How e-Learning accelerates L&D success for more satisfied employees

Motivated and competent employees help companies deliver on their vision, leading to a healthier bottom line and e-learning could be key to ensuring your employees love coming to work.

Leading businesses look for ways to encourage employees to bring their ‘A game’ every day.

Evidence shows that employees value learning and development (L&D) opportunities, and increasingly they expect to be in control of their professional development journey. That makes online training an attractive tool for employers looking to foster engagement and productivity.

By harnessing cloud-based, online teaching software or a learning management system (LMS) it’s possible to make e-learning highly engaging, self-directed, and available to employees anytime and anywhere.

Introducing e-learning to deliver L&D programs is not only convenient, it has a positive impact on employee satisfaction and productivity, which benefits your business at a strategic level. When employees feel compelled to achieve do their best, and have the information and skills they need to perform well, your business can operate more effectively.

Here are some of the key ways leveraging an e-learning platform can benefit employee & organisation performance:

Improve employee experience at every stage

Paying attention to the employee experience—how your people feel about their interactions with your business—gives companies a competitive advantage. How well employees needs are met, from hiring to onboarding and throughout their tenure, directly influences their attitude and effort levels.

Improving the employee experience should include a focus on employee learning and professional development. Why? Employees value it.

Many employees said they’d spend more time learning if it was recognised by their manager according to a recent report from LinkedIn: 44% of Generation Z (under 22 yrs) and 36% of Millennials (22-37 years) felt this way.

And given that e-learning is a more flexible and autonomous approach, it will give your team a better experience. This is especially relevant given the recent shift to remote working that many organisations have been forced to implement due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Increase talent retention and loyalty

Employers cannot afford to lose good employees, yet inadequate training increases this risk.

The 2020 employee experience trends study by Qualtics found that 23% of workers in Australia, New Zealand and the UK intend to stay with their current employee for less than a year, with younger employees (under 30 years old) at the most risk of attrition. The same survey found that one of the top drivers of engagement is opportunities for learning and development.

Many organisations would find it easier to attract and hold on to talented people by offering quality L&D programs delivered online. Professional development is a drawcard for job-seekers, and it makes current employees happier in their roles.

Giving people a chance to develop and gain the skills they need to do meaningful work builds loyalty. The quality of training matters: well designed, accessible and engaging. Effective online training software can help you quickly create and distribute content employees will want to engage with and can actually apply to their work.

Develop your team’s skills in a fast and agile way

It’s becoming harder for companies to find people with the necessary skills in many industries.

A recent white paper released by RMIT and Deloitte Access Economics, found that 88% of Australian businesses in professional industries face skill shortages. Less than half are addressing the issue by delivering education and training internally, despite the significant costs of hiring and replacing a bad hire. The paper’s authors argues that helping people constantly expand and reinvent themselves is a huge opportunity for growth.

Similarly, HR Magazine reported on a UK survey that found nearly a third of L&D leaders have concerns about whether their current offering is adequate to address the potential skills gap caused by technology. It’s time to offer a more digitally-driven learning experience if you want your employees to help you excel in a digital economy.

Using sophisticated e-learning systems in the delivery of L&D programs is an important step to take to ensure your training is more relevant and encourages digital literacy. The best online training software allows content to be easily managed, kept up-to-date, and delivered to a larger number of employees in a cost-effective way.

Communicate and reinforce your company values

Fostering a learning culture that encourages information-sharing and taking time for self-improvement sends a message about your company values. When leaders actively champion learning, and support it through L&D investment and user-friendly training software that supports mobility, it sends a clear message about how the business values innovation and trusts its workforce.

Also, training is not just for transferring practical skills. Writing for Inc., CEO Marissa Levin says that training specifically about your company’s ethos and story is an ideal way to integrate your company’s core values into the everyday fabric of the business. “Formal training communicates that the values matter,” Levin suggests.

You can also craft course content with values in mind, to ensure key messages, desired behaviours and policy approaches are incorporated into all L&D programs—further enhancing employees’ sense of belonging and engagement.

Lift productivity and business performance

It can be a challenge to get all your staff pulling in the same direction, focused on delivering the work that will support strategic goals. Learning programs delivered via a powerful learning management system helps you to monitor and improve your employees collective knowledge and skills—and thereby lift overall performance, the quality of outputs, and business results.

For instance, by taking advantage of online training software you could more consistently deliver onboarding training across your organisation, to ensure people are confident about what’s expected of them, and can get up-to-speed sooner. You can ensure people have the information needed to maintain compliance standards. You can better understand organisation-wide gaps in knowledge and skill that need to be addressed further.

Companies that invest in employee training tend to enjoy higher profits. Continually investing in the skills and engagement of your team pays dividends, and is essential for maintaining the capabilities of your workforce.  

A meta analysis by Gallup found that businesses that score highest on employee engagement also score higher when it comes to profitability (by 22%) and productivity (by 21%). Top performers for employee engagement also experienced less turnover, absenteeism, and safety incidents.

The analytics and insights available within the best online teaching software help you get a clear picture of how well you’re engaging employees and where you can improve. Employee training programs can be considered a success when they have a positive effect on key performance indicators – but you need to be able to track metrics in order to determine this.

Harness the benefits of e-learning to support your employees

Happy and competent staff are more capable of making a strong contribution, helping you to meet your business objectives. Learning and development can make the world of difference when it comes to improving employees self-assurance, skills, and overall job performance and satisfaction.

Employee training can be made even more accessible and engaging through an online learning platform that helps you align L&D programs with business goals, enable mobile and self-directed learning, and achieve a more cohesive and scalable system.

Talk to Groove eLearning Solutions today for advice on tailoring the best software for online training to empower your team.