6 tips when introducing online training to your worforce

So you are an L&D professional and you have been tasked with introducing online training to your employee training strategy.

How should you go about implementing this change in strategy?

Below are just 6 things you should take into consideration when introducing online training in your company.

1. Communicate why you are introducing online training

Most online training is delivered via a learning management system which sends emails to your employees. This notifys them when they have been set up on your system and when they have courses to take.

If you fall into the trap of thinking you don’t need to communicate anything further to your employees, they won’t end up seeing the value in your training.

Even worse, they will treat your system generated emails as spam and will not take any notice of them.

So communicate properly why you are asking them to take an online approach to training and how it will benefit them.

The next five points should be taken into consideration when communicating the value of eLearning to your employees.

2. Get line managers to pilot it first

We can’t stress enough the importance of middle management/line management in the process of training your team (not just eLearning training but all forms of training).

Without your line manager’s “buy-in” your employees will get into bad habits, such as ignoring training that is on offer and finding excuses as to why they can’t complete it.

It is best to pilot online training with your line managers first, so they know what their team are going to have to do, and then run a second pilot for the teams of your most actively engaged line managers.

This will help build momentum for your change in training strategy.

3. Blend it

People learn in different ways, just like giving up smoking — it is sometimes hard to stop doing something you have done regularly.

So you should take a softer approach and give your employees a choice to sign up to face-to-face training or online training courses which cover the same topics.

Or perhaps deliver the first part of training on a topic as a face-to-face session and the second part online, for example as a knowledge quiz or video demonstration.

4. Don’t overdo it

If when introducing digital elearning training your employee finds loads of courses to complete, they will be put off and less likely to complete them all.

It is best to only have a couple of courses on display and once your employee’s have completed these, set a trigger to assign a few more.

5. Don’t make the focus compliance

To encourage your employees to complete online training, don’t tell them it is mandatory for compliance reasons…if I tell my daughter she has to do something, she is much less likely to do it!

Instead, you should create a focus on fun and gaming, such as random prizes for the 100th course completed in the month or the employee who completes the most training in the month etc.

6. One size doesn’t always fit all, so make it relevant

Whilst off-the-shelf training courses are good, you don’t have to pay much or wait too long to get an eLearning partner to customise courses, so they look and sound relevant to your business.

For more advice please feel free to speak to me on 01325 734 885 or contact our team on info@elamb.co.uk

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