This is a guest post contributed by Ciara Byrne.
Skill set needs in the modern workplace have changed by 25% since 2015, and with the AI boom, the change will only continue. As leaders, keeping your employees updated with the changing requirements can be challenging.
But there’s a solution: effective online learning. That’s why we have created this guide to leveraging online learning so you, too, can boost your team’s skills and set your business up for success.
Benefits of Effective Online Learning
The benefits of creating an online learning program go beyond cost-effectiveness. It gives you total control over your course, allowing you to target employees and the company’s specific needs. Furthermore, investing in online learning help you:
- Create a safe space for employees to discuss any gaps in knowledge and skills and turn potential weaknesses into strengths.
- Build a centralized library of learning resources your employees can refer to when needed.
- Provide consistent upskilling and reskilling opportunities to your workforce.
- Keep employees updated with current industry knowledge, skills, and trends.
Plus, online learning means your employees can learn from anywhere, anytime. This adds to the charms, especially today since flexibility is a key determiner of employee satisfaction.
Boost Your Team’s Skill with Effective Online Learning: 6 Tips
Creating an immersive online learning experience is more than recording a course. To get you started, here are six tips for building an effective experience for your team:
Understand Your Team’s Learning Needs
Before you begin designing the perfect online learning experience, you want to understand the skills and learning needs of the team.
Start by asking:
- What skills are essential for employees in their role?
- What are the current skill and knowledge gaps within the team?
- Are there any upcoming projects that require new skills?
- What industry trends should your team be aware of?
With your own answers ready, set learning goals that align with employee needs and their role’s demands. List the objectives that lay out the framework and expectations of your online learning initiatives.
Get your workforce involved in the planning. Conduct employee surveys to determine the skills employees are interested in building upon. This way, you can give your team exactly what they want while keeping the company’s best interest at the center.
Create Well-Organized Online Learning Material
Next, build your online learning content. The content should align with your goals and overall training objective. We’d recommend adopting a microlearning approach.
Microlearning is presenting content in small, bite-sized portions that employees find easy to absorb and comprehend. It’s a great online learning strategy because your team is always time-pressed and juggling multiple tasks.
Micro-learning allows employees to focus on one topic at a time, reducing complicated subjects into digestible knowledge chunks.
Ideally, you’ll want the material to address multiple forms of learning. A healthy mix of training videos, interactive training modules, reading assignments, tests, and other tools will ensure you reach a wide range of learning styles.
Even better, include recorded team meetings in the course for new employees’ online learning material. This will help them understand the team dynamic, learn from past decisions, and promote transparency.
Also, include assessment at different stages. The first test will gauge your team’s skill levels, and the following ones will prove progress and retention.
Devise the Right Online Learning Strategies
The best way to set your team’s skills for success is to start their professional development from the get-go. Integrate online learning into your employee onboarding process.
Along with helping new employees fit in with the right skills, this initiative will also reinforce your determination towards learning and continued growth–thus increasing overall job satisfaction.
You want to test different types of online learning engagement tactics to boost team skills. It can mean using work instruction software for creative interactive learning experiences with real-time updates and version control. For remote workplaces, it can mean pairing team members through Employee Resource Groups, mentorship, and coaching.
Another interesting strategy is rewarding online learning activities. This will motivate the team to participate more actively in their learning, allowing them to earn incentives for finishing modules or assessments.
These rewards can be anything from badges and certifications to discounts and even monetary benefits. Implementing all of it together will benefit your company by improving employee productivity, skills, and knowledge.
Personalized Learning
Each team has different skill sets and ambitions. To understand this, as L&D professionals, you have to work alongside managers to create personalized online learning paths that upskill employees based on their unique career trajectories.
The crux lies in identifying the ideal learning approach for each person–an approach that goes beyond online learning and involves more hands-on and practical activities.
See if you can provide specific course recommendations based on employees’ own learning needs. For example, you can train your sales team about the newest LinkedIn outreach strategies to improve their cold pitching skills, which are immediately applicable to their role. This, in return, will put them in contact with industry experts, thus creating more learning opportunities, as well as creating a culture of knowledge sharing–which will ultimately benefit your brand.
Doing this will harness individual member’s passion and interest, along with boosting employee engagement.
Ensure Managerial Support
To fully embrace and engage with your company’s online learning programs, you need more than a nod of approval from managers. You need their support and active involvement in the learning journey.
To ensure this, equip your managers with the right tools to cultivate a culture of learning with teams. Teach them to integrate skill development into daily workflow.
Foster open communication channels where employees can discuss their learning needs and interests. Encourage managers to listen to their team’s feedback actively. You can also start incentive programs to reward managers who focus on team learning for maximum impact.
Continuous Feedback
The goal is not just to facilitate online learning but also to foster the team’s skill development and excitement throughout the process. The key lies in providing consistent, constructive feedback.
Here are a few approaches to putting this into action:
- Regular Assessment and Evaluation: These assessments can include quizzes, assignments, peer reviews, or self-assessments tailored to specific learning objectives.
- Feedback Surveys and Focus Group: conduct feedback surveys and choose the correct ERG metrics to measure the effectiveness of your team’s skill development.
- Instant Personalization Feedback: Using eLearning tools powered by AI, you can offer automated and personalized feedback based on the team’s performance (akin to a digital mentor)
In Conclusion
Corporate online learning is not a fad. Employees and employers globally are convinced that virtual learning is effective for providing much-needed workplace skills. It’s high time you integrate it into your L&D strategy. Therefore, put the above 6-step process into action and start upskilling your employees from the outset.
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