Top 6 Tips To Effectively Analyze Your Company's Online Training Needs

Top 6 Tips To Effectively Analyze Your Company's Online Training Needs
Summary: In this article, I'll discuss how to effectively analyze your company's online training needs, so that you can create an online training and development strategy that allows your organization to reap the many rewards that online training has to offer.

How To Effectively Analyze Your Company's Online Training Needs

Making the transition from face-to-face training to online training has offered a number of benefits to organizations. From improved employee performance to increased profits, the advantages of online training offer businesses a competitive edge in today's unstable business environment. However, in order to successfully implement it, it's vital to carry out an in depth analysis of your training needs beforehand.

  1. Determine current employee performance.
    In order to determine your core learning objectives and to develop an effective online training strategy, you must first assess the current knowledge base and the skill sets of your employees. You should ask yourself: Is their current job performance high or low? For example, are they meeting their sales goals and are they effectively handling customer service issues? Carry out a thorough assessment to gauge where your staff is today, so that you can determine areas of training that you want to focus on moving forward. By doing this, you will also be able to identify which departments or groups need the most attention when you are formulating your online training plan. For example, if your assessment reveals that your HR department may need to brush up on company policies and hiring procedures, then you can custom tailor your online training strategy to develop their knowledge base and skill sets concerning these matters.
  2. Diagnose training obstacles that may be blocking employees’ performance.
    Carefully assess your current training strategy to see if it may be hindering, rather than helping, your organization. In many cases, you may find that your traditional training strategy may actually be causing performance issues, rather than remedying them, given that it isn't as effective as it should be. For example, employees may not have access to the resources they need, when they need them, or your current training courses may not be focusing on the right skill sets. Then, ask yourself: What is causing the performance issues that you observed? If you already implement online training, then you'll want to assess how you can improve your online training courses/modules/events to get the most out of your training efforts. Are there modules that may need to be shortened or lived up by adding graphics and/or videos? Are you updating your online training courses regularly so that employees can find out about the latest products or services your company is offering? To make a long story short, diagnosing current training obstacles that are standing in the way of employee growth can help you to pinpoint areas of improvement.
  3. Pinpoint areas of improvement based upon company’s mission and overall objectives.
    What are your company’s mission and objectives and how can you fill the current performance gap in order to align these with employees’ performance? Answering this all important question will enable you to pinpoint areas of improvement or concerns that may need to be addressed into your online training modules. What do you want to achieve through online training? Interview employees, conduct surveys, or carry out assessments in order to find out where weak areas exist, so that you can figure out how you can create an employee development plan that is in-line with company’s objectives.
  4. Analyze what content is necessary for company-wide growth.
    What information or data will you need to provide your employees in order to ensure company-wide growth? What is the core content that will help them to do their job more effectively? Are there protocols that you can share with them in order to enhance their on-the-job performance? This is a vital aspect of your online training needs analysis because it will allow you to determine which subject matter experts you may want to bring in during the development process, as well as which training materials you might need to provide during the online training sessions. While you are trying to assess your corporate training needs, knowing which information to include is just as important as determining what can be left out. After all, avoiding cognitive overload is essential to the knowledge acquisition and retention process. Only include what is relevant to the individual employee, and omit any data or information that may be unnecessary. For example, you won't need to include information about tech support or human resources in your sales online training module, as it will only confuse those employees and make the learning experience less engaging.
  5. Identify your audience and their skill sets.
    Learn as much as you can about who will participate in the online training program and what they will need to learn. In other words, you need to effectively analyze your online training audience. This can help you to develop an online training strategy that offers certain necessary skills and caters to individual employees. If you find out through a thorough analysis and data collection that your tech support department needs to work on their communication skills, you can then formulate a strategy based upon their particular needs. For example, their training might include niche-specific jargon and include scenarios that are based upon real-life computer issues they would encounter on a daily basis.
  6. Consider delivery methods and any technical limitations.
    Lastly, you'll need to consider how your employees learn most effectively and any technical limitations they may have. This way, you gain the ability to develop a corporate online training strategy that successfully delivers the necessary information or skill sets. Taking into account any technical limitations will enable you to create online training courses and modules that can be easily accessed by your employees. For example, if you design an online training course that includes content which cannot be viewed on a mobile device, then your employees won't be able to acquire new information on-the-go. It's important to always consider not only how you will be delivering the information, but also how the employee will be absorbing that new information. Consider their learning environment, which platforms they will be utilizing, and when they will be accessing your online training course or module. Also, you may want to check the following resources:

