How Blended Learning Benefits Corporate Training?
Corporate training benefits tremendously from a smart combination of educational technologies and a face-to-face interaction with a facilitator and other group members: In blended learning, a traditional instructor is substituted with a term “facilitator”. His main duty is to motivate and guide an employee. It helps a person develop own potential more effectively and implement newly gained skills into everyday work. This approach and new educational technologies also allow to control and evaluate the employee’s performance. At the same time, a learner feels free to study at his comfortable pace, time, and place. I call it “healthy democracy” of corporate training. Let us have an analytical look on how blended learning benefits corporate training:
1. It Is Cost-Efficient
Of course, good learning programs do not cost cheap, yet blended learning techniques allow to cut costs for the classrooms, traveling, accommodation, instructors' fees, and learning materials. So, how much can an organization save on blended training? According to Clive Shepherd’s case study, the online training reduces expenses to $11 for every learner in comparison to $95 spent on traditional training. However, IBM’s impressive results in $200 million sound more convincingly.
2. It Boosts Your Employees’ Motivation
Motivation and desire to develop own professional skills are key factors that influence any employee’s success. Flexible hours in blended learning provide a learner with freedom and self-control tools. Moreover, an employee isn’t stressed with the necessity to attend face-to-face classes whatever it takes. A learner decides himself what time is the best for learning and how many hours he should spend each day.
I think blended learning makes an employee more self-sufficient and result-oriented. Since there is no fixed schedule, a learner can balance more and choose the most appropriate learning hours. However, it also motivates to control oneself not to relax or postpone learning. The new educational software can evaluate and record the learner’s performance results. Thus, an employee can view the progress rate at any time of the day. And it can be a good reason not to give up to excuses such as family issues, low mood or too many tasks at work.
3. It Improves Communication Skills
Using the blended approach an employee is involved in a community of other employees. They learn to interact with other employees in both virtual and real environment. Besides, using the newest educational technologies in blended learning a person will face no difficulties with video conferences and online meetings in future.
With help of right blended learning, you can strengthen your employees on their online training, and enhance the engagement and motivation levels of their complete training experience. Further, face-to-face interactions following online study, or vice-versa, optimize the different benefits of both plans. It allows the employees to learn and build problem-solving skills.
4. It Is Personalized
I consider this benefit the most valuable, because in traditional corporate training an employer is a part of a group. He tries to adjust to weaknesses or strong points of other members. However, when a learner becomes involved in a blended learning he gets more freedom to focus on own weaknesses not losing a contact with a group. A person can also choose the method of learning which is more convenient to him at the moment. Besides, he can always select the course which is more useful to his current work.
The training can have a great impact on your business results, as the training trains your staff more effectively by optimizing their capability to get the best eLearning goals, and hence be able to develop their skills sets and enhance their work performance.
5. It Saves The Employee's Potential For Work
Every person possesses own potential and his productivity can depend on various factors. However, a tough schedule of in-class training can leave no time for a good rest. Hence, when an employee attends lectures notwithstanding his fatigue, it will lower his productivity level necessary for daily tasks. Using a distant learning approach a person can simply study the same issue sitting in a comfortable armchair at home.
Regarding all these ways blended learning benefits corporate training, blended training embraces the needs of a person and an organization at the same time.