There is little to no doubt that training can be extremely advantageous for most businesses. With greater skills and expertise, members of staff will be able to carry out their job roles more effectively and efficiently.

But it isn’t as plain sailing as sending your employees off on a training course and reaping the rewards that this activity promises to provide. The vast majority of today’s workforce have grown tired of classroom-based teaching and don’t tend to learn much by passively accepting what a teacher has to say.

At the same time, the business itself must identify a suitable time for staff to be excused and invest sufficient resources into training, which could end up being wasted if employees haven’t acquired much knowledge or aren’t able to apply new information at work.

Therefore, a new approach and attitude towards training is required. For many, this takes the form of e-learning, which brings about the benefits that training can potentially afford, but also yields additional advantages too.

What is e-learning?
Essentially, e-learning can be described as the use of technology to help people learn at anytime and from anywhere. Therefore, this can include accessing online modules from the comfort of your own home or opening up software programs on a work computer during quiet periods of the day.

E-learning content can incorporate various types of media to enhance the overall experience but also to improve memory retention. As a result, a mix of audible and visual elements is commonplace, while teaching techniques such as gamification can also be integrated easily.

Businesses can either use an off-the-shelf e-learning product, which is cheaper to introduce but usually needs some tweaking, or develop a bespoke solution that costs more money but will be tailor-made to specific requirements.

But regardless of the choice you make, e-learning allows for lower costs and faster delivery when compared to traditional training methods. However, what most businesses will be more concerned about is how it can make an impact on their workforces.

How can e-learning make an impact on your workforce?
The amount of research conducted into the affect of e-learning is extensive to say the least. Numerous studies and surveys have looked at how this technique compares to alternative methodology, with most generating favourable results.

According to a nine-year study in Training and Retraining by Fletcher and Tobias “learners learn more using computer-based instruction than they do with conventional ways of teaching, as measured by higher post-treatment test scores.”

This statement is backed up by specific studies from Fletcher (1999), Kulik (1994), and Willett, Yamashita and Anderson (1983), which all confirm that e-learning techniques are much more effective than traditional classroom methods.

Further research from Brandon Hall (2001) reveals that the learning most suited to computer-based instruction includes information and knowledge as well as processes and procedures. This report also notes that e-learning gains can be found with employee attitudes towards training, scores on tests or other evaluations, the number of learners achieving “mastery” level and/or “pass” exams, the ability to apply new knowledge on the job, and long-term information retention.

While research on the subject of e-learning is all well and good, several companies are bound to want greater reassurances that replacing traditional training with this technique will actually deliver auspicious outcomes. Thankfully, there are countless real-world examples that provide genuine proof it works.

E-learning success stories

Trinity Mirror:
Employing over 11,000 people across the UK and with a portfolio of more than 500 media brands, Trinity Mirror is one of the UK’s largest publishing companies. However, it managed to introduce e-learning courses that not only improved staff morale by making them feel more valued and invested in, but also helped managers stay up-to-speed with the latest legislative issues.

Accor:
In order to track service quality and improve business efficiency while increasing its enquiry-to-booking conversion rate, hotel and service industry group Accor developed an e-learning solution for staff. Along with enhanced service quality and consistency, training also improved agent performance, reduced booking errors significantly and increased enquiry-to-booking rate by 5% per cent in one year.

Brother:
Electrical equipment company Brother wanted to give staff an online training platform that could help grow the business on a global scale, but also provide multilingual courses with strong engagement and flexibility. The solution was an e-learning platform known as “Brother University,” which led to 1,000 global users with an average of 63 per cent pass rate across 152 courses.

Although these stories relate to multinational companies, any size or sector of business can successfully utilise e-learning thanks to its flexible and scalable nature. So, if you want your employees to carry out their job roles with greater proficiency but also improve staff attitudes towards training, while keeping operational costs and disruption to a minimum, then consider implementing an e-learning solution.

Chloe Britton is the brand manager of training app Wranx, which provides continual training and assessment to help HR and Learning and Development professionals extend their training and communication strategies out of the classroom and office.