear due to Corona, but they will meet with significantly less acceptance.
Self-learning is becoming increasingly important
The self-reliant and motivated self-learner is the ideal for many companies. In the past, this didn’t really work out, because many companies, through their HR development, educated employees to be the opposite: everyone should only learn what is necessary for their competence. For this, they received a tailor-made offer.
COVID-19 has strengthened employees’ personal responsibility, especially when it comes to ‘acquiring new skills’. More and more companies are providing their employees with access to online platforms where they can access offerings according to their individual needs. This trend will continue to grow.
Job profiles in HR and Learning & Development are changing radically
HR development and other areas that procure training and coaching have so far been rather uninnovative and digitally incompetent. This is currently changing – and Corona is reinforcing it. The introduction of a tool like Microsoft Teams, for example, requires IT competence. This leads to a completely new requirement profile for the departments concerned and their employees. Digital Learning Growth Hacker, for instance, is now a job description in HR.
The training industry is being disrupted
Corona contributes to the disruption of the entire training industry and established business models. New platforms like Greator (formerly GedankenTanken) or Coachhub receive significant funding from investors and are challenging traditional training offerings. Continuing education databases like Semigator were niche ten years ago, but today they are hitting a nerve. Microsoft is increasingly becoming a learning company, building its own ecosystem around competence development from LinkedIn, LinkedIn Learning, and Slideshare.
And this is just the beginning: Customers are increasingly asking for ‘playlists’ of e-learnings and online courses from LinkedIn Learning and Udemy as a supplement to purchased in-person training. They often do not want specific e-learnings from the hired trainer. For companies purchasing training, the offerings on such online platforms are often more transparent, but for individual trainers and consultants, it is becoming increasingly difficult to assert themselves in the market. There are several reasons for this:
- Clients increasingly view continuing education as a commodity, a product. Therefore, their willingness to pay high prices for it is decreasing.
- In the online sphere, competencies in handling and managing groups are less relevant.
- The expert status that many consultants and trainers have painstakingly built up has a completely different value online. Here, self-proclaimed experts who have no real expert status can appear overnight. However, customers often don’t mind this.
- Blended learning offerings sometimes require solutions that individual trainers can no longer provide.
Business is becoming fragmented
Online formats are shorter than in-person formats. A two-day in-person training, for example, is not simply converted into two consecutive live online training days, but rather spread over four sessions of four hours each on several days.
Consulting mandates are also split; for example, one day of consulting is divided into four meetings of two hours each. While this is usually sensible, it makes the work of a trainer or consultant significantly more complex.
Individual working days are thus divided into different appointments for different projects; sometimes one has four appointments for four different client projects in one day. Each time, the client expects one to be well prepared. Furthermore, it becomes more difficult to achieve past revenues when training is spread over more and more days.
New business models are needed
The training industry cannot avoid developing new business models. Previously, we agreed on fixed daily rates with clients, but suddenly this training day is split. In addition, we need additional support for a technical moderator, which has not yet been part of our framework agreements. At the same time, our clients and participants are getting used to consuming online content often for free. Thinking in terms of training days is a thing of the past. Completely new models are required here.
The training industry is becoming more international
Corona promotes the internationalization of our industry. Many employees search online for suitable learning opportunities during the Corona period and quickly land on international sites like TED or large MOOC platforms like Coursera. No wonder, because there are currently no large e-learning platforms from Germany. In addition, automatic translations by Google or similar providers are getting better and better, and the reluctance to use English-language continuing education is decreasing. Anyone who only works in German has little chance as a trainer with internationally active companies.
Big players are gaining ground
In Germany, Haufe is the dominant player in open training. Even the German Society for Human Resources Management (DGFP) has discontinued its own offerings and moved under the umbrella of Haufe. The company has invested heavily in the development of its own e-learning and social learning solutions in recent years and will continue to grow accordingly in the future. Haufe works extensively for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This particularly threatens individual trainers and consultants who serve this segment.
In the future, more and more SMEs and larger mid-sized companies will want to work with a full-service provider like Haufe. And due to Corona, even more trainers and consultants than before are willing to enter into a cooperation with such a large player – usually, however, at lower fees. Individual providers are weakened by the crisis and hardly have the resources to invest in new digital solutions when revenues from their core business of in-person training are declining. All of this benefits the big players.
Generational change in the industry is accelerating
Many individual trainers and consultants are ‘digital immigrants’ (in contrast to digital natives, who grew up with modern information technology). They will find it difficult to credibly transition to the new digital business.
For topics such as ‘agility and digital sales‘, for example, a company is more likely to hire a trainer whose age also fits the topic and the target group. More importantly: Many digital immigrants find it significantly harder to understand and adapt to the new digital business models. Anyone over 50 will need a good niche strategy in the continuing education market in the future.
On the client side, many personnel will be cut in large companies as a result of the Corona crisis. This means that the old contacts from the 50+ group will disappear sooner than expected. And young decision-makers often prefer to work with trainers and consultants of their own age rather than with gray-haired experts who remind them of their own parents. Anyone over 50 will therefore need a good niche strategy in the continuing education market in the future.
Live Goes Online – Successfully Conducting Meetings, Presentations, Seminars Online
Live Goes Online: If you think the ‘V’ in this title is wrong and should be replaced by an ‘F’, you’re not entirely mistaken, because ultimately, our entire lives are also moving online. Live Goes Online is about live communication in conversations, meetings, presentations, conferences, which initially occurred due to Corona, but are now increasingly taking place online for practical reasons.
Albrecht Kresse and Jannis Herzog have summarized their experiences from the last six months in a practical guide that shows us all how live online communication works.
- How do I present myself professionally online?
- How do good live online meetings work, no matter which tool I am currently using?
- How can I make myself fitter in my online communication?
- How do I present my content in online meetings professionally, convincingly, and also technically flawlessly?
- And how is our working world changing due to the shift of phone calls and in-person meetings to the virtual space?
This is what the book “Live Goes Online” is about, aimed at everyone who, since March 2020 at the latest, has been professionally moving more and more frequently or even daily in the live online communication world.
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