How Better Learning Content Management Makes A Good Business Sense: An Insight

How Better Learning Content Management Makes A Good Business Sense: An Insight
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Summary: While the benefits of effective workplace learning are many, the deficiencies that the organization faces as a result of poor learning efforts has a direct impact on business objectives as well and one of the prime reasons behind it is lack of learning content management. To build the case for eLearning and, hence, technology-aided platforms of learning, the fallacies of poor learning content management have to be clearly understood as well.

How Can Poor Learning Content Management Impact Your Organization As A Whole? 

Learning professionals in every industry agree unanimously on the many benefits of continual learning in the organizational scenario – for both employees and the organization as a whole. However, poor learning efforts have negative effects on business objectives; one main reason behind this is lack of learning content management.

Here are 5 constraints of effective learning content management:

  1. Duplicate content.
    A lot of information and knowledge reside within an organization, but for fruitful and continual learning it is important that duplication of information is avoided. Duplicate courses are a common problem for many learning-aware organizations and an extraordinarily expensive one at that. A single hour of content can cost over $15,000 of production, and creating duplicate content is a complete waste of valuable resources.
  2. Out-of-date content.
    Another result of duplicate content is outdated training conducted within the organization. This can lead to employees being misinformed, which is worse than having no information at all. It can give your end users wrong information and a false sense of confidence that they have knowledge, which, in reality, is month or even year old. It not only leads to compliance-related issues but also creates performance-based issues for the entire organization.
  3. Hard to access content.
    According to a study by Brandon Hall, mobile access to content is a critical issue to organizational learning, but nearly 60 percent of employees have no or limited access to learning content on mobile devices*. Learning professionals within the organization spend a lot of time and resources creating content, but unless this content is easily found or accessed by the end users, the efforts are a mere waste. Even if the learning content is found, it cannot be accessed on the device at hand. In fact nearly 50 percent of companies looking to move from their legacy learning platforms state that mobile incompatibility with learning management systems poses serious threats to seamless learning. Most modern learning management systems have searchable catalogs and logical designs that help users find content faster and learn efficiently.
  4. Underplaying the importance of learning.
    Though all learning professionals experience an organization wide increase in the interest and importance for training, especially in the last decade or so, many would also agree that they would benefit from using more resources in their organization for the cause of learning. The right learning content strategy can boost productivity by 50 percent, and online learning has the ability to increase retention rates by 60 percent*. Only a limited amount of resources are assigned to corporate learning within an organization, and with a misplaced focus, these resources can get consumed without the desired effect or impact.
  5. Not availing the services of learning experts within the organization.
    Subject Matter Experts within an organization are usually the champions of training and learning and play a critical role in the overall learning strategy. It is important to give them the resources and solutions that make it easy for them to share their knowledge with the employees of the organization. SMEs often have to struggle to develop content as per the requirements of the technology-aided learning platform. This is an area where external content creators or Learning Management System vendors can help them reuse and remix the existing content, as well as collaborate and create new, useful content.

Overcoming the constraints of effective learning content management is not an impossible task. Focusing on the critical problem areas and working to address them will help enforce corporate learning and gain the business advantage of continual workplace learning.

*Source: Making the Case for Learning Content Management by Xyleme