Online Employee Training and Development: Why are companies making the switch?

Remember the time, when you used to carry a pen and a notebook to take down notes whenever your trainer said something insightful? Well, that’s no longer the case. We are now living in the digital era wherein smartphones, tablets and laptops have taken over the humble notebook. It’s the era of online learning and corporates are now moving away from traditional training methods of corporate training due to the many advantages of e learning.

How is Digital Transformation Influencing Online Learning?

Digital Transformation is affecting every industry be it education, finance or corporate. The combination of technology and the Internet have changed the business landscape forever. Organizations across industries need to embrace the changing paradigms and formulate a strategy to create streamlined online learning programs.

They must understand what their employees need, their personal preferences and choices before designing their online curriculum and to seamlessly manage the transition between analog and digital. The benefits of online learning are undeniable, in this article we go into depth of why companies are quick to embrace the change.

An effective e-learning platform or initiative can boost confidence levels of the workforce, better learning outcomes and generate greater business performance.

7 Primary Benefits of Online Learning

Digitization is rapidly changing how learners train themselves to keep their knowledge and skills relevant in all stages of their careers. In this segment, we cover the 7 most important benefits of e-learning and how it strengthens your learning and development program:

  • Online Training is Accessible Everywhere

    Online training proves beneficial for both the trainees and organizations as a whole. When employees start their training and learning online, they can do it at their own pace and schedule and from their device right from the comfort of their home or workplace. All they need is Internet connectivity to access the content on-the-go.

    Further, if they do miss out on a lecture or are confused about a topic, they can always replay that particular video as per convenience. Recalling important points every-now-and-then builds up their retention ability too. This setup also works best for professionals who fail to attend office due to medical issues and for the ones who aren’t made for the traditional “9-5” work schedule.

  • Online Learning Promotes Self-learning

    Another benefit of e-learning is that it allows the employees to learn without being pressurized. As each learner comes with his/her set of skills, knowledge, experience, and even retention ability, offline learning can get too much complicated for them as it tries to fit into the requirements of all candidates.

    On the contrary, no such hassle occurs with online learning as it allows employees to pick modules as per their choice. Picking out modules and lectures as per their personal choice allows them to engage with the content in a way that works best for them.

  • Interactive and User-friendly Content

    As a trainer, you must create user-friendly content, one that helps your learners understand the topic clearly and meets up their expectations. To ensure that your content piques your audience’s interest, you can implement the concept of gamification into it. Interactive videos, online simulations, videos, etc. combined with gamification are known hacks to improve user traction across all types of content. Embracing the latest e learning trends keeps your audience motivated.

  • Collaboration Becomes Easier with Online Learning

    If your organization is huge with multiple departments and a wide workforce dispersed across the globe, connecting with them at the same time is a struggle due to time zone differences and other logistical factors. However, with online training, it gets easier for the employees to access the same content, attend live sessions, and collaborate with other attendees. E Learning development and implementation can ensure that the entire company gets to view the same standardized content and collaborate seamlessly.

  • Online Training is Cheaper than Conventional Training

    Corporate organizations no longer believe in the concept of conventional training because it either demands the attendees to be physically present at one centralized location or needs the corporate trainers to travel to different locations, facilitating this can become prohibitively expensive. Online learning on the other contrary, is pocket-friendly as it minimizes travel and accommodation costs alongside other costs incurred in purchasing equipment, meals, learning materials, lodging, etc.

  • It Caters to All Kinds of Audiences

    Another significant benefit of learning online mode is that you get ample of data to read and consume. You get 100% flexibility to customize your training experience based on what you need, for example – if you are an audiophile, you can download apps like Spotify, Google Podcasts to listen to some popular podcasts that resonate with your course. If you’re able to retain more through visuals or infographics, you can watch YouTube videos to train yourself in a particular skill. Corporate trainers can use a Learning Management System or platform to store all these forms of content, leaving it to users to pick and choose based on their preferred format. Additionally, it’s easier to personalize your curriculum to make it fit into the needs of a certain segment of your target audience. Following a targeted approach allows your employees to expand their knowledge graph effortlessly, thus improving the chances of course completion.

  • It’s Easier to Monitor Performance and ROI

    With major learning tools, E Learning platforms and LMS platforms incorporating analytics into them, it’s easier for you and the employee to keep a track of their performance at all times. With analytics involved, you can check assessment grades, course completion rates, dropouts, and even turn-around-time for each course. Generating massive data reports becomes a breeze and makes record-keeping and monitoring an easy task. It also allows you to generate quality content and tweak your training material to ensure it’s both effective, user-friendly and helps you meet your business targets without affecting your overall ROI.

E Learning: What’s the way forward?

Now that we’ve covered the importance of online training in an organization, it won’t be wrong to conclude that there’s simply no slowing down. With the corporate world trying to enhance productivity at every touch point, e learning and digital transformation is the inevitable cost of doing business today.

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