Economic E-Learning and Employee Development Tools
Smart companies recognize their employees for what they truly are: business assets to be developed in order to optimize their growth from within. However, in this current economic climate, business managers are consistently being asked to do more with less. This often leaves them without adequate resources to offer the continuing training and educational opportunities that help encourage their employees’ development. Employees who aren’t being given opportunities to cultivate and enhance their skills tend to view that as a lack of investment in them by their employers. This ultimately effects their engagement, which impacts their productivity, which has a heavy influence on your bottom line.
Thanks heavens for the potential that E-Learning and employee development offers. By utilizing online or on-demand learning modules in the training of your staff, you’re able to both encourage their continued professional growth while not having to get creative in order to afford your training costs. For managers such as yourself that are in danger of losing the confidence that employees have in your ability to serve their bests interests, these tools can be invaluable.
Understanding How Cost Effective E-Learning Can Be
To truly appreciate the revenue savings and retention that the combination of E-Leaning and employee development provides, you need to view their costs in comparison to your current training policies. If yours is like most companies, then you address your training needs in either one of two ways: contracting with a third party to come in and teach new employees the fundamentals of new concepts and then relying on internal employees to show how those concepts are applicable to your unique work environment, or maintaining a dedicated training staff that handles all aspects of employee education. In either scenario, you’re left having to deal with travel costs, material expenses, and man-hours lost to decreased productivity due to training.
By disseminating training materials online, you’re able to effectively eliminate a majority of those expenses. Employees are able to access training materials whenever they want, including during down times or even while away from work. Content management platforms dedicated to creating online learning content have recently been introduced that even allow for the development of material that’s accessible via mobile devices. With greater access comes greater flexibility in terms of the pace at which employees can complete required training modules. So great is the impact that E-learning tools have on employee productivity that some corporate training industry experts estimate that every $1 dollar spent on such tools offers a $30 return in improved work.
Addressing the Concerns Over Implementing E-Learning Tools
Now, you may be hung up on the fact that whether or not your choose to shift your company’s philosophy to E-Learning and employee development or to continue to adhere to standard training practices, you still have to dedicate the same amount of time to the creation of training material. While this is true, consider the ROI you get on your training content. By limiting training opportunities to an instructor-led environment, you’re also limiting the access to your training material. However, if you make that same material available online, a much greater number of employees may benefit from it, thus increasing your return with every use.
Another potential concern that you may have about the switch to an E-Learning and employee development philosophy are the costs associated with implementing an enterprise-wide learning management system software application. The truth is that you may not need all off the resources that such a program offers. Not to worry; LMS providers are increasingly offering customized service packages that can be specifically tailored to meet your organization’s unique needs, eliminating the potential of paying for features that could go unused.
The Other Advantages E-Learning Offers
While the financial benefits of combining E-Learning and employee development are readily apparent, they are not the only reasons why you may want to consider such a switch in your organization. Some of the other advantages include:
-Standardization: If all of your employees are accessing the exact same training content presented in the exact same way, then it’s easier to standardize process through your company.
-Privacy: Many employees don’t allow themselves to become full-immersed in in-person training sessions out of a fear of failing in front of their co-workers. E-Learning tools allow them to complete their training in anonymity.
-Retention: By requiring employees to work through training content themselves, you increase the chances of them retaining the material being presented.
It’s never too late to take advantage of the combined benefits of E-Learning and employee development. Once you’ve been able to effectively incorporate such tools into your corporation’s training and development practices, you’ll be able to leverage these benefits in order to bring on new employees looking to advance their careers within your organization. The tools offered by Mighty Recruiter can help make finding such employees that much easier.