While research supports the growing value and engagement employees find in online learning opportunities, many companies currently find themselves at the crossroads of deciding whether to abandon their traditional training practices in favor of online courses.
Each culture is unique, of course, and there are many factors to be considered. But if cost is a major part of your corporate thinking when it comes to training, you would be well advised to seriously consider taking the online options.
Here are five ways online training saves your company money:
1. The most obvious is that you do not have to pay for transportation, accommodation and meal costs as well as the hour-by-hour fees of bringing in expert trainers to your workplace. Balance that with the reality that no matter how carefully you plan and schedule things to allow employees who need this training to be available to receive it, you cannot stop them from catching the flu that week or having to leave suddenly to deal with a family crises. With online learning, the expert is ready and waiting whenever the employee downloads the lesson. If they miss a scheduled course one day because they were ill, they can pick it up next week when they feel better.
2. Disengaged employees cost your company money, and with a disengagement rate as high as 70 percent according to Gallup Research, chances are some of your staffers are just going through the motions. Offering online training can save you the money by engaging your staff, sparking the spirit of knowledge and feeling of value, and creating promise and growth for the employee’s future as well as the company’s.
3. The time you spend having your online training program created will provide you with a much higher return on your investment than your sponsorship of traditional training avenues. That is because once your online presentation is viewable online as a download, the industry standard is that you will receive at least a 90 percent return on time spent and cost to create the modules. When you analyze the number of employees who take the training and the small investment needed to keep the program up to date, you will see these considerable savings.
4. A cost factor that can be calculated within your company is the number of employees who complete the online training compared to those who complete the in-person training. Statistically, more people enjoy learning when they have the freedom to select the time to study and have the ability to be comfortable in their own home as opposed to facing frequent interruptions in their workplace. If you add an element of gamification to your online training and make it fun for employees, engagement grows.
5. Finally, you can actually make money with your course content if your industry can offer courses in subjects that have appeal outside of your workplace. By offering your courses online, you can even make money when you are not technically working if you charge for course download.