Think back to your last training. Do you remember any of it?

Now think back even further to your first professional training session. How effectively were you able to practice what you learned after the session? Did you consider yourself “job ready” even after you were given the course completion certificate? Chances are, there was a gap between what was presented during training and your day-to-day responsibilities, forcing you to figure things out on your own.

Think of it this way: Your HVAC tech knows right away if their work is correct — the heat or air conditioning blows hot, cold or not at all. They’ve learned over hundreds of systems and understand what to do. The same goes for pilots. We wouldn’t want (or allow!) pilots to fly people around the world without many hours of flying in all conditions. Yet this is the approach of many corporate training teams in business-critical areas like cybersecurity and engineering.

The Risk of Traditional Training Methods

While ideal for providing initial context, traditional training often fails to prepare workers for on-the-job responsibilities and as a result, can decrease employee confidence and engagement. According to Gartner, 70% of employees state they lack the mastery of skills needed to do their jobs. Employees aren’t the only ones who’re affected by the lack of learning and development (L&D) opportunities in the workplace.

While 87% of organizations report experiencing skills gaps now or expect to experience them within a few years, most are unsure of how to effectively transform their approach to close skills gaps and prevent new ones from forming. Additionally, once training is complete, L&D teams must ensure that their employees are job ready. Failure to do so could result in wasted time, tools and resources, or delays in technological innovation. Employees may also be more likely to change positions or disengage in their roles due to a lack of training or skill development opportunities.

Hands-On Practice Can Bridge the Gap

As organizations are prioritizing reskilling and upskilling within their L&D initiatives, they’re missing a huge part of the equation: performance validation, or in other words, practice. Hands-on practice can help test employee knowledge and skills post training. This can help L&D leaders observe and verify that employees learned the necessary skills for their roles and can apply it on the job.

Hands-on practice can also provide insight into employees’ strengths and weaknesses, making it easier to identify future skill development opportunities. To validate performance and encourage practice, learning leader must replicate tasks specific to the employee’s job role in a safe, low-stakes learning environment. Simulations, role-playing and cohort-based learning are great examples of hands-on practice methods.

Virtual, Hands-On Labs Provide Effective Skills Development

Virtual training labs can also provide hands-on practice, as well as in-depth skilling data. The most successful learning organizations that have utilized virtual training labs can:

• Determine effectiveness of training strategies and whether adjustments/changes are needed to create a cost-effective training solution.
• Identify individual strengths and weaknesses and map them to larger skills taxonomies.
• Provide leadership with real-time, accurate data on learners’ progression.
• Create highly-skilled workers who meet business goals.
• Ensure learners are job ready.
• Increase learner engagement, retention and overall, satisfaction.

Most importantly, virtual training labs can provide organizations with in-depth data they can trust. We must stop the assumption that knowledge-based learning is enough and that employees are job-ready after leaving training. We all know business and technology has a daunting pace of change. You can’t compete individually or as a team without the key skills your business needs. L&D professionals must ensure employees have the necessary skills needed for the job and can apply them successfully.

Additionally, with the cost of eLearning and online modules expected to grow by $19.51 billion between now and 2025, organizations must rethink their approach to training. The only way to build skills that fit the work is to offer hands-on learning experiences that encourages people to practice and improve their skills in a safe environment.