5 Ways E-Learning Can Improve Company Culture
The importance of company culture cannot be overstated. It’s connected to staff retention, productivity, and standards of customer service in addition to HR issues like bullying and harassment.
When you have a positive company culture, employees feel happier and work harder. They also have better relationships with colleagues and managers, with this positivity translating through to customers.
There are lots of ways you can improve company culture in your organisation. This includes effectively communicating your vision as well as how each employee fits into that vision. Adopting flexible working policies and empowering employees also helps.
E-learning can play an essential role too. Here are five ways e-learning can improve company culture.
1. E-Learning Improves the Onboarding Process
The onboarding process is often challenging, not least because of the time and resources involved in bringing a new employee up to speed. Even after this, the new recruit can still feel overwhelmed, disconnected, and alone, a situation that can lead to the new employee either leaving or taking longer than they should to become productive.
Adding e-learning training modules to the onboarding process can significantly improve the experience, however. You will still need face-to-face training with the HR team plus on-the-job training, but e-learning can supplement this and fill gaps.
Crucially, e-learning lets new recruits go through training modules at their own pace and at a time that best suits them. They can also use the training module as a reference to look back on and refresh their memories.
In other words, e-learning helps to get new employees settled into their new job quicker while also ensuring they are fully aware of all company policies.
2. E-Learning Promotes Ongoing Professional Development
It is highly beneficial having a learning culture in your organisation where employees have a desire to improve professionally. It ensures your company keeps up with advances in technology and can give you the edge on your competition.
By providing e-learning training modules on a range of different topics, you are setting a tone in your organisation that ongoing professional development is not only welcomed but encouraged.
There are other benefits too:
- Members of your team don’t have to go looking for suitable training as you provide it
- You can ensure the quality of the training meets your standards and is tailored to the needs of your business
- New opportunities might open up for your business when your staff acquire new skills
3. You Can Use E-Learning to Help Employees Achieve their Full Potential
A common cause of employee dissatisfaction is the feeling of hitting a ceiling. When employees believe they can’t progress or advance their careers, they can become demotivated, losing interest and enthusiasm. This is not good for staff morale in general, or for company culture.
You will probably have good reasons for not promoting particular employees. This includes when employees don’t have the necessary skills to advance.
Making e-learning training modules available to your employees can give them the skills they require to realise their full potential. In addition, your training programme, which e-learning will be crucial to, can help employees develop a personalised career pathway.
This progression in the employee’s development will benefit the company as they will be able to use the new skills and knowledge they learn. In addition, the employee will be more loyal to the company and will have a higher level of job satisfaction.
4. E-Learning Can Improve Key Skills that Are Crucial to Company Culture
There are some important skills that people in your organisation need to have for a positive company culture to develop. When individuals don’t possess these skills, employees can become frustrated, departmental silos can develop, employees can feel undervalued, and team disharmony can develop.
The skills that can help prevent these things from happening include:
- Teamwork skills
- Communication skills
- Presentation skills
- Management skills including training on how to motivate and how to resolve conflicts
The last one on the above list is arguably the most important. After all, managers are often promoted because they have particular aptitudes. This doesn’t necessarily mean, however, they are good at:
- Motivating people
- Issuing clear instructions
- Setting lines of responsibility
- Conflict resolution
These are all skills in their own right. They often need to be taught, and it’s always beneficial to continuously refine and improve them. An effective (and highly cost-effective) way of doing this is by making e-learning training modules available.
5. E-Learning Can Prevent Bullying and Harassment
Bullying and harassment is a common cause of negative company culture. It can exist below the surface, and it’s often under-reported. Sometimes organisations don’t deal with it until they feel they have to.
Whatever situation your organisation faces in terms of workplace bullying and harassment, you can take a proactive approach by making high-quality, informative, and non-patronising e-learning training modules that cover these issues available to staff.
By then making the completion of these training modules compulsory, you will raise standards across the company, ensuring everyone knows the type of behaviour that is unacceptable as well as what they should do if they are faced with inappropriate behaviour.
The result will be lower levels of complaints (because incidents become less frequent) plus improved morale.
An Ongoing Process
Improving the culture in your company is an ongoing process and making e-learning modules available to staff is not the only solution. Training is essential in many areas, however, with e-learning being the most effective method for the delivery of that training.
