Having a highly engaged workforce does not always guarantee that the organization will not have to deal with under-performing employees. There will always be situations where poor performance must be identified and dealt with.
In the first article, we covered some of the ways to improve employee performance.
So when it comes to Performance Improvement, where does eLearning fit in?
There is no one who can rationally argue that eLearning does not have a role to play in enhancing employee performance. It most certainly does! For instance, there are some poor performance situations that can only be addressed through learning interventions. For instance, the following poor performance situations can greatly benefit from eLearning and high-quality instructional design techniques:
- When a new employee misses performance targets (perhaps they need some additional training)
- When employees have just returned to the workforce after prolonged absence (perhaps they need a refresher)
- When new techniques and technologies are introduced in the organization (perhaps whole-scale training is needed)
- When an employee's roles/responsibilities have recently been revised (perhaps review training may be in order)
All of the cases of poor performance highlighted above can most certainly benefit from eLearning programs. However, to make a blanket statement that all employee performance issues can be addressed by re-training or eLearning is a misnomer.
To effectively deal with poor performance, employers must realize the limitations of organizational training initiatives. ELearning is not a "silver bullet" to cure all poor performance ills! In some cases, even the best instructional design cannot always fix poor performance issues. That is because the root causes of those issues are not training-related and may be anchored to other organizational challenges. In such cases, other performance improvement interventions, some of which have been discussed above, are needed to improve performance.
If you want to learn about Instructional Design and eLearning, please check out the Instructional Design for ELearning: Essential guide to creating successful eLearning courses book. This book is also available in Spanish http://amzn.to/1ur9Fiu
