The Business Benefits of Online Learning

Many business owners and managers have been very wary of online learning because it is relatively new on the scene and therefore something of an unknown to them. However, now that e-learning is being more widely implemented by everyone from universities to Fortune 500 companies, it may be time for them to look again at online learning, not least because it offers a number of significant benefits to business, as you will see below.

Lower training costs

One of the biggest benefits of using online learning is that it can significantly lower your business’ training costs. Online training systems do not require travel, especially outside of work hours, the use of classrooms, physical learning materials, or the provision of catering services for students, which means you can save a whole lot of money by training your employees virtually.

Of course, you will need to spend some money on developing an online training course, but the beauty of doing so is, once you have created it, you can use it for years to come, easily updating any knowledge that is not current, and adding in any new pieces of training that are required, which mean the ROI of creating your own online courses is excellent. 

Avoid cheating

Another great thing about using online courses to train staff is that you can lower the risk of cheating. When you administer an online proctored exam, software will carefully monitor what a student is doing so that they are unable to cheat in any way., This is often more effective than relying on a human proctor to look out for instances of cheating, so you can be very confident indeed that anyone who passes your online courses is actually knowledgeable on the subject you are testing for.

Improve employee engagement

Employee engagement is really important for any business. Employees who are highly engaged are likely to be more productive, happier in their work, and less likely to leave.

You might be surprised to hear that the use of e-learning has been shown to improve employee engagement by as much as 18 percent, according to The Molly Fletcher Company.

This is perhaps not surprising because most employees really value personal development and the ability to train and progress up the career ladder, but they also value being able to manage their time as effectively as possible, and online courses that can be taken at any location in their own time will really help with this.

Reduce learning time

Studies have shown that e-learning courses can save as much as 60 percent of your employees’ time when it comes to completing a course! This is a huge amount of saved time that you can use to work on more productive aspects of your business.

How does e-learning save so much time? For one thing, it cuts out the need for employees to travel to a classroom-based learning environment, but more importantly, when you develop an e-learning course, you focus only on what is necessary. You don’t go off on tangents or add in unnecessary waffle, which is what often happens with in-person training, which means staff can simply get down to business, learn the essentials and then move on to getting on with the job again.

Gain a competitive advantage

Another thing that online learning can help you with is gaining a competitive advantage over competing businesses in your niche. Employee training, when it is implemented effectively, will not only improve employee productivity, but it will ensure that your workforce has sufficient skills to come up with new ideas, implement existing ones effectively and develop the skills required to more effectively help your customers. This will undoubtedly put your out ahead in the competitive world of business.

Improve teamwork

How can online learning improve teamwork? By ensuring that all of your employees get exactly the same training. Often, when you send employees out to be trained by third-party providers or have someone come in to deliver training in-house, the quality of that training can differ depending on whether you use the same person every time, whether the training company has decided to revamp its learning materials, or simply depending on the mood of the trainer at any given time.

Obviously, when you use online learning, you have none of these problems because, once you have developed a course, you can use it to train every single employee in the exact same way forever. Obviously, you may need to add updates as legislation or working practices change, but other than that, your training courses can remain the same forever, which means you know for a fact other employees will all be singing from the same hymn sheet.

This is likely to lead to fast fewer arguments or clashes in style, although it will obviously not be able to deal with all instances of personality clash – a computer can only do so much! 

Train more effectively

Although it is not universally the case that online learning is more effective, it is true that by gamifying the content of a course and making it more interactive, fun, and competitive, you can improve retention rates. Your employees will find it much easier to engage with interactive content that turns learning into a game, and as such, they will find it easier to get to grips with even the most difficult of subjects.

As you can see, there are so many great benefits to using online learning to train and develop your staff. No matter what sector your business operates in, implementing e-learning courses will help you to boost your bottom line, improve employee engagement and ultimately beat the competition, which means it is a tool well worth investing in.

Of course, you need to ensure that your online courses are of as good standards, so you will need to invest a decent amount in a good developer who really understands both your sector and how to structure an effective e-learning course, Don’t scrimp on this or you could end up missing many of the benefits.