10 Situations Where It Makes Sense to Use E-Learning
There are several options available when deciding on a training delivery format for your next course. One of those options is e-learning. When is the right time to use e-learning, though?
E-learning can deliver a range of benefits to your business – using e-learning in situations where it is most suitable will maximise those benefits. Here are 10 situations where it makes sense to use e-learning.
Workforce Spread Over Multiple Locations
If your organisation has multiple locations, instructor-led training will involve a lot of travelling and/or multiple trainers. Both options are costly, plus there can be consistency and quality issues.
E-learning makes sense in this situation because you can quickly distribute the training to everyone, wherever they are located. Each person will also receive the same training, so you achieve consistent levels of quality as well.
Largely Mobile Workforce
Training a largely mobile workforce can also be logistically challenging when you deliver the training in a traditional classroom setting. There is a lot of travel involved, there can be scheduling issues, and productivity can suffer.
However, you can solve these problems with e-learning. Using e-learning, remote learners will receive the training wherever they are located and can complete it at a time that best suits them, improving the learner experience.
Where You Have a High Rate of Staff Turnover
There are many industries and organisations in the UAE and Saudi Arabia that have high staff turnover rates. The retail sector is one example where there are companies that change staff regularly. All new staff brought into the organisation have to be trained and, due to the repetitive nature of the training, this process is resource-intensive.
Creating e-learning courses is a much more efficient approach as you don’t need to repeat instructor-led training with each new batch of recruits. Instead, you create the training once and then distribute it as you need to.
Training Topics the Won’t Change Much Over Time
Even in companies with low staff turnover rates, workers still come and go, while employees may also seek to develop and learn new skills. These factors result in training requirements that can also be repetitive, i.e., training courses delivered multiple times over the years to different groups of people.
E-learning can deliver efficiency savings in these situations, particularly for topics where the content won’t change.
To Backup Instructor-Led Training on Complex Topics
Providing reference and study material to learners is common when conducting instructor-led training, especially when the training topic is complex. After all, most of us learn through repetition and practice, so we need more than a classroom-based session to fully grasp a concept or skill.
There are lots of ways to provide this back-up material, including manuals and specification documentation. E-learning courses are also an option. In fact, e-learning can enhance this backup content as e-learning courses can be interactive and engaging.
Compliance Topics
Compliance training can be challenging to make interesting unless you use e-learning. With e-learning, you can make the topic engaging while also ensuring it is more than a box-ticking exercise where everyone goes through the motions. Instead, you can achieve tangible results when you use e-learning for compliance training.
As a Better Alternative to Just-In-Time Content
Just-in-time training material can be highly beneficial to training outcomes. One of the main reasons is the fact learners are highly motivated when completing the training as they are doing it when they have an immediate need for the knowledge.
As e-learning content is considerably more interactive and engaging than alternative forms of just-in-time material, you can improve this type of training even further by switching it to e-learning.
When You Need to Train Large Numbers of People
As with some of the other situations on this list, training large numbers of people can be costly, while there are also often logistical and quality consistency issues. E-learning is an alternative that not only solves these challenges but can also enhance the training while ensuring it is delivered in a shorter period of time.
So, instead of using considerable resources to plan and deliver multiple instructor-led sessions for everyone who needs to go through the training, you create high-quality e-learning content that, once complete, can be instantly distributed.
Onboarding Topics
E-learning is the ideal training delivery method for many onboarding topics. When you use e-learning, each new employee receives the same high standard of training. In addition, e-learning can improve the learner experience as you can make the onboarding training fun, engaging, and interactive.
Your new starts can also use the e-learning content you create as reference material that they can refer to over their first weeks or months in the job.
Training Aimed at Contractors or Vendors
If you need to provide vendor or contractor training on your products, processes, procedures, or systems, e-learning is the ideal solution. One of the main benefits of using e-learning in this situation is the fact you don’t have to allocate resources every time a third-party requires training. Instead, you simply give the vendor or contractor access to your e-learning material.
Adapting Your Approach
E-learning is a highly effective method of training delivery that ensures consistency and that can be quickly distributed to any number of learners wherever they are in the world. It is also a very cost-effective training delivery method. The situations where these benefits are most valuable are ideal for e-learning, including those in the broad categories on this list.