    • How to create an Asynchronous eLearning Strategy
      In this article I'll highlight the most important tips that you may want to keep in mind when creating an asynchronous Learning strategy for your eLearning course. These asynchronous learning tips will enable you to develop an eLearning course that motivates learners and makes your eLearning modules engaging, exciting, and effective.
    • How to create a Synchronous eLearning Strategy
      In this article, I'll offer you a step-by-step look at how to create a synchronous learning strategy that is informative, engaging, and interactive. Regardless of whether you are developing a private or corporate eLearning plan and whether you are planning an event, lesson, or course there are certain synchronous learning tips you will need to follow.
    • How to create a Blended eLearning Strategy
      In this article I'll go over on how to create an eLearning strategy that successfully integrates both synchronous and asynchronous eLearning design strategies, so that you can offer your learners a diverse and effective eLearning experience.
    • How to Develop a Successful Mobile Training Strategy
      While face-to-face instructor-lead training used to be the “norm”, today mobile training has become an increasingly popular method of skill set and knowledge development. Training and development managers are beginning to see the endless potential of mobile training. That is because mobile training not only offers learners the ability to learn on-the-go, but also allows them to gain immediate access to information whenever and wherever they really need it.

Following these Online Training Tips you will get a clear and spherical view of your employees’ current knowledge base, skills, and performance. At the same time, you will also become aware of their weaknesses and areas of improvement. After a thorough assessment of the vital information that you gathered in each step, you are now ready to build an effective online training strategy!

Want to learn more about Online Corporate Training? I highly encourage you to read the following articles.

  • 10 Reasons Why You Should Invest In Corporate eLearning
    In this post you'll find the Top 10 reasons why you should consider investing in corporate eLearning, regardless of the size of your staff or budget. In fact, I'll even share some insights about how online corporate training may help to actually reduce training costs and reduce employee turnover rates.
  • How To Dramatically Reduce Corporate Training Costs
    In this article I'll discuss how transitioning from face-to-face corporate training to online corporate training can help you to dramatically reduce corporate training costs and even share some tips to help you get the most out of your eLearning investment. In addition, if you are still skeptical about converting your face-to-face corporate training into eLearning, I will give you some examples of big brands that made the big transition and got positive results in many respects.
  • 6 Tips To Effectively Evaluate Your Corporate eLearning Strategy
    This article will delve into some helpful and effective tips to evaluate a corporate eLearning strategy, so that you can determine if your current plan is offering the best possible return on investment.
  • Top 9 Online Corporate Training Mistakes You Should Avoid
    Every online corporate training project comes with its own unique set of obstacles such as a tight deadline or the difficulty of organizing an abundance of training materials. These issues can make an online corporate training project challenging even for the most experienced instructional designers. No matter the challenges, there are a number of online corporate training mistakes that many projects have in common. So, before developing your next online corporate training course, have a look at this list of the top 9 online corporate training mistakes that you should avoid.
  • Assessing Return on Investment (ROI) of eLearning
    One of the biggest challenges that eLearning professionals experience is demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) of their training programs. In order to attract project sponsors and to justify resources invested in the development of eLearning, projects need to prove that they deliver real benefit to an organization. This article discusses considerations that need to be factored in when calculating eLearning ROI.