How eLearning Increases Employee Productivity
The business of doing business in today’s competitive marketplace has become a huge task. Not that it wasn’t already tough enough before the internet changed how the world shops and gathers information. The demands on business have caused a shift in the workplace. Employees and staff can enhance their productivity with eLearning opportunities. What eLearning are essentially online training programs. Here is a look at reasons why you should encourage your staff to embrace eLearning as a workplace training tool.
1. Low Investment
Let’s face it. You are trying to keep an eye on the bottom line without it falling to the floor. Spending any kind of money on staff training is actually a good investment. Not only will it cost you little in the long run, you end up with employees with better skills. It’s really a win/win only if you are prepared to take that leap. With eLearning you can provide many different program options for anyone involved in your company. It will actually raise your bottom line.
2. Investing In Your Staff
We all hear about it a lot. The boss doesn’t care about me. The boss is a (fill in the blank) for doing (fill in the blank). Unhappy employees are lethal in the ways they can damage a business, product, or reputation of a company. When they feel that they are not valued, it becomes a tough issue to confront and resolve. By offering incentives through eLearning opportunities staff feels a better connection with management. It improves workplace attitudes and keeps everybody happy.
3. Improves In-House Hiring
One costly hurdle for many of today’s businesses is the training of new staff. There is no doubt that some employees are only going to climb so high on the corporate ladder. However, with eLearning as an option to enhancing one’s skill set, this does two very important things within your business. It trains employees for better opportunities within the company. It also provides you with a better trained staff for hiring within the company. Being able to hire in-house saves you money and keeps retraining costs down.
4. Builds Better Relations
In addition to being an incentive tool, eLearning is a great opportunity for management to increase the employee/employer relationship. With the right type of eLearning training programs being offered, team building can be a spin off that can enhance the workplace relationship to where effort is rewarded. Too many of us work in dead end jobs where your contribution is calculated in the hours you worked and nothing more. Team building exercises broaden the scope to the point where rank disappears and everyone works for a common goal.
5. Builds Trust
Looking a bit deeper into why an employer may consider offering eLearning tools we see an interesting spin off. When a boss provides such an opportunity where a member of staff can improve their work skills and knowledge it shows a level of trust. Although it may have always been there in the first place, it may not always be obvious. With workplace eLearning tools made available this shows employees that they are trusted and valued as part of the company they work for. This is truly not to be taken for granted.
6. Shift The Responsibility
Sometimes the boss needs a break. There isn’t always someone as well versed in the science of barking out orders or slamming down the phone as he/she is who exists on staff. Actually, what we are getting at is that some managers really need to be mentors and train up some of the best people in the department. One great way to do this is with eLearning. It also assists with determining who in the department could potentially become management material when the boss gets around to considering retirement.
7. Opens Communication
As odd as it may sound, when a company offers eLearning opportunities to staff, it does another really interesting thing. It can open up a channel of communication that did not exist before. Sure, we all generally nod at the boss or greet him/her pleasantly even when it’s not payday. But when management shows they care about you by giving you a chance to improve yourself on the job, it makes the line between boss and employee slowly disappears. It’s one of those interesting benefits of having a trusting workplace environment.
8. Shows Value In Staff
Sure, you may think it only happens at the staff Christmas Party or at the odd Casual Friday event at work, but management can show you the value you when they offer incentives. One such contemporary incentive is eLearning. The interesting thing about this is that even if you were not certain how a department head viewed you or your position, with an offer of training programs on site it really does say a lot about what the company sees in you. It also should give you a fairly good indication of what the company sees in your future. Combine it with the potential of climbing the company ladder and your value increases.
Conclusion
Your business can go one of two ways. It can grow or it can fail. Companies that fail tend to because they resist change and eventually become stale. Those businesses that continue to grow and expand do so because they stay innovative. It keeps them competitive and keeps their employees as involved and connected as possible. Using eLearning as a tool to grow is not only a wise business investment it is a good investment in the people you have working for you. That’s because the people working for you also represent you and your business. If they are progressive and active, they will assist with steering the growth of your business.
