8 Reasons Why E-Learning is Great for Big and Distributed Companies
Delivering training in large and/or distributed companies is time-consuming and expensive. Heck, you don’t need me to tell you that if training is one of your responsibilities. What I can tell you is e-learning alleviates many of the problems that are unique to organisations like yours.
For large and/or distributed companies, e-learning makes training your employees:
- Simpler
- Less resource intensive
- More cost-effective
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Here are eight reasons why I believe e-learning is great for big and distributed companies.
1. E-Learning Scales Well
In fact, e-learning scales very well, regardless of the size of your team or their geographical distribution. The biggest benefit of scaling e-learning, however, is that it involves minimal (and sometimes zero) cost. So long as the course content remains the same, it costs the same to deliver training to 100,000 people as it does to one, wherever they are in the world.
2. Eliminates the Need for Centralised Training Locations
It costs money to send employees to centralised locations for training, plus it takes up their time. With e-learning, you can eliminate this problem completely. You can even do it while delivering instructor-led training. Depending on how distributed and large your organisation is, the savings can be significant.
3. Improves Consistency
You will probably have multiple instructors if you have a large workforce or geographical area to cover with training. In almost all situations, this presents consistency problems. After all, some instructors are simply better than others so the quality of training your team receives will vary depending on their location or the luck of the draw.
With e-learning, however, every member of the team gets the same level of quality and, in some circumstances, exactly the same course content.
4. Improves Collaboration
While it is possible to have interactivity with fellow learners and the instructor during classroom-based learning, there is often minimal communication or collaboration either before or after. By using the right techniques and tools, such as gamification features and social elements, you can improve levels of collaboration with e-learning.
5. Makes Compliance Easier
Compliance training is often challenging in large and distributed organisations, not least because of some of the points above. Other challenges include making the training relevant to the employee, engaging them, and making the content interesting.
With e-learning, employees can complete the training at their own pace. In addition, you can monitor performance through quizzes and tests ensuring each member of the team grasps all the crucial concepts. You can also tailor the training to suit the individual employee, making it more relevant to their day-to-day job.
All this makes the training more effective which in turn makes compliance in your organisation easier.
6. Reduces the Complexity of Training
If your organisation is large and/or distributed, you probably have to train people who have a variety of job roles and skill levels. While it may be possible to deliver training to these people in a classroom, it is often difficult to tailor the training to make it more relevant to everyone’s job role or ability level. E-learning, however, makes this possible.
7. Reduces Course Planning, Preparation, and Administration Time
Classroom-based training programs involve significant logistics operations in large and/or distributed teams. Preparation of course material is also time-consuming, particularly when you have to update courses with new information. In addition, administering the delivery of training often involves large and complicated paper trails.
You can do away with almost all of this with e-learning. E-learning lets you automate many of these processes while also enabling you to create courses on a modular basis. This makes planning and maintaining course material much easier.
8. Easier to Tailor Training to a Location
In a large and/or distributed company, you might have employees in different regions, countries, or continents. Generic, one-size fits all training is rarely effective in these situations.
With e-learning, however, you can tailor the training to each location. For example, delivering training in the right language is easier, plus you can address cultural sensitivities, norms, and expectations.
E-Learning and Your Organisation
Of course, organisations of all sizes can benefit from e-learning. Some of those benefits include many of the points above. The benefits are amplified if you are part of a large or distributed company, though. In other words, the time savings and cost savings are greater, plus you will make training a much less complicated process.
