Motivated and competent employees help companies deliver on their vision, leading to a healthier bottom line and e-learning could be key to ensuring your employees love coming to work. 

Leading businesses look for ways to encourage employees to bring their ‘A game’ every day.

Evidence shows that employees value learning and development (L&D) opportunities, and increasingly they expect to be in control of their professional development journey. That makes online training an attractive tool for employers looking to foster engagement and productivity.

By harnessing cloud-based, online teaching software or a learning management system (LMS) it’s possible to make e-learning highly engaging, self-directed, and available to employees anytime and anywhere.

Introducing e-learning to deliver L&D programs is not only convenient, it has a positive impact on employee satisfaction and productivity, which benefits your business at a strategic level. When employees feel compelled to achieve do their best, and have the information and skills they need to perform well, your business can operate more effectively.

Here are some of the key ways leveraging an e-learning platform can benefit employee & organisation performance:

Improve employee experience at every stage

Paying attention to the employee experience—how your people feel about their interactions with your business—gives companies a competitive advantage. How well employees needs are met, from hiring to onboarding and throughout their tenure, directly influences their attitude and effort levels.

Improving the employee experience should include a focus on employee learning and professional development. Why? Employees value it.

Many employees said they’d spend more time learning if it was recognised by their manager according to a recent report from LinkedIn: 44% of Generation Z (under 22 yrs) and 36% of Millennials (22-37 years) felt this way.

And given that e-learning is a more flexible and autonomous approach, it will give your team a better experience. This is especially relevant given the recent shift to remote working that many organisations have been forced to implement due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Increase talent retention and loyalty

Employers cannot afford to lose good employees, yet inadequate training increases this risk.

The 2020 employee experience trends study by Qualtics found that 23% of workers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK intend to stay with their current employee for less than a year, with younger employees (under 30 years old) at the most risk of attrition. The same survey found that one of the top drivers of engagement is opportunities for learning and development.

Many organisations would find it easier to attract and hold on to talented people by offering quality L&D programs delivered online. Professional development is a drawcard for job-seekers, and it makes current employees happier in their roles.

Giving people a chance to develop and gain the skills they need to do meaningful work builds loyalty. The quality of training matters: well designed, accessible and engaging. Effective online training software can help you quickly create and distribute content employees will want to engage with and can actually apply to their work.

Develop your team’s skills in a fast and agile way

It’s becoming harder for companies to find people with the necessary skills in many industries.

A recent white paper released by RMIT and Deloitte Access Economics, found that 88% of Australian businesses in professional industries face skill shortages. Less than half are addressing the issue by delivering education and training internally, despite the significant costs of hiring and replacing a bad hire. The paper’s authors argues that helping people constantly expand and reinvent themselves is a huge opportunity for growth.

Similarly, HR Magazine reported on a UK survey that found nearly a third of L&D leaders have concerns about whether their current offering is adequate to address the potential skills gap caused by technology. It’s time to offer a more digitally-driven learning experience if you want your employees to help you excel in a digital economy.

Using sophisticated e-learning systems in the delivery of L&D programs is an important step to take to ensure your training is more relevant and encourages digital literacy. The best online training software allows content to be easily managed, kept up-to-date, and delivered to a larger number of employees in a cost-effective way.

Communicate and reinforce your company values

Fostering a learning culture that encourages information-sharing and taking time for self-improvement sends a message about your company values. When leaders actively champion learning, and support it through L&D investment and user-friendly training software that supports mobility, it sends a clear message about how the business values innovation and trusts its workforce.   

Also, training is not just for transferring practical skills. Writing for Inc., CEO Marissa Levin says that training specifically about your company’s ethos and story is an ideal way to integrate your company’s core values into the everyday fabric of the business. “Formal training communicates that the values matter,” Levin suggests.

You can also craft course content with values in mind, to ensure key messages, desired behaviours and policy approaches are incorporated into all L&D programs—further enhancing employees’ sense of belonging and engagement.

Lift productivity and business performance

It can be a challenge to get all your staff pulling in the same direction, focused on delivering the work that will support strategic goals. Learning programs delivered via a powerful learning management system helps you to monitor and improve your employees collective knowledge and skills—and thereby lift overall performance, the quality of outputs, and business results.

For instance, by taking advantage of online training software you could more consistently deliver onboarding training across your organisation, to ensure people are confident about what’s expected of them, and can get up-to-speed sooner. You can ensure people have the information needed to maintain compliance standards. You can better understand organisation-wide gaps in knowledge and skill that need to be addressed further.

Companies that invest in employee training tend to enjoy higher profits. Continually investing in the skills and engagement of your team pays dividends, and is essential for maintaining the capabilities of your workforce.  

A meta analysis by Gallup found that businesses that score highest on employee engagement also score higher when it comes to profitability (by 22%) and productivity (by 21%). Top performers for employee engagement also experienced less turnover, absenteeism, and safety incidents.

The analytics and insights available within the best online teaching software help you get a clear picture of how well you’re engaging employees and where you can improve. Employee training programs can be considered a success when they have a positive effect on key performance indicators – but you need to be able to track metrics in order to determine this.

Harness the benefits of e-learning to support your employees

Happy and competent staff are more capable of making a strong contribution, helping you to meet your business objectives. Learning and development can make the world of difference when it comes to improving employees self-assurance, skills, and overall job performance and satisfaction.

Employee training can be made even more accessible and engaging through an online learning platform that helps you align L&D programs with business goals, enable mobile and self-directed learning, and achieve a more cohesive and scalable system.

Talk to Groove eLearning Solutions today for advice on tailoring the best software for online training to empower your team.

