E-Learning for Your Employees 101

Ongoing training for employees can take a significant toll on your business. From renting classroom space and scheduling coverage to hiring instructors and making sure everyone who needs the training is able to attend, training can become a logistical and financial nightmare. Fortunately, there are many e-learning solutions that can achieve similar educational results without expending significant resources on traditional training expenses. Here are five tips for choosing and deploying an e-learning program at your organization.

1. Choose the right course topic for your enterprise
   Before selecting an e-learning provider, you should have a clear understanding of the learning objectives—which skills do your employees need to develop? This is the first step in researching e-learning providers who offer courses relevant to your aims. Look for companies with an impressive track record of producing quality learning resources. The e-learning provider you select will then help you to assess specific skills and qualifications required by your staff.
2. Evaluate a high-quality e-learning program
   Is this e-learning program the right fit for your organization? First, preview the program’s e-learning materials to see whether the course is user-friendly and engaging. Does it include videos or interactions to foster learning? Are there any support tools provided?
   A quality e-learning course is well-written, enjoyable for the learner, and full of engaging interactions to help learners to retain and digest new knowledge. Make sure the course is also available on mobile devices to allow your staff to access learning content anywhere and at any time.
   Most importantly, ensure that you’ll be able to track, measure, and analyze learner activity. If you’d like to include the course in your own LMS, you should also make sure that it’s SCORM-compliant.
3. Figure out the average cost of great e-learning courses
   First-year deployment costs of an e-learning training program are usually higher, and ongoing costs tend to get lower. Return on investment is typically realized within the first year of acquiring a program. What are the main expenses associated with online courses? Costs depend on the needs and size of your enterprise and the number of active learners, as well as software-related costs ranging from licenses to deployment of special applications.
   What about budgets? A Fortune 1000 company might be looking at the range of $100,000-$200,000. Small businesses can expect to spend around $30,000-$50,000. As a general rule, the larger the project, the bigger the cost.
4. Motivate employees to use your e-learning solution
   If your employees aren’t aware of the real-world benefits of training, they’ll never be motivated enough to begin the program and to finish it in a timely manner. Make sure to emphasize the course’s advantages and offer your employees a method for assessing how much they’ve learned. They’ll be motivated to learn more after discovering they’ve deepened their knowledge.
   On a broader scale, develop an e-learning culture at your company and make e-learning part of your business mission. Your best strategy for motivating employees is offering incentives and rewards for those who achieve the best results or who significantly improve their performance. Create a consistent program and make the most from a smart, gamified learning environment.
5. Measure learning outcomes and ROI
   If you don’t have your own learning management system, then you can count on a quality e-learning provider to offer you one, as well as a suite with administrative, tracking, and analytic functionalities.
   Measuring ROI is a bit more complex than analyzing the immediate learning outcomes of an e-learning course. To realize the full ROI of e-learning, you’ll need to convey the value of learning to your organization. This value can only be measured by relating your training solution to the business goals of your company. Before investing in e-learning technology, you’ll need to conduct an in-depth, front-end analysis to explore your business vision and any obstacles standing in the way of realizing it. Once you know these factors, you’ll be able to tell how training will support your aims and to gauge its value from the company’s proximity to these goals before and after training.

E-learning is easily your most cost-effective business training solution. These courses are flexible and can easily adapt to the needs of your organization, bringing you closer to developing and realizing your business vision.