5 Key Benefits of Online Corporate Training

August 18, 2021

In the world of ever-evolving technology, having the option for remote or online corporate training has a multitude of advantages over traditional physical training. Especially in a world where travelling and getting together in groups, for training or otherwise, is no longer a good option. Social distancing has become part of our vocabulary and our daily life. Thus we need to adapt with the times to keep moving forward.

Moving to an online environment has people feeling sceptical as it is an entirely new concept for most, though remote training has been an evolving practice since before the times of social distancing. The benefits of online training are many, but we wanted to introduce you to a few we believe to be the most valuable in the time of COVID-19 regulations.

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<li>Budget-friendly</li>

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We’ll start off with one of the more attractive benefits of online training, it cuts down the cost of training, by a lot. In a <a href="https://trainingmag.com/sites/default/files/trn-2018-industry-report.pdf">2018 training industry report</a>, it is observed that companies spend anywhere from R15 300 to R17 900 per employee per year on training courses. For SME companies that amount could be hard to swallow. Even for large enterprises that can be quite expensive especially if you have a large workforce.

To put this in perspective, this would mean companies are spending between R1 275 and R1 491 per month, per employee. For many companies, this is not viable.

Following on from the above, training facilities can become an expensive endeavour and thus most companies opt out of the idea in giving their employees the professional training needed to up productivity and quality of work. They rely on the “grow-as-we-go” mindset opening up possibilities of irreparable mistakes to be made that could have been avoided with proper training. Other costs include the cost of travel expenses, catering and venue hire – not to mention the costs of facilitators and physical training materials and time lost in the office or production that can’t be reclaimed.

Conducting training through an online environment cuts down on a lot of costs whereas you can focus your budget solely on the educational course as a much better and cost-effective investment to your company and all staff members. This is the case seeing as online learning material remains available in a central location, no venues need to be hired and only one set of course work needs to be made available.

<li>Flexibility</li>

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One important aspect to keep in mind is that you do not want to burn your employees out. According to a <a href="https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/2019-training-industry-report/">2019 training industry report</a>, employees spend around 42.1 to 49.8 hours on average on training per year. Working an 8 to 5 job and going to training facilities before and/or after work can take a toll on their performance. Having to give up weekends to work these hours will also rob them of their personal time and well-deserved rest to be focused and on point come Monday morning.

Having all of your training material available online gives your staff the flexibility to complete their training whenever they have the time to do so as long as they have a proper internet connection and a device to work from. Training can even be done on the go, wherever students are. According to an article by <a href="https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/12/2018-e-learning-trends.html">Small Business Trends</a>, 67% of people now use mobile devices to access their training material, which indicates that people are studying while moving about.

<li>Accessible support from experts</li>

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Having all of your training materials at your fingertips can be a great advantage but sometimes there is still a need for a facilitator with expert support and guidance. One of the main reasons why some companies opt out of training their employees is due to the fear of ineffective training. Luckily with remote training, employees can train at their own pace whilst still having access to expert support in the form of live or prerecorded video sessions.

It is still important for employees to have the option to be in contact with trainers and facilitators through live streaming, for example through Zoom - the world’s foremost live streaming platform, where they can get personal guidance.

<li>Interactive and adaptable content</li>

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No two people are alike. Whereas some employees thrive having a plethora of content to read and research, others better understand through visual representation. Having your training material in an online environment allows for content to be presented in a variety of forms to ensure that every employee fully understands the training material. eLearning platforms allow for additional information to be available that employees can also read into to better understand topics.

One of the major benefits of online corporate training is that there are so many tools available to create custom content for your courses. According to an article posted by the <a href="https://trainingmag.com/trgmag-article/online-vs-class-success/">Training Mag</a>, “by limiting the content that has to be taught face-to-face, we can maximize the quality of the instruction in all areas and minimize the cost in time and money for ourselves and our students”.

From videos, graphical diagrams, animations, interactive lessons and more. It is expected that online <a href="https://smallbiztrends.com/2017/12/2018-e-learning-trends.html">videos are responsible for 80% of all internet traffic</a>, this is to be expected as graphical content draws our attention. Courses can be shaped and specialized to cater to each employee’s unique needs. Interactive content like this also helps to keep employees engaged and interested in the training material to ensure that they get the most out of their online course.

<li>Digital record-keeping and administration</li>

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When it comes to training your staff, the administrative work can be a hair grasping job. Through the creation of an online profile on a remote learning platform, employees can check their progress and revise. An online profile also allows employers to keep track of which employee has been allocated to each training program, who has completed, who is still busy, who has even registered.

Arguably the biggest benefit of online corporate training is having the ability to properly track each employee's progress through online reporting. Facilitators and employers can track each individual employee’s progress on each part of the course to better understand their strengths and weaknesses. This allows trainers and facilitators to assist employees in the areas with which they struggle for optimized performance. Other than that, employers will be in a better position to see if their training is effective in the first place by being able to draw class-wide data and insights.

When it comes to assessments, proper remote learning environments offer quizzes and surveys that educators can set for students. Once these are completed, the system automatically calculates a mark for each student, meaning that facilitators do not have to budget time for marking papers and weighing up marks for learners. The risk of human error during calculations is also limited when using automated assessment tools available on online learning platforms.

The future of corporate training is online

There are many more benefits to remote corporate training than what we have listed here. Learning management systems (LMS) provide online training platforms that make it possible for online courses to be presented. Ever-evolving technologies will keep improving and advancing the remote training environment for better quality content and training materials.

LMS platforms have become increasingly popular with COVID-19 regulations keeping us all at a distance as it is important that we consider the health of all of our employees whilst still providing them with top-class training to boost their performance.

SOCO_ED is a locally developed adaptive LMS platform that provides a vast variety of services which include content creation and an online learning environment where you can host your training. SOCO_ED is designed to be an all-in-one solution for those looking to take their training online.

For more information on the benefits of online corporate training and the different services that we provide, visit our website here <a href="https://www.socoed.com/">https://www.socoed.com/</a>.

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5 Key Benefits of Online Corporate Training

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