E-learning is changing our entire understanding of education. In the old days, learning was fairly standardized. Learners would sit through training sessions and lectures, and then take a test to demonstrate the knowledge or skills they’d gained. E-learning alters that completely. And there are some huge benefits of online learning for employees.
Conventional training methods can no longer keep up with our fast-changing, globalized society. A modern approach to learning should enable the freedom and flexibility to learn from anywhere in the world. In short, this means it’s time to embrace a culture of online learning for employees. Here are 10 benefits of online learning for your organization’s growth:
Now that many more employees are working remotely, e-learning emerges as the only fit for learning in a work-from-home setup. As you continue to hire new employees remotely, for example, creating an effective digital training program allows you to keep up with remote onboarding needs.
And this culture of online learning is here to stay. Even as the pandemic fades away, more and more organizations will continue moving toward e-learning as their primary mode of corporate training.
A traditional approach to education centers around strict class schedules, which can be limiting for people with other commitments, like work events, family matters, or other obligations. One of the advantages of e-learning is that it gives learners power over their schedule by granting access to training materials online anytime.
Besides time constraints, traditional education is also led by an instructor who decides what and how their students will learn. One of the pros of e-learning, however, is that it restructures that top-down learning approach. It shifts the learning responsibility from an instructor to the learners themselves. By becoming less dependent on a top-down organized learning program, learners can take responsibility for their own development.
Research shows that most people forget at least 75% of what they’ve learned in just a few hours. This problem is known as the forgetting curve. But one of the advantages of e-learning is that you’ll be better equipped to help your learners retain information.
By making your training content readily available, you empower your employees to revisit the information as often as they may need to on the job. On the flip side, you can also easily share the most up-to-date content in real-time, ensuring that your employees always have the most relevant information on hand.
Saving money has often been cited as another one of the advantages of e-learning in the workplace. That’s hardly surprising considering the vast savings that an effective e-learning system can provide. This is particularly true for larger organizations with thousands of employees to train across the world. Making your content available online also eliminates the need for expensive onsite facilities and stacks of printed materials.
Besides being much cheaper than classroom-style training, e-learning also helps organizations keep up with the ever-increasing speed shaping our work environments. Empowering employees to learn at their own pace gives your Learning & Development team more time to devote to more high-stakes tasks instead of organizing face-to-face training events.
Get expert tips for a smooth transition from classroom training to digital learning.
When T-Mobile added an Employee-generated Learning approach to their e-learning strategy, they managed to increase their learning output by five times using only 25% of their L&D resources. Using an Employee-generated Learning approach, the L&D team was no longer responsible for creating e-learning content and could instead delegate that to employees. This allowed the L&D team to take on a more managerial role, freeing up their time to take on other tasks.
Today’s employees are used to getting information on demand through platforms like Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, or an LXP. It’s no surprise that they would feel restricted by slow, traditional learning channels they might find in their workplace. That’s where online training offers benefits for employees.
By enabling you to share the most up-to-date content quickly, e-learning allows your employees to decide for themselves what and when they learn. In return, it allows you to meet your employees directly in their learning moments.
Another benefit of e-learning courses is that you can easily track key metrics about your employees’ progress. Modern e-learning platforms provide detailed insight on your learners — not just their performance on tests and assignments, but also what resources they’re turning to the most. This data allows L&D teams to identify trends and make strategic changes whenever necessary. It’s a faster, more responsive way of teaching, and it eliminates time spent reviewing exams or assignments.
Another advantage of the online learning system — as the pandemic has shown us — is that it can lower a company’s carbon footprint. One way e-learning helps is by reducing the need for printed materials, saving paper, and preventing the use of environmentally harmful inks. But there are even more benefits of online employee training. For instance, an e-learning model significantly reduces carbon emissions if it means employees are no longer driving or flying to in-person training sessions. Subsequently, eliminating the need for large-scale training facilities (i.e. classrooms, auditoriums) can also save lots of energy.
With e-learning, you can provide instant feedback to your learners. When a learner responds to a test question, for example, they can expect to know if they’ve answered correctly or not immediately. This is one of the main benefits of e-learning for employees as it allows them to internalize the knowledge during their learning moment instead of having to wait a week or more for test scores.
And feedback goes both ways. By incorporating a rating system into your e-learning course, like a net promoter score (NPS) survey, you can identify how your learners respond to your content and determine whether you need to make improvements to your approach. All courses created in Easygenerator offer an NPS survey by default.
The classroom setting is filled with distractions. Even the teacher’s body language and speaking style can distract learners from the actual lesson. Another advantage of online learning is that it significantly reduces these interferences and places the focus solely on the content, optimizing your learner’s attention.
From helping your employees thrive to lowering your company’s carbon footprint, there are several advantages of e-learning your organization stands to benefit from.
Now that you know the benefits of e-learning, it’s time to learn how to create an e-learning course. We recommend you try out our accessible e-learning authoring tool to get started.
Easygenerator provides a user-friendly authoring experience with unprecedented support services, allowing anyone to get started, even if you don’t have a background in instructional design. Try our free 14-day trial with unlimited access to our authoring features. No credit card required.
