Enhance your company training programs with content curation

A serious company ensures the continuity and improvement of work capacities of its employees. To achieve this goal, it organizes appropriate training programs for its employees. These enriching sessions reveal to be much more interesting and beneficial thanks to content curation. What is it all about exactly? How to use content curation as part of a company’s training programs?

Better understanding content curation

Content curation is a relatively new practice. This approach is considered vital by communication agencies, marketers and all those working in online marketing. Content curation includes the act of selecting, assembling, modifying, and sharing web content that is deemed to be of interest on a specific topic. Several players rapidly specialized in this field to respond to an ever-increasing demand on behalf of both companies and individuals.

Content curation sites work differently if compared to a typical search engine. These platforms do not have to look for absolutely all the content on a given subject. A curation tool focuses only on interesting content published by external sources, such as institutional sites, social networks, blogs, etc., or internal. The tool can equally scan your own database. The function of the curation tool does not end there. You can subsequently filter the most relevant content and select only those publications that really matter to you. These quality content materials are then shared in a timely manner with a specific audience, defined well in advance. Certainly, you can comment on the shared content, or enrich it with photos, updates or other additional material.

Why adopt content curation to train your collaborators?

Are you responsible for the training of employees within your company? If such is the case, you should give more importance to content curation in your programs. This practice presents various advantages, which make it a necessary ally for any professional trainer. Here are a few benefits:

Facilitating the gathering and sharing of relevant content

As a trainer, you are certainly very demanding on the quality of the resources made available to employees on training. You pay particular attention to the relevance of sources, the quality of writing and formatting. You would also like to provide the same information to all learners. Content curation responds to all these requirements. Curation tools help you group and organize the most interesting content on all subjects of your choice. You can then edit and share them to learners via a single channel.

Simplifying the work of trainers and capturing learners’ attention

Content curation tools are easy to use. All the company’s staff can make the most of them if used wisely. Finding quality resources then becomes easier for both trainers and learners. The latter could even contribute to the documentation part during their training itself. The curation of content thus makes them accountable, but not only. Involving employees in documentation also implies mobilizing more staff in research and thus, obtaining more quality resources for training. Content curation also encourages learners. They will feel more useful to the training program and will progress faster in their learning.

Instilling a true culture of learning

Content curation also changes the way you learn within your organization. There is no more place for the traditional model of the trainer who shares his knowledge with other employees. Information sharing is done on a linear basis among all participants. Trainers and learners are all likely to find edifying content that they can share with all staff. Content curation can also be used to establish a community of learners within the company. This community can interact at any time, through discussion channels on forums, social networks and instant messaging. Your employees will no longer consider training as a temporary step to take once or twice a year. Learning will become a habit among employees and will be part of their daily, weekly or monthly schedule. It goes without saying that having such employees can only be beneficial to your business.

Harnessing the optimum benefits of content curation

The contents obtained from curation give companies the freedom to no longer attach themselves to the traditional training model. This latter model relies heavily on formal learning and social learning. This approach, although unavoidable, is becoming less and less effective. Here are some reasons why:

Learners are less and less inclined to the professional trips that involve sitting for a long period of time and listening to- often- monotonous speeches
Finding time to train all employees is always more complicated
The organization of a traditional training program requires a significant budget

Does this imply that you should abandon the classic company training program? No. The idea would be to add more volume to your program with content curation, provided, of course, to use this lever under optimal conditions. Here is how you can perfect your company training with content curation.

Identify what the learners really want

Every company training program has a defined objective. The questions addressed during the learning sessions always revolve around these objectives. Sometimes these goals do not really correspond to what the learners are really looking for and this may affect their motivation and concentration. Content curation offers you the opportunity to choose and use data that truly matters to employees. A survey or a monthly questionnaire filled by employees is usually sufficient to know their preferences in training. Subsequently, the content curation tools allow you to find resources that meet these needs.

Add value to content obtained from curation

Curation tools scan publications on various platforms, including social networks, blogs and institutional sites. The content chosen by these tools is logically relevant and of high quality. However, this is not enough to make it a complete resource for your company training sessions. These content materials must be enriched with the comments and observations of the trainers. Your remarks help learners learn how to benefit from data obtained from curation in accordance with the objectives of the training.

Stay updated

All useful resources for training at your company are available on the Internet. Yet, not everyone has the capacity or the means to access it. Your role as a trainer thus consists in keeping an effective watch. It consists of monitoring the latest developments on topics that interest learners as well as your company as a whole. This is the best way to stay competitive in your industry.

Share and relay

Resources obtained from curation are useless if no one has access to them. Make sure that you have a platform where all learners can view the latest information related to their training and activities.

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