e-Learning for Employees:

Achieve Mastery of Your New Role With Ease

Training is an essential element of every new employee’s work journey with a new employer. Through your new hire training, your employer introduces you to the job routines, work tools, and environment of your new workplace. All of these are essential components of your onboarding process. E-learning for employees is gaining approval as an effective training method for delivering training to new hires. In fact, e-learning for employees is changing the face of traditional training methods using technological advancement and innovative techniques such as training gamification.

With e-learning for employees, you can be armed with the know-how to overcome any challenges you might face in fulfilling job duties at the beginning of a new employment.

Thus, this article addresses e-learning for employees. We will provide an answer to two key questions. What are the benefits of using e-learning for employees? and How can you get the best out of providing e-learning for employees?

e-Learning Employee Training

If you find yourself wondering is onboarding the same as training, then simply put, the answer is no. Knowledge transfer is key in new hire onboarding. But onboarding does not stop at training. However, in the same vain, an effective onboarding process is dependant on effective training.

Employee training is an exercise designed by the employer to put you through the needed activities to meet your job goals and expectations.

The outbreak of Covid-19 prompted many organisations to embrace e-learning methods for training their workforce from their remote locations. Thus, when specifically thinking about new hires, onboarding e-learning can be a great solution for both remote onboarding and on-premise onboarding.

In a survey conducted by Cambridge English Academy, almost 72% of organisations said that online learning is instrumental to enhancing their competitive edge.

Use Cases of e-Learning for Employee Training

e-Learning for employee training is not only an effective training method, but also a cost-effective method of training employees because it is cheaper than traditional face-to-face training. According to IBM, e-learning training has saved approximately $200 million compared to traditional employee training. 

An e-learning employee training is more suitable for a larger employee audience. You only need access to a computer and internet facilities in e-learning for employees. In addition, your organisation will save money from trainers’ costs, other costs related to training rooms, travel, catering, and training materials. Furthermore addition, as an employee, e-learning based training will save you from the stress of going to the workplace from your home, thereby reducing your learning time.

Traditional learning for employees is synonymous with breaks and meal sessions and group teaching. however, all these are not part of e-learning because it allows workers to be trained individually.

A clear use case of onboarding e-learning refers to new manager training. As a new manager you can learn all about your organisation’s management and leadership culture and key policies. You can also participate in specialised training such as conflict resolution and human resource management.

What Are the Benefits of Using e-Learning for Employees?

In the following paragraphs, let’s discuss some key benefits of e-learning for employees.

e-Learning for Employees Can Boost Employee Retention in an Organisation

According to Forbes, e-learning increases employee retention rates from 25% to 60% among business organisations globally. e-Learning for employee training can contribute to better employee retention due to the flexible approach to training and learning. 

Although training is scheduled during your onboarding programme, you can choose for yourself the appropriate time to actually participate in the training. E-learning employee training provides you with access to what works best for you by taking flexibility into account and improving your morale in the process. This is an obvious advantage of e-learning for employees being available for you 24/7, irrespective of your location.

e-Learning for Employees Provides Ongoing Access to Vital Training Resources

With e-learning for employees, you have continuous access to training resources anytime you need them. For instance, if you want to reference crucial resources from the training, you can easily log into your online training portal and get the information instead of searching manually. Maybe you went through various software trainings in the first stage of your onboarding, but did not get to use them all right off the bat. With e-learning, you can always go back and brush up on your knowledge. No need to stress about forgetting information, it is always at your disposal, should you need it.

e-Learning for Employees Provides a Risk-free Environment for Employees to Study

One of the disadvantages of confining employees into a training room is that some employees harbour the fear of failure if they contribute during the training sessiosn. However, e-learning for employees offers you an opportunity to learn in a safe environment, even if you fail some questions in a quiz, it all happens in a safe space. Additionally, even if you e-learning has a 1:1 test or discussion with an online instructor, it is still a more intimate and comforting experience. Even if you do fail some questions, you are not doing so in front of other participants.

e-Learning for Employees Ensures Consistency and Standardisation

With e-learning for employees, you will receive the same quality training as your peers from other locations. This is not possible in traditional face-to-face training, where the instructors’ focus and training abilities could be different. However, e-learning training ensures that every employee receives the same treatment and the same quality, without human bias.

