How eLearning Is Changing Employee Development

How eLearning Is Changing Employee Development
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Summary: Thanks to eLearning, training your employees has never been easier or more affordable.

How eLearning Is Changing Employee Development

You hire someone because you believe in their skills and their ability to do a job well. That doesn’t mean, however, that they have all the skills you’re looking for, or that they should never advance their existing skills.

Today’s workforce expects more from their job than just a paycheck. They want opportunities to learn, grow, and advance. They want to build a career. Employers who can provide these development opportunities can attract top talent and build more loyalty within their workforce.

As an added bonus, employees who get the opportunity to grow and develop within a company tend to be more engaged in their job and their company. Engagement has many benefits, including improved productivity. In fact, companies with high levels of engagement have around 22% higher productivity, which leads to increased business success.

There’s never been a better time for companies to invest in employee development. eLearning is a game-changer when it comes to skill-building. Here’s how eLearning is changing employee development for the better.

eLearning Makes Employee Development Easier and More Convenient

Professional development is still an investment, but it’s easier and cheaper than it was in the past with eLearning. Instead of requiring employees to attend a meeting at the same time and paying someone to come and teach on a specific topic, employees can do self-paced online courses.

Employees are more likely to be engaged with the courses if they can fit them around their own schedules. The workday can be unpredictable, and if they’re able to squeeze a lesson in during some downtime, it’s much better for productivity than everyone stopping work at once. It’s possible for development to take place without a huge investment and without leaving the office for a class or conference.

Personalized Skill-Building

There are times when you might want the entire office to learn the same skills, but in other cases, employees might be working on individual skill-building. eLearning is perfect for this because it’s easy to personalize the learning process and find classes that fit each person’s individual needs. There are online courses for just about everything, from finance to marketing to communication.

Executives can even benefit from eLearning in the same way their employees do. Taking classes can help you learn how to motivate employees and learn leadership techniques.

Online Degrees Gaining Credibility

Although a lot of eLearning for employee development is for enrichment and advancing skills informally, more and more employers are sponsoring tuition for their employees. This has become more common as online degrees rise in popularity.

When eLearning first emerged, many people worried that an online education wouldn’t be as in-depth as a traditional learning setting, but the popularity and effectiveness of online degrees have shown that eLearning can be just as effective as the classroom experience. Offering your employees tuition reimbursement for online degree programs helps to reduce turnover and help you create a more educated workforce. eLearning allows full-time employees the flexibility they need to earn a degree on their schedule.

eLearning Helps People Find Inspiration

When you’re stuck in a job that isn’t going anywhere, it’s not easy to find inspiration. Instead of losing these employees, you can help them find the inspiration they need to succeed. eLearning can help employees discover a new interest and take on new responsibilities.

You can also use employee development to improve the diversity of your organization’s management team and help your employees get new opportunities. Companies that are ethnically diverse are 35% more likely to outperform, and gender-diverse companies 15% more likely. Some employees who are feeling stuck might just need a new opportunity to shine.

Setting Up Employee Development Opportunities

So how do you go about setting up eLearning opportunities for your employees? First, think about your needs. Does your workforce need to work on their communication? Are there any topics the whole office needs to work on?

Then, think about what individual employees may need and want. It’s typically better to frame development sponsorship as a benefit rather than a mandate—you don’t want people who are resentful to learn. Experiment a bit—you might try some self-directed courses or see what methods your employees find help them learn best. It’s important to invest in employee development on an ongoing basis—it just might take a little while to determine which eLearning solutions work best.