One constant in every company’s life nowadays is change. The way we embrace it and how we manage to keep on track of the organization’s productivity and profitability goals while ensuring that people at all levels are satisfied and performing  at the top of their abilities, is a key challenge that involves all departments and levels. 

Training and managing knowledge is one of the most important aspects of dealing with change. As an HR or training manager you are likely already familiar with the benefits that eLearning has and how much it has transformed the landscape of people development in organizations in recent years. But even more to the point is the significant role that introducing an LMS could play in helping you to balance the educational and training needs and requirements of a variety of stakeholders within different departments in your company.  

Let’s explore the 5 key benefits that eLearning has over the traditional in-person methods.

#1 Flexible pace & schedule

If you ask any teacher or instructor about finding the best pace for a classroom full of learners (whether students or corporate employees), they’ll surely tell you that this is one of the biggest challenges. Finding the mean pace will only suit a minority of the students, whereas eLearning allows each individual to move at their own pace. People have different attention spans, which can be affected by the time of day, type of instructional materials, general levels of stress and a variety of other factors. By using an LMS you will give your employees the option to schedule their training at a time and pace that suits their individual preferences to achieve the best results.

#2 Efficient resource management

Once you introduce eLearning to your company you can immediately realize some gains. You will see savings in terms of travel and accommodation, venue hire, course materials, trainers, etc. However, when eLearning is done in the right way it can affect the bottom line and lead to increased profitability both in the long and short run. 

Let’s illustrate this with an example. Your company is a retail chain with many outlets across different geographical locations and the need to conduct induction as well as product, sales and customer service training. This will normally involve getting a number of employees together at a certain location(s) for a day or longer, organizing and paying for travel, accommodation, scheduling trainers from different departments, etc. Apart from the obvious costs associated with all these, you have to take into account the cost of lost productivity when people are away from their place of work, as well as the need for re-training at some point in the future. By introducing an LMS and using online training, you can drastically decrease the costs by altogether avoiding face-to-face methods or using a blended learning approach. Employees can also use down-time better by scheduling their learning during those hours, thus not affecting productivity in a negative way.

#3 It’s what learners really want

There’s no denying the fact that we live in a digital world and almost everyone has at least one connected device that they carry with them all the time. So if you can introduce training methods that naturally blend in with the way society lives and allow your employees to integrate training in their lives, then they will want to do it and will be more likely to delay or postpone. The flexibility in scheduling that we mentioned earlier, the gain of control over your own environment and the way you approach the materials, combined with the fact that eLearning can be delivered in a more personalized way than most traditional classroom-based approaches, makes it a lot more desirable to the workforce of today and of tomorrow.

#4 Continuous learning

One of the many benefits of eLearning over face-to-face is that it is a continuous process. The courses and materials are available 24/7, they can be easily updated to reflect changes and new additional information can be added at any time. Learners can get feedback and share their experience with many others who are going through the same process in a way that traditional training doesn’t allow them to. In other words, an LMS is the ideal vehicle to support and promote a true culture of learning, knowledge sharing and continuous development within your organization.

When it comes to choosing and remaining in a company or organization, people are no longer just content with remuneration, job satisfaction and security. They also want to work for a company that makes a difference to the world. Introducing eLearning, of course, doesn’t turn your company into a socially responsible one, however it covers certain aspects such as lower environmental impact (paperless training reduces the carbon footprint) and ease of learning for people with visual and aural impairment, which employees can appreciate and can contribute to an increased feeling of belonging.

eLearning can help balance the requirements of different stakeholders by delivering efficiency, cost-savings and offering many benefits to the company and to learners. If you already have decided to introduce it in your company, our blog on How to sell the eLearning idea to your internal stakeholders might be helpful.