The value of e-Learning

Many organisations have a need for more efficient training, whether it be onboarding new staff, compliance, or advanced learning. However, it’s not always clear how to address this need. Should you invest in online learning, pay for courses with an outside institution, or hire a specialist to conduct traditional face-to-face learning?

There’s a good reason why online learning has proven to be such a popular choice with many businesses. As a mobile, adaptable, and cost-effective tool, it makes effective training courses available to all businesses, large or small.

Online learning provides a wide range of benefits for businesses with the foresight to invest in it.

Here are just a few of them:

1. Reliable and scalable

e-Learning provides the opportunity to deliver your learning content in a uniform, consistent way. Alternative training methods can’t always guarantee this level of consistency.

When your people take the same course, they all receive the same high-quality learning that your stakeholders and you expect. And there’s no limit to the number of learners who receive that learning, from 1 to 1000+.

2. Potent learning journeys

Perhaps one of the biggest benefits of e-Learning is what it can achieve according to your budget.

A single e-Learning course can form a learning journey that:

• Communicates the ‘why’ by targeting the motivation of your learners
• Delivers information in a concise and engaging way
• Checks knowledge gained with informal and formal assessments

Of course, all these outcomes could be achieved via a combination of different methods. However, high-quality e-Learning can deliver them via a single platform.

3. Simple to personalise

e-Learning offers simple but effective ways to deliver personalised learning paths. This could be in the form of a diagnostic quiz at the start of a course which can assess the learner’s current level of knowledge.

This type of personalisation ensures your learners only receive the learning they need to achieve their objectives. This helps to maintain engagement, improve knowledge, and make the best use of your peoples’ time.

4. Reduced costs

e-Learning is proven to reduce costs for both learners and organisations. Learners enjoy the financial freedom of not needing to commute to a location each day – usually only requiring a device and an internet connection to complete their daily training tasks.

Accommodation in large cities is often a crippling commitment, especially with many training courses requiring two or three days away from the office. By removing the need to travel and staying overnight in costly hotels, learners are more likely to undertake non-mandatory training.

5. Updateable

Whether you need to reflect a policy or regulation change or simply keep your learning aligned to evolving business needs, e-Learning can be quickly and easily updated.
This helps ensure your learning is always relevant and aligned to the needs of your business. Other non-digital training methods tend to be less flexible, with a longer process to implement new content. This increased lead-time can have significant repercussions if your training supports key business operations, such as health and safety compliance and risk training.

6. Easily measured and tracked

The success of e-Learning is far easier to track than other training solutions.

By following industry standards such as SCORM you are able to collect a wealth of data on:

• Uptake and completion rates
• Learner activity and performance at an individual or group level
• Gaps in critical knowledge or skills across your business

This data can help you measure the success of your approaches, identify learners who may need more targeted support and help fine tune the experience accordingly.

Data from your e-Learning can also be combined with data on business performance to prove the impact your efforts are having. For example, tracking the completion of an e-Learning course on risk assessment against incident rates could demonstrate that your e-Learning is having a quantifiable impact.

7. e-Learning is environmentally friendly

The environmental impact of e-Learning is significantly lower than face-to-face learning events.

The below environmental factors are minimised (if not completely eradicated) when prioritising e-Learning over face-to-face learning:

• Carbon emissions from train, bus, air, and road travel
• Heating and cooling costs for venues
• Plastic and paper waste from catering and refreshment supplies for the duration of the event, not to mention the additional travel for catering deliveries
• Food waste, also associated with higher catering costs for an array of dietary requirements
• Accommodation costs, typically a burden on gas and electricity resources

The environmental impact of in-person training events can become enormous, considering how frequently new learning material needs to be delivered.

8. e-Learning eliminates the need to be local

Organisations have benefitted from the surge of remote workers since stay-at-home orders were imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic. This has filtered through to e-Learning, removing the restrictions of physical location.

Learners no longer need to be local – opening both the talent pool as well as the ability to deliver quality learning content across continents and time zones.

e-Learning also enables an element of social learning, which is vital for driving engagement and cultivating inclusion in the workplace. By removing the need to be physically present, learners are more inclined to interact within their own comfort levels while pushing their learning and development further.

Evidently, the advantages of e-Learning for employees underpins the growing need for digital transformation in the workplace. Learning and development should be at the forefront of employee development strategies.

Quality is key to maximising the benefits of e-Learning investment

One of the often-claimed benefits of e-Learning is that it is highly cost-effective. But that’s only the case if it’s done right.

If the e-Learning courses you provide are boring and unengaging, it doesn’t matter how much money you may have saved creating them. If it isn’t having a measurable impact, then it isn’t worth the investment. In fact, many of the benefits of e-Learning can be lost entirely if the solution itself isn’t high-quality.

For many businesses, e-Learning can be a fast, budget-friendly way of delivering critical learning to their workforce. But delivering quality, as well as speed and value, is key to making the most of your investment.

At System Concepts, we know that with the right approach, high-quality, effective e-Learning is within the reach of every business.

We have developed our own unique SCORM compliant e-Learning framework which can be customised to meet clients branding guidelines and has a range of rich interactive screen types available.

For lower-budget and/or quick-turnaround projects, we have a process in place to build courses using Articulate StoryLine 360 which is an off-the-shelf software package used to create rather more basic content that is fully SCORM compliant.

Please get in touch if you want to deliver intelligent, engaging, custom e-Learning to your people.