e-Learning for Employees Allows for Global Collaboration Among Employees

e-Learning for Employees is designed to aid online collaboration among workers across the world. Furthermore, it allows employees from different departments and countries to collaborate. Maybe there are some group assignments, or some mock-projects. By contributing to larger company discussions, you and fellow new hires can exchange innovative ideas, learn from each other. All of this will propel your growth.

e-Learning for Employees Simplifies the Training Outcomes Feedback Process

With e-Learning for Employees, it is easier to share real-time feedback during the online exercise. This is a more direct method of feedback collection and sharing. However, this is not the only method. A key advantage for carrying standardised training online, is the opportunity for data collection. Any detail, from time to completion, time spent during specific modules, constitute opportunities for your employer to diagnose the status of the e-learning training. Optimising the training process is useful not just for the employers, as it ensures better performance for new hires, but also for employees. You will feel more confident to tackle new challenges in your role, without fear of complete failure.

e-Learning for Employees Contributes to Increased New Hire Satisfaction

Increased satisfaction as a new hire is instrumental in you deciding to stay with an employer. And, needless to mention, further opportunities for training and development are also crucial for talent retention.

Furthermore, as a new hire you need concise training activities that enhance your competence and productivity on the job. You don’t want to spend time with training that is not relevant to your role. Through e-Learning your employer can offer a catalogue of courses. You will receive mandatory courses and deadlines for completion, but you can also browse around and take on supplementary training, if you feel like you have any gaps in skills or information.

How to Ensure the Success of e-Learning for Employees

In the following paragraphs, we will discuss what you need to do to implement successful e-learning training for onboarding employees.

Clear Learning Goals

It goes without saying that any activity present in an onboarding plan must have a purpose and an anticipated outcome. Obviously, when it comes to training new hires, the goal is to improve the level of skill and knowledge. But this is still quite abstract. You will need SMART goals. This means goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time bound.

Having defined, clear, and measurable learning goals will give you a sense of purpose in the exercise.

Consider Gamification Elements

Gamification content provides you with an interactive form of learning online. Onboarding gamification is gaining traction as a means to engage new hires and make their integration process more fun and less stressful.

A gamified training would use game-based elements such as competition, scores, and rewards to boost morale and motivate employees to complete tasks. With e-learning for employees, your employer can adequately leverage onboarding gamification by involving the workers in some competitive and engaging activities during the online training to spur them to a more active participation. According to data from Anadea, 90% of employees say that they are more productive when they use gamification. This is because learning through activities and rewards will encourage engagement and attention to detail.

Additionally, TalentLMS also correlates a drop in boredom and increased motivation with using gamification in training. In fact, when gamified elements are added to training, motivation climbs up to 83%, and boredom drops to just 10%.

Our articles on gamification also provide real-life implementations from Deloitte and Cisco. So, we highly encourage you to take a look.

Include Video-based Modules

Video is one of the most effective forms of knowledge transfer available in the digital medium. When your employer puts up a combination of graphics, voice-overs, and live images, you are assured of an interesting learning process that will resonate with you properly.

You can probably relate to this fact: the majority of learners are visual learners. There are studies that back up this information. In US alone, visual learners represent approximately 65% of the total population. Bite-sized training also seems like a preferable format. By bite-sized training, we mean short form video content, of maximum 5 minutes. There is a high chance you watched at least a YouTube tutorial to learn to do something. It is fast, focused, and easy. This kind of learning is definitely preferable over lengthy training sessions.

In fact, Forbes reports that “It typically takes employees 40 to 60% less time to study a particular material via e-learning than in a traditional classroom setting.” So, not only is e-learning more engaging, but it is also more time-effective.

e-Learning for Employees: Concluding Remarks

In conclusion, e-learning for employees provides you with fun and engaging ways to learn effectively. Hence, the onus is on your employer to include useful and engaging content that yields faster learning capacity enhancing workers’ productivity.

One tool that organisations can embrace to execute their e-learning for employees is introdus, employee onboarding software. It is enriched with useful multimedia content to enhance your ability to hit the ground running in your workplace. 

Also, it aids you in achieving social interactions with your new colleagues, thereby ensuring an effective collaboration through the exchange of creative ideas. introdus is an automated tool that ensures easy transfer of knowledge virtually to employees.