With industries becoming more competitive and new trends emerging, organizations must pay careful attention to continuous learning. Employees need a progressive learning strategy that lets them expand their knowledge over time.
The global market size of workplace learning and development is expected to soar to $401 billion by the end of 2024, showing how organizations make the effort to improve their employees’ abilities and skills. While there are many ways to offer training, from workshops to seminars, mentoring programs, one-on-one coaching, and in-house communities, e-learning platforms stand out for their flexibility, cost-effectiveness, accessibility, and customization. (1)
But how do you choose the right online learning platform for your team’s needs?
Assess Your Organization’s Learning Goals
Figuring out your online learning goals is crucial. Begin by thinking about why you want to educate your workforce. You may be aiming at bridging leadership development gaps, enhancing their skills and competencies, boosting productivity and efficiency, improving job satisfaction and retention, or maintaining compliance.
Next, conduct a needs analysis. Analyse your team’s current skills and determine whether they can learn on their own or if they need specialized training. Consult with various department heads like operations and HR to understand the everyday challenges their teams face. This way, you can identify real-life issues that could be solved by training.
Identify key performance indicators that are relevant to your business. This could be productivity rates, quality of output, or employee retention rates. These metrics will help you gauge the effectiveness of your online training programs. You’d also want to evaluate how engaged your employees are with any current training programs you might be running. Knowing what they like or dislike will help you choose a relevant eLearning platform.
Lastly, assess if you have adequate time to carry on with eLearning. This won’t be much of a concern, though, because an eLearning platform is time efficient, cutting down learning time by 25 – 60 % compared to the traditional learning approach. However, you must still ensure that the training won’t greatly affect your team’s work schedules, which may be detrimental to their productivity. (2)
Look Into eLearning Platform Features
Below are some key eLearning platform features you’d want to consider when selecting one for organizational growth.
User-Friendly Interface
Simplicity and usefulness are basic elements of an effective eLearning platform. Your team shouldn’t have to read a lengthy user manual to learn how to access specific content and maneuver the platform. A platform that keeps every detail simple and useful goes a long way toward keeping users engaged.
Go for a platform whose content is easy to read and understand. Look for readability pointers like highlighted keywords, appropriate headings, concise sentences, short paragraphs, lists, bullet points, readable fonts, and straightforward navigation. The content should also have relevant images, screenshots, and demonstrative diagrams that align with the written text.
Personalized Learning Paths
Personalized learning paths will give your staff members the opportunity to pursue individual learning goals instead of subjecting them to templated training content. Everyone gets targeted eLearning activities and fully customized assessments. This approach enables your team members to reach their true potential and fill performance gaps (including both technical skills gaps and leadership development needs).
This also allows your team to learn at their own pace. The eLearning platform will give learners the freedom to choose which activities they’ll complete and when and how they assess their progress. This is found effective because this could help boost retention rates by up to 25-67%. Plus, learning at their own speed can improve their performance by up to 25%. (3)
Integration Capabilities
The best online learning platforms seamlessly integrate with other business systems. For instance, online learning platforms that integrate with HR systems enable you to align training goals with performance reviews. And a platform that integrates with LinkedIn lets learners share their achievements with their professional network. Also, consider integration capabilities with content management systems, security platforms, business intelligence tools, and customer relationship management systems.
AI Course Creator
AI-based eLearning platforms make use of artificial intelligence to personalize and improve the learning journey. They typically analyze user behavior, performance, and preference data to deliver training content, assessments, and recommendations. Such personalized learning experiences sufficiently cater to individual needs and learning styles of every user.
Reporting Tools
Reporting tools show how your team members are progressing with the training. They can track learner progress and course completion, measure learner engagement, assess the effectiveness of the online course, share data with the organization’s management, and measure how much time learners spend on training.
Ensure Scalability and Future-Proofing
Your eLearning platform should also be scalable. That’s because you might soon see an increase in the number of your staff. And with such growth, you’d want to enroll more team members into the online platform without having to switch platforms. Aside from it being cost-efficient, it also ensures consistency; incoming employees use the same training material as those who joined your organization earlier.
A scalable eLearning platform should easily allow the addition of more users without dwindling in performance. It should be capable of accepting multiple logins and interactions without slowing down. A scalable platform should also allow for quick updates, additions, and modifications to course materials. With these, you can future-proof your training needs and stay ahead of the curve.
Conclusion
An eLearning platform lets your employees improve their skills over time, without adversely affecting their working schedule. Use the choice criteria discussed herein when evaluating these platforms. Remember, not all of them are designed the same. Features vary widely, so you’d want to be sure about what exactly your organization needs.
References
1. “Workplace learning and development – statistics & facts”, Source: https://www.statista.com/topics/4281/workplace-learning-and-development/#topicOverview
2. “66 Elearning Statistics: 2024 Data, Analysis & Predictions”, Source: https://research.com/education/elearning-statistics
3. “Online Learning Statistics: The Ultimate List in 2024”, Source: https://www.devlinpeck.com/content/online-learning-statistics