PERSONAL TRAINING 2.0

The tech startups replacing those dreadful tutorials

— AMPLIFIRE

Employees respond to questions presented by software that blends neuroscience and cognitive psychology. Each answer informs what content they see next, so they can’t progress without mastery but aren’t stuck wading through stuff they already know. “It’s hard to see what’s in the neurons of your workers,” says CEO Bob Burgin. “But with the right analytics, you can pinpoint where people are struggling and when they start to forget things and need retraining.”

— AXONIFY

“Most employees can’t recall the torrent of information they get during onboarding,” says Carol Leaman, president and CEO. “Yet training is typically one and done, with no reinforcement afterward.” Axonify provides a steady drip of targeted training: a few minutes every day, delivered at a kiosk or on employees’ smartphones.

— DEGREED

This gamification platform lets employees add any type of learning—courses, articles, videos—to their user profile, and then spots and seeks to fill skill gaps to help move them up the career ladder.

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UDEMY FOR BUSINESS

This curated collection of nearly 2,000 videos—on everything from how to get Amazon reviews to statistics for business analytics—is used by companies like Lyft, PayPal, and Century 21. Employees can view course progress, star ratings, and comments.

— NOVOED

Co-founded by a professor and a PhD student from Stanford University, NovoEd works with customers like Ideo and Wharton to create group training courses that are collaborative and hands-on, in subjects such as design thinking and cross-functional team leadership. CEO Ed Miller says, “When people have thought about training online, it’s been about managing the materials—‘Here’s a video of that talk, here’s a discussion board to accompany an in-person class.’ But this newest generation of technology rethinks training entirely.”