Employees are one of the main pillars of success for any organisation or business. However, to ensure employee retention, growth is essential to keeping them happy and satisfied. Happy and satisfied employees bring the best results for businesses. Training and development are crucial for the human resources department, and sending employees for training sessions can be productive.
However, there may be other ways to accomplish this goal that save time and money. The changing times require updated methods of training, which not only ensures that the training works on employee development and growth but also, at the same time, doesn’t waste their time.
Understanding the benefits of e-learning for staff training
Before diving into the procedures and methods, we must understand the importance of e-learning in our work and professional lives. How does it impact our human resources department, and how can it affect the overall business?
- Empowerment: E-learning gives your employees the power to control their learning journey. Whether working from home, in remote locations, or in the office, they can access the learning modules at their convenience and complete them from anywhere, fostering a sense of independence and control.
- Cost: E-learning is a financially prudent choice. With everything available online, there’s no need to hire a venue or print out papers. Travelling costs for employees or trainers from one location to another are also reduced, and instructor fees are minimised, making HR professionals feel resourceful and cost-effective.
- Efficiency: The course is available to any number of employees working across global offices and destinations, showcasing the efficiency and effectiveness of e-learning in reaching a large audience.
- Consistency: The same course is available to every employee, so it helps avoid discrepancies.
- Tracking and reporting: Everything is available online, and HR personnel can easily monitor each employee’s progress.
How to implement e-learning courses in staff training and development effectively
Step 1: Assess the training needs
The human resource department must assess the organisation’s needs and understand the gaps in knowledge and skills required to meet the organisation’s needs.
Conducting surveys and meeting with department heads can help you identify the areas where your employee needs training to grow in their profile. Here are the common areas of e-learning:
- Onboarding and orientation
- Compliance and workplace safety
- Leadership and management skills
- Technical and software training
- Customer service and communication skills.
Step 2: Setting clear learning objectives
Once you have identified training needs, your next step is establishing a clear learning objective. You must see if the training needs match the organisation’s overall growth to do that.
For example, you might have training on ‘improving customer service.’ This broad topic covers all the department’s needs, but to make it more achievable, you can divide it into further smaller sections like ‘How to handle customer complaints professionally,’ ‘How to improve repeat consumers,’ and more. Following SMART objectives can help you determine clear learning objectives.
For instance, a SMART objective for ‘improving customer service’ could be ‘By the end of the training, employees should be able to handle customer complaints professionally.
S – Instead of focusing on the broader topic, be specific to the learning segment.
M – Every learning module/course should be measurable. Therefore, monitor and include merits for learning progress.
A – Since you have made your learning specific to the needs, it should be achievable by all employees.
R – The learning goals and organisations should align with each other; therefore, it should be relevant to the company’s progress.
T – Employees must know that they have time-bound training sessions to complete.
Step 3: Choosing the Right e-Learning Platform
Once you have everything set, it is time to look for the perfect online partner to cater to your training needs. Here are essential considerations that one should evaluate their learning platforms.
A user-friendly interface, interactive learning tools, comprehensive reporting features, and responsive customer support are key factors to consider. Choosing the right e-learning platform can significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of your training programs.
- User friendlt: You want to ensure that all your employees have an easy time logging in, scrolling through the courses, and choosing what is required according to the requirements and deadline.
- Mobile compatibility: Given that the employees are occupied and might travel, it will be preferred to have mobile compatibility platforms that can help them take courses on mobile as well.
- Integration: For the HR department, integrating the courses and tools should be easy.
- Tracking and analysis: Tracking the employees’ progress and updates for HR and the department should be easy.
- Customisation: The platform should allow the departments to help plan the training needs according to the requirements and customise as needed.
Step 4: Develop engaging e-learning content
The content of any learning course should be engaging, and employees should be encouraged to learn more. Here are some best practices for e-learning content development:
- Use microlearning: As discussed earlier, instead of creating extensive courses with a longer duration, it is better to divide them into miniature learning courses; this will be like a step-wise approach to learning the broader topic.
- Make it interactive: Instead of sticking to reading or listening courses, create quizzes, tasks to submit, and more.
- Multimedia: Using animations, graphics, and media can help keep the employees engaged throughout the course.
- Gamification: Besides quizzes and submissions, creating interesting games with badges can motivate employees to learn more.
Step 5: Encourage employee participation
Encouraging employees to learn and stay motivated at all times is crucial; to do that, the human resource department must create and incorporate learning into the organisation’s culture.
Here are some ways to boost participation:
- Setting deadlines: One way to ensure employees participate and complete each course is to enforce the deadline.
- Providing incentives: Offering rewards like bonuses, recognition, and certificates can help employees stay motivated to learn more.
- Communicating benefits: Employees might find the learning modules a waste of time, so you must highlight the course’s benefits and how they can grow in their roles after taking them.
- Manager support: HR and the hiring department/manager push employees to complete the course faster by making it within their teams.
Step 6: Monitor progress and give feedback
As the Human Resource Department creates e-learning courses, they must be measurable and achievable.
Here is the way the department can monitor progress and give appropriate feedback:
- Check the scores of the quizzes and submissions
- Check the leaderboards of the games.
- Completion dates and timeline
- Observe the areas where employees struggle.
- Check on their engagement levels.
As the manager or the Human Resources department, when you have the data right in front of you, you can give proper feedback to your employees, conduct appraisals, and approve other learning modules for the employees to improve.
Step 7: Continuously improve e-learning courses
With the changing times, you need to change the e-learning courses to keep up with the progress of the staff and organisation.
Here are the ways you can keep updating your courses:
- Keep an eye on the upcoming changes in the field. Look at the industry trends.
- Collect feedback from the employees and managers and make adjustments to the courses.
- Prepare fresh material for the staff training.
How Do We Create an e-Learning Culture in the Organisation?
It is not easy to create the culture straight away, but it is the beginning or the first step to setting up e-learning in the organisation for staff training.
Here is how HR can push the culture:
- Encourage self-paced learning: Do it at your convenience, anywhere and anytime, to give them the comfort of taking courses after a busy day or week.
- Offer career development opportunities: When employees know that the training can help them grow in their roles, they are motivated to learn more.
- Host knowledge-sharing sessions: It helps when you encourage the employees at different forums to share their insights into what they have learned from the e-learning courses.
- Recognise and reward learning achievements: In the town hall or any other platform, recognise active learners and reward them with incentives or certificates to motivate all employees to complete their courses.
The future of digital staff training
The changes and advancements in the business require skilled and experienced staff members who can continuously deliver their best for the organisation.
When employees know that the organisation is motivated to invest in their development, employee retention increases to the maximum. They often become more motivated to learn more and grow with the growing business. Therefore, setting up an e-learning course culture for organisations will be beneficial and have less impact on cost and time.
These learning methods can be measured and monitored, and then, with proper feedback, necessary actions can be taken, whether it is suggesting new improvements for the employee or the latest courses in the platform.
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