f you’re an owner or employee of a small business, investing in team learning and development can have huge benefits. You may already know some of them, from greater productivity and fewer skill gaps, to attracting top talent and boosting the satisfaction of your existing team. In fact, there are so many reasons to invest in a learning and development program for your team that we’ve written a whole blog on it!

Today, the majority of businesses are turning to eLearning as their learning solution. eLearning is rapidly overtaking face-to-face styles of training, and for good reason. 

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Save cost

Without a doubt, eLearning is a far cheaper solution than face-to-face training, and it’s ROI only improves over time. How? Face-to-face training requires a live trainer at the cost of hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, and may come with hidden costs such as travel. This cost is repeated every time there staff turnover brings new, untrained employees, or if a regular reaccreditation period demands fresh training.

eLearning does away with the cost of expensive trainers and workshops. Courses can be bought off-the-shelf, or developed by Subject Matter Experts within your business, and then reused at no additional cost as often as needed. Many eLearning platforms offer pricing plans that match the size of the business. For example, HowToo’s Growth plan is only $5/month per user, allowing small businesses to only ever pay for what they use.

Save time

Most small businesses simply don’t have time to waste on training that takes hours, or even days. Unfortunately, face-to-face workshops can be hugely time consuming, to the frustration of busy employees.

eLearning takes just one third of the time to deliver the same training as a face-to-face session. Human brains are far quicker to process visual information than auditory information, allowing workers to move quickly through eLearning courses. At the same time, eLearning courses allow learners to move through at a pace that works for them, instead of getting left behind or feeling impatient with the pace of a workshop.

Highly flexible

eLearning regularly proves much more popular with employees thanks to the incredible flexibility it offers. Face-to-face training is inherently inflexible, requiring the trainer and every learner to be available at the same (long) time and same location.

Modern eLearning allows workers to learn when, where and on whatever device they please. eLearning course creation software such as HowToo to automatically adapt courses to different screen sizes. As a result, workers can complete their training anywhere from the office desktop, to their mobile while commuting, or in the field on a tablet.

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Automate onboarding training

We’ve already mentioned the time savings that eLearning offers, but the ability to automate onboarding training deserves it’s own point. Onboarding is both the most regularly required, and most repetitive form of training every business needs. Many small businesses suffer with multiple steps in their onboarding process, with critical information spread across dozens of documents and sometimes stuck in people’s heads!

It’s critical to get your onboarding process right to ensure your new employees are happy and engaged with your business. By developing one or more onboarding courses, you can automate and centralise important information, processes and tasks, allowing your new recruit to start faster and freeing up your team’s time.

Download free: 5 eLearning Courses every team needs

Train remotely

If your business didn’t include remote workers prior to COVID-19, it almost certainly does now! The pandemic has shown many leaders the benefits and possibilities of remote work, and many predict that it is here to stay. eLearning offers an ideal training solution for remote and mixed teams. eLearning courses can be sent to workers wherever they’re located and completed without in-person supervision. Results can be tracked online from a learning platform such as HowToo’s Growth plan for an easy, reliable and flexible training experience.

Provide consistent learning experiences

If your business relies on regular face-to-face sessions for training for products, safety or onboarding, it can be difficult to ensure that your employees are experiencing consistent learning experiences. While each session can follow the same curriculum, it can be impossible to ensure that every learner receives the exact same training, as it relies on fallible human elements such as the cohort and trainer.

With an eLearning approach, businesses can ensure that learners receive the exact same learning experience every time, and can ensure that learners meet the same standard of knowledge by delivering digital assessments with automated requirements for passing. 

Capture knowledge and experience

Successful small businesses are often lucky to have dedicated employees who stay with the business for a long time. Such employees are invaluable for their experience and knowledge of internal processes and historical information. It can be a devastating setback for a business when these employees move on, and can take years to replace the lost knowledge and experience.

However, with the right eLearning platform, this knowledge and experience can be captured, and then shared with other team members. With an eLearning course creation tool that is easy to use, any team member can capture their knowledge in the form of an interactive and shareable course.

Scalable 

eLearning is a highly scalable solution compared to face-to-face training. If your business is looking to grow in the future, you’ll need a training solution that grows with you. Face-to-face training sessions can be limited by a number of factors, from the size of the room needed to hold everyone, to the trainer-to-learner ratio. By comparison, eLearning only requires that learners have a device (of any size!) and internet connection to complete the digital course. As a digital product, an eLearning course can be delivered over and over again for no additional cost. The only consideration for businesses is finding the right eLearning platform that offers flexible and scalable pricing solutions.

eLearning is the gift that keeps on giving

With so many ongoing benefits, it’s difficult to go wrong with an eLearning approach to team learning and development. Once set up, eLearning becomes a valuable investment with ongoing returns.

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