Obviously Online: E-Learning Done Right
July 31, 2008
With all the well-known benefits of e-learning—greater accessibility, greater savings, and greater on-demand support—you may take it for granted. Who's not sick of hearing about it? Fortunately, when done right, it lives up to the hype.
By J. LeRoy Ward
There was a time when training and employee development made up a significant portion of an organization's annual human resources budget. Today though, the economic downturn has caused these funds to dwindle, leaving many managers desperate to find cost-effective ways to help their employees develop and maintain the tools and best practices required for success.
A February 2008 study by TrainingIndustry.com and Expertus found that 50 percent of training executives surveyed feel "significant" or "intense" pressure to bring in cheaper training solutions for their employees.
Fortunately, the answer to this ongoing challenge isn't difficult to find—in fact, like so many of today’s solutions, it can be found online. Online learning, or e-learning, has grown significantly over the past several years because, thanks to its ability to dramatically decrease the per-employee and the per-hour costs of training, it has allowed organizations to maintain and even expand their employee training efforts while significantly decreasing their long-term administrative costs.
When an organization goes online, travel and lodging expenses are no longer part of the equation, and e-learning generally requires little more than a simple Internet connection. Plus, maintenance is significantly easier with a paperless training program. After an initial startup investment, maintaining an online learning program is simple because additions and changes are made to one centralized location as opposed to countless books and course materials.
Saving Money…and More
Despite such obvious economic benefits, online learning saves more than hard dollars. In 2000, when the dot.com bubble had its historic burst, e-learning emerged quickly onto the scene. Since then, it has evolved into a viable employee development tool with a score of benefits for employees and organizations.
• Flexibility: Eliminating travel and lodging costs saves organizations moneyߞobviously. But, for the individual employee, the true benefit is the savings of time. Because online learning is so flexible, employees are able to get the training they need to stay efficient and effective without having to be away from their jobs and families for extended periods of time. Your employees are busier than everߞand, due to attrition, many of them are doing the jobs of two or three people. Without question, they’ll appreciate every moment they're not on an airplane or stuck in a hotel room.
• Targeted Training and Learning on Demand: Online learning has proven to be a powerful tool for driving business alignment, and it can be tailored to focus on helping an organization solve specific problems—not just general ones. This helps training managers demonstrate a tangible return on their organization’s training investment. Similarly, online learning allows an organization to offer its employees learning-on-demand tools. Databases of exercises and course materials from an online program can be treated like virtual libraries. An individual employee can access items from a library whenever he or she needs to—from anywhere in the world. So, if a department notices a few scheduling and cost control slips, or if a call center representative gets a difficult question from a customer, problem-solving materials are easily accessible—instantly.
• Tracking and Reporting: Many online learning programs offer detailed tracking and reporting tools unmatched by traditional learning programs. These Web-based programs can track virtually anything, such as who's training, how often they're training, what materials they're accessing and how they're performing on exams and assignments. Like targeted training capabilities, this information helps administrators gauge the value of their training programs and determine exactly how the programs are being utilized.
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J. LeRoy Ward, PMP, PgMP, is executive vice president of ESI International, where he heads ESI's worldwide training programs and international partnerships. To learn more, visit www.esi-intl.com.
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