Benefits of eLearning for Businesses

Today, many companies, from large enterprises to small startups, use eLearning to manage their employees’ development: upgrade their qualifications, teach them new skills, or retrain them for new positions.

eLearning is a great boon to businesses because it provides:

Lower training costs

With eLearning, you don’t have to spend a fortune hosting seminars, renting hotel rooms, and covering travel expenses. You can simply develop an online course and share it with your employees.

Wider coverage

Distance learning has no barriers. You can train hundreds of employees in dozens of offices across the world in a uniform fashion. Employees don’t need to spend time attending classroom lectures. All they need is a digital device and Internet access.

Single knowledge base

All the learning material is stored in one place, i.e., an LMS. Employees can log in to the LMS at a convenient time from any device, find the course they need, and refresh their memory.

Faster employee development

Traditional training can be rather slow because it depends on the business trainers’ working hours. An LMS is available anytime, making it possible for your employees to study whenever they feel like: when commuting, during their lunch break, or at home.

Easy progress tracking

Your business trainers don’t need to hold in-class training and go over every single paper in person. Most LMSs have analytics, which show each student’s progress in graphs and reports.

Business adaptability

eLearning helps employees keep up with the company’s rhythm and solve problems in real time. Need to introduce a new product to the sales team? Create a course and deliver it instantly to thousands of employees.

Businesses use eLearning to help with the following:

• Employee Training. This is the main reason why companies implement eLearning. Digital courses are more efficient at employee training because they provide an ongoing and easy-to-use learning solution.

 

• Compliance Training. Compliance training is mandatory for almost any business. The goal is to inform new employees about company policies, for example those involving safety and personal conduct. Compliance training is much easier to deliver with an LMS, especially if you need to implement immediate changes to your policy.
• Employee Involvement. eLearning engages employees with interactive courses, creative design, and game-like elements. The latter is specifically aimed at keeping learners’ interest peaked with awards and ratings.
• New-Hire Retention. The onboarding process for new staff members can be perplexing, especially if you have a big company. You can make things easier by introducing the company and its key figures step-by-step with digital courses. This will also free up time for your HR team.
• Client and Partner Development. With digital courses, you can teach your partners and clients about what you do, be it products or services. People like innovation, but are often suspicious about things they don’t know. Use courses and presentations to explain how your service works and why it’s good. That will make them feel safe and get them on board quicker.
• Product Promotion. Brands and retail companies always have new products to present. You can use eLearning to teach your sales teams about new additions, and help new employees learn the products quicker. As a result, you get more sales.

So, how exactly do businesses achieve these goals with eLearning? A quality digital course is more than just a sequence of slides. The content you present needs to be engaging, informative, and interactive.

eLearning Content Types

We’ve analyzed thousands of client cases and determined that the efficacy of an eLearning course depends on the content. The more relevant, engaging, and interactive your course is, the higher its efficacy. There are lots of content types to choose from; below, we’ve listed the main ones you should consider:

Digital Courses

Simple digital courses are often presented as slides with information and media (video, audio, and pictures). Modern authoring tools allow you to make the slides more diverse with quizzes, simulations, and screencasts. The key here is to make the whole experience memorable and easy to go through. We recommend using this content ratio: 60% media and 40% text.

Quizzes

Just like traditional school tests, digital quizzes help test how much your employees have learned from a lesson. Modern authoring tools allow you to create fun and interactive tests, with branching, audio and video questions, drag-and-drop elements, and more.

Webinars

A webinar is an online lecture, often recorded with a webcam. The speaker’s desktop serves as a blackboard where they can show slides and videos.

This format has two benefits. The first is that you can broadcast to thousands of employees at once, and second, your viewers can ask questions and receive answers in real time.

Video Courses

Video courses make education visually compelling. This format is fun and can be used for any topic; you just need to choose how you want to present it. A video course can be an interactive course with pop-up questions and game elements, or a simple informative video.

YouTube utilizes this simple and engaging format not only to provide entertainment but also to educate. When you watch a cooking show or a tech review, you’re engaging in eLearning.

Screencasts

Screen recordings can help you show people how to operate specific software. For example, if you need to introduce your employees to a CRM, demonstrate to them how the software works with a screencast.

Talking-Head Video

Simply put, this is a video that involves a person talking to the camera. The goal is to engage the listener with a captivating story. This could be a success story, an interview with an expert, or a product showcase.

eBooks and Articles

Many LMSs have catalogues where companies store books, longreads, case studies, and other articles. Together, these materials make up a strong knowledge base that employees can access at any time during their training.

Conversation Simulations

Simulations help employees train their skills. They simulate a possible scenario the learner may encounter at work. It could be a dialogue with a client in retail, or an engine failure simulation at a plant. The main benefit here is that the learner can complete the task safely in a virtual environment without risking potential real-world problems.

 

Mailing list

According to a poll we conducted, 60% of businesses use mailing lists; however, this format is not suited for every solution. You can teach business correspondence or SEO basics, but you should stay clear of complex mail lessons.

The disadvantage is that when you use mailout, you lose control. You can’t track how many people read the mail from top to bottom and what they learned from it.