Educational institutions and the corporate world are increasingly looking to introduce flexible learning options and cost-effective training solutions. It’s why the online education market is expected to be worth US$ 350 billion by 2025.

The COVID-19 pandemic has further driven home the value of online learning software, as traditional classrooms and face-to-face training options have been shut down due to physical distancing requirements.

There’s never been a better time to move your courses or corporate training programs online. Which means you’ll no doubt be considering whether to invest in an online learning management system (LMS) and what value such a system brings?

The right LMS makes eLearning a worthwhile experience for both learners, instructors, and organisations or businesses delivering courses. Let’s take a closer look at what an LMS offers and the benefits you stand to gain by adopting the best software for online teaching or training.

What is a Learning Management System?

It’s possible to deliver online training in many ways. For example, a basic set-up could involve an instructor sharing their screen over a webinar program. It’s learning and it’s done online.

But the problem is, you can’t easily reproduce the experience, scale the number of learners, tie the learning activity to a broader program, or easily see how successful you’ve been in transferring knowledge.

Online learning is made easier with a learning management system (LMS). An LMS is software that helps education, training, and L&D providers to organise and track content, student information, and course delivery.

One platform to manage all activities associated with course delivery is smart. It means you can offer the convenience of online study and training, while also delivering an end-to-end eLearning experience in a more streamlined, cost-effective, and professional way.

So, what’s the best LMS software for online teaching and training? 

A popular approach is to leverage a cloud-based, open source platform, which can be modified to suit your precise needs.

One of the most credible open source LMS platforms is Open EdX. It was developed by Harvard and MIT universities (and is still maintained by these institutions). Open EdX is used by thousands of leading universities, corporations and small-to-medium businesses around the world.

That’s why it’s also the platform Groove eLearning Solutions uses to develop bespoke systems for our customers. By using a flexible LMS, expertly configured to address your specific organisational challenges, we can help you make the transition to online learning fast.

The biggest benefit of great online training software? Engaged learners.

The first and most obvious way your organisation benefits from quality eLearning software is giving your learners the best possible experience. That allows you to attract more students or employees to your programs, better help them achieve success/completion, and keep them engaged over the long-term.

With many organisations and companies now grappling with how to foster lifelong learning and a learning culture, including up-skilling and re-skilling—it’s essential to take a holistic approach to how you manage learning online.

An LMS provides a clear advantage because it simplifies the experience for learners or training participants. For example, using a customised, cloud-based LMS enables learners to:

• Learn online at their own pace, and on any device, where and when it suits them.
• Pay for and enrol for courses with minimal fuss online through self-service features.
• Access all course content, assessments, schedules and learning history in one spot.
• Revisit and review learning materials multiple times to refresh or remind themselves.
• Easily interact with instructors and other learners in a central, secure environment.
• Access a wide variety of interactive learning such as videos, VR, and forums.

Organisational benefits: more effective teaching and better ROI

Above and beyond improved learner/employee engagement and outcomes, using the best online training software is wise due to the business benefits. Adopting an online learning management system can deliver significant wins in terms of productivity gains, reduced costs, and improved compliance.

A tailored, cloud-based eLearning system allows your organisation to:

• Centralise content management and teaching administration: Imagine having all of your learning material in one spot that’s easily managed. Your instructors can quickly find, add and collaborate on content, and basic student administration tasks can be automated or completed much quicker with digital tools that encourage consistency and accuracy.
• Shorter training timeframes: When students can access what they need when they need it, you can slash the lead-up time to delivering training sessions, and empower self-directed learning. You can offer on-demand L&D courses so employees can fit training into a busy workload or move more quickly through a program resulting in reduced training costs.
• Keep training fresh and relevant: You can add, delete and modify course materials easily from one central platform. That means you can offer new courses/modules with less effort and keep current content up-to-date as regulations or knowledge evolves, or based on learner feedback. Materials can be easily shared rather than sitting within silos across your organisation.
• Helps you meet compliance obligations: Let’s say you run health and safety compliance training. An effective LMS makes it straightforward to update materials if standards or legislation changes, ensure instructors are using the most current content, and record which employees have done the training, how well they performed, and when they need to repeat the training.
• Reduce the cost of teaching and training: Online teaching and training is less expensive than in-person learning. You can cut the costs associated with physical room hire, catering, travel, presenters, and accomodation. In addition, a cloud-based LMS is more cost-effective than other software deployment methods—you don’t have to maintain a physical server, and you can easily scale the system without a huge investment in infrastructure.
• Understand and improve eLearning with better data: Track the progress of your learners and easily compare performance. Understand the courses and activities that drive results so you can refine your courses, training or learning and development programs. LinkedIn’s 2020 Workplace Learning Report revealed that nearly a quarter of L&D pros don’t currently measure learning engagement. Analytical tools available in the best training software gives you valuable insights that will help you improve your content and demonstrate your return on investment.

Shift learning online with the best software for online teaching

If you want more flexibility, more mileage from your training and L&D resources, and to truly empower learners and employees to develop their knowledge and skills over time—investing in an LMS offers incredible benefits for your organisation.

Remember too, the best software is made more useful by working with the right vendor. Choose your edtech provider carefully to ensure you make the most of your LMS platform.

We’re an edtech company and Open EdX hosting provider that has worked with organisations across Australia, the UK, Singapore and Hong Kong—so you can rest assured your system will be secure, up-to-date, and reliably managed.

Get the best eLearning platform and experienced partners you can trust. Talk to us now about embracing an LMS to deliver more cost-effective, organised, and data-driven online learning.