Best Corporate Training Topics: Employee Training and Development

Today’s employee seeks training in the top corporate training topics to stay relevant and prepare for job advancement. Thus, an organization that provides popular corporate training topics can better retain an employee who is skill-driven and motivated to do good work.

On this page:

• 13 best corporate training topics for any employee
• Importance of corporate training for the employee and organization
• How corporate training has evolved
• Summary

13 Best Corporate Training Topics for Any Employee

This suggested list of topics for corporate training can help your organization prepare any employee for additional responsibilities and improve current skills. Use our suggested list below as a starting point when determining what topics to offer an employee or employee group in your corporate professional development training program. Each topic group has a description to help you understand what each encompasses to help ensure a specific topic meets your training needs. An employee may request a corporate training topic not explicitly listed here; however, skill overlap often exists among the most popular corporate training topics.

Corporate Training Topic #1: Leadership Development

At the top of the search list is “popular corporate training topics leadership skills,” which applies to multiple employee categories: those preparing for leadership roles, those in entry-level leadership roles, and those seeking to advance to higher leadership roles. An organization’s size will influence the scope and focus of leadership development. For example, a larger organization will have an internally developed leadership corporate training program to meet the needs of different levels of leadership roles.

Corporate Training Topic #2: Communication and Collaboration

Effective communication and collaboration are best practices for any organization. The critical skill of emotional intelligence is within this training topic area. Review the full course description for any communication or collaboration class to see if it aligns with your needs. For example, communication can be project management-specific skills or be about customer communication.

Corporate Training Topic #3: Presentation and Speaking

The increase in hybrid and virtual work has only fueled the need for solid presentation and speaking skills. Learning presentation and speaking skills are one of the top corporate training topics for almost every industry and organization regardless of size. These skills are used within project management in many ways, including presenting a new project to the team, leading project work sessions, and speaking in project meetings. Knowing how to present in different environments to different audiences is a valuable skill set that benefits all careers.

Corporate Training Topic #4: Organizational Skills and Productivity

Organizational Skills often fall within an organization’s customized employee training program. Work types, software, standard operating procedures, quality control processes, and key performance metrics determine the organizational skills needed for a business and how it will assess employee productivity. Productivity is a skill set connected to time management, therefore, training in time management can help an employee within a current role and contribute to a team’s productivity.

Corporate Training Topic #5: Project Management

No training search is complete without “popular corporate training topics project management,” and it should always be an available training topic for an organization. Project management encompasses more than just organizing tasks to reach a goal. It requires interpersonal skills, leadership, budgeting, communication, negotiation, risk management, vendor management, etc.

Corporate Training Topic #6: Customer Service

Customer service is most common for those with a customer-facing role or a business with a designated customer service team. Yet, customer service skills are by no means limited to those that work in the customer service team. Make customer service an available topic for all employees, because how you treat internal customers is just as important as how you interact with external customers.

Corporate Training Topic #7: Negotiation Skills

Negotiation skills may be included in a more extensive training program to upskill employees or as a standalone topic to grow leaders’ overall skill set. For example, an employee could use negotiation skills to help team members work together, reach an agreement with a vendor, or find a consensus for a project requirement with a stakeholder.

Corporate Training Topic #8: Human Resources

For a smaller business, human resources may be one part of someone’s role. A larger company typically has human resource professionals, teams, or entire departments. There should be a training program for anyone with any human resource responsibilities to support that mission-critical work. Employee law, recruiting and interviewing, and employee benefit programs are a few knowledge areas within Human Resources that impact the entire organization.

Corporate Training Topic #9: Diversity and Inclusion

Creating a respectful work environment built on trust leads to more productive and engaged employees. Emotional intelligence is part of developing an understanding of diversity and inclusion. Additionally, employees with a greater understanding of diversity and inclusion are more likely to tap into innovative thinking sparked by sharing new perspectives. This is a topic that benefits from having an entire training program created as a means of increasing diversity and inclusion awareness among all employees.

Corporate Training Topic #10: Business Ethics

The layers of governmental regulations can dictate required ethics training. Yet, ethics training is not limited to laws or regulations. For example, Project Management Institute (PMI), the global standard for project management skill sets, has a code of ethics that all credential holders must abide by to remain credentialed. Therefore, consider ethics training in terms of the needs of a specific role and as a potential topic within a more extensive training program.

Corporate Training Topic #11: Strategic Thinking

Closely connected to problem-solving and critical thinking, strategic thinking is a skill that applies across industries and roles. Being able to assess a situation, the risks of different paths of action, and how to best leverage resources to address a problem is a powerful ability.

Corporate Training Topic #12: Conflict Resolution

Conflict can occur at any time within almost any setting. For example, coworkers can have a conflict around office environment preferences (e.g., level of lighting or times of work). Or there can be a conflict with a customer around billing or service quality. Emotional intelligence plays a vital role in conflict resolution; understanding the perspectives of conflicting parties is essential for bringing them together.

Corporate Training Topic #13: Technical Skills

Technical skills include the specialized knowledge to use tools to complete specific tasks. Technical skills can be delivered as standalone topics or as part of a more extensive training program within onboarding, upskilling, or reskilling.

Importance of Corporate Training for the Employee and Organization

Corporate training benefits the employee and the company when it is supported by leadership, valued as a benefit, and aligned to professional needs. Training can help:

• an employee learn new skills, stay updated on company policies and procedures, and improve their current role
• create a corporate culture promoting continuous learning, leading to a more positive work environment and higher job satisfaction
• a business become more competitive by staying ahead of the curve in technology and industry trends

Corporate training programs are an investment that helps a company attract and retain top employees while ensuring they remain productive and engaged.

How Corporate Training Has Evolved

In recent years, corporate training has undergone a dramatic shift, moving away from traditional methods of in-classroom lectures and toward more engaging and effective approaches. Incorporating technology-based modalities such as eLearning, virtual classrooms, and mobile learning has been crucial to the evolution.

With interactive technology, companies can deliver training more cost-effectively and efficiently while maintaining a high quality that enhances the training experience. For example:

• learners access course materials from anywhere, anytime, making it easier to fit studies into busy and sometimes unpredictable work schedules
• distributed employees and teams can collaborate and share ideas for a more interactive learning experience

Additionally, mobile apps can allow learners to track their progress against goals to help motivate progress.

Summary

Use this “baker’s dozen” of 13 of the best corporate training topics to guide skill development and training efforts for one employee or many. They are considered the best because they apply to any professional seeking to be a high performer with career advancement opportunities.