On-Demand Learning And Your Employees
As Learning Management Systems (LMS) continue to be more affordable for any size business, the need for relevant content continues to grow.
Is On-Demand Training Right For Your Employees?
The need for On-Demand Training has grown to be a $107B industry. 70% of employees today engage in some form of on-demand learning to improve their job skills. Employee are used to having information at their fingertips and locating answers within minutes. What has this done to impact employee expectations of workplace training? More employees than ever are taking control of their own learning and development.
Today’s Modern Learner
According to Deloitte’s, Meet The Modern Learner, technology has enabled the modern learner to direct their own learning by providing instantly available knowledge and personal/professional development.
There is still a place for more traditional learning methods but the challenge for smaller businesses is these well-known physical classroom formats require weeks or even months to organizes and the cost can be difficult to justify in the short-term. As an employer, you want a more immediate return on the training investment. Hence, a balance must be met between investment and timely return. Employees generally need to learn in real-time, and more often while on the job.
Flexibility Is The Key
Taking an employee away from their work environment to sit in a classroom may limit how often training can be provided. On Demand Training provides the flexibility to train anyone, anywhere and anytime. Employees can take control of their learning within a time and space of their choosing.
Don’t misunderstand, this doesn’t mean that the organization relinquishes all oversight and monitoring of the employees training. Proof of training completion along with associated learning objectives can easily be added to the employees LMS record along with internally provided training elements.
Breadth of Opportunity
Your internal LMS platform is a waste of resources if nobody uses it. Most small to medium size businesses have limitations of resources when it comes to filling the LMS with content and keeping it up to date. Content must be of value as viewed by your employees. If it is filled with content that doesn’t provide value, your employees simply won’t engage with it. Most will look elsewhere for content and if the organization is not paying attention, the employee may pursue outside content that is not relevant or contrary to you cultural objectives.
Your employees aren’t always motivated to engage in the act of “learning,” but studies show they are motivated to learn. If they understand the content they learn is directly tied to their performance, they become more likely to engage. You can transform the culture of learning within your organization by viewing more non-traditional, third-party learning platforms as an employee development multiplier. Cost is far less and performance gain far more, if the right platform is chosen.
Selection And Evaluation
One point of clarification. As wonderful as it is that your employee can learn at a pace that suits them, depending on the skill set being learned, employees still need access to Subject Matter Experts within the organization to ensure the correct connection is made between knowledge accrual and application.
When selecting a third-party platform or training repository, it’s critical to know first what skill development areas you are willing to outsource. If you are in a unique industry or providing a service unlike any other, you may choose to conduct the majority of the technical skills in-house. If you are in an industry with universal regulations and compliance guidance such as electrical, fire, security, and etc., you may choose to select industry standard learning platforms that provide a percentage of core skills training. For areas such as leadership and management development or many of what are classified as soft-skills, you would be well served choosing a platform that specialized in these skills and supplement internally with company culture and process training.
Regardless of the on-demand pathway you choose, continual evaluation of the skills toward performance is paramount. Evaluation of on-demand is a continuous process. When measuring hands-on technical skill application, the determination of acquired learning can more easily be made. When dealing with soft-skills that deal with personal growth, customer relations and critical thinking, these can take a little more time to recognize.
Helping your organization become more productive and performance-driven is not a plug and play endeavor. It begins with incorporating an on-demand philosophy into your learning strategy and developing appropriate controls and evaluation steps to ensure employees are making the application in performance.