A cartoon image of a laptop with a graduation cap on top and a stack of books behind it, symbolising e-learning.
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How e-learning can empower your employees

25 May 2023

BrightHR’s Jenny Marsden explores the benefits of e-learning in the workplace and the best ways to ensure employees are engaged.

A crucial part of what’s important to the modern workforce is training and career development. There’s a big shift in how employees want to be rewarded and the importance of company values and learning.

Incorporating e-learning into your company can be essential to upskilling employees, especially as we face a global talent shortage.

If you’re wondering why e-learning in particular, it’s because it has a significant leg up over traditional learning methods. E-learning is much more accessible and can be tailored to different learning styles, making it a more inclusive option than traditional learning methods.

For businesses looking to provide coaching and development to employees, digital learning material is now the most cost-effective option. It’s also the preferred method for employees, which makes them much more engaged with the idea of learning.

With e-learning, employees can take charge of their learning experience: letting them decide what they want to learn, when they want to learn and how they want to learn.

It also allows organisations to provide a diverse range of learning resources and opportunities suited to staff needs and preferences. So, you can see for yourself how developing your workers increases their value to your business.

Tips for empowering employees through e-learning

Start with key areas of focus and provide access to technical and soft skills that are relevant to all employees regardless of role, length of service or seniority. This means choosing topics that employees care about.

Employees want to learn skills that also help them outside the work environment, like time management or leadership skills, or training that shows them that their company aligns with their own values like equality and diversity, sustainability and environmental responsibility.

Continuously improve your e-learning courses by gathering feedback on your teams’ learning experiences. It can be as simple as learning their preferred content style and adapting courses to suit their preferences, so it’s more engaging and maximises learning outcomes.

These approaches create consistency but also help you as an employer to overcome any challenges or resistance you face from employees when introducing e-learning to your organisation.

Click here to go to the BrightHR website.

Potential challenges

As with all things, e-learning comes with challenges. Even introducing new technologies can create tension not only for those who are less tech savvy, but it can also raise concerns about certain positions becoming irrelevant in the future.

You can overcome these challenges by being open with employees about your business goals and why new technologies are critical to helping them grow.

Being able to join that journey and be involved in the implementation alleviates any tension, re-focusses attention and allows employees to be open to learning new skills at the same time.

Other ways to address challenges or resistance to e-learning include:

  • Emphasise how e-learning helps employees’ personal growth and upskills them for senior roles.
  • Embrace learning and development openly and create a continuous learning culture so it’s more familiar for employees.
  • Showcase other staff members’ experiences and share their feedback from the learning process.
  • Provide tangible rewards so employees feel more encouraged to take part in e-learning initiatives.

How AI and tech can shape the future of e-learning

AI is a hot topic in every industry right now and we can expect these technologies to play a notable role in shaping the future of e-learning.

They’ll likely help to improve personalised learning by analysing each learner’s behaviour, preferences and performance to create customised learning paths.

Integrating AI with e-learning makes your business more accessible as well. For example, AI can transcribe audio, describe images or convert text to speech to make sure that e-learning programmes are inclusive and accessible to all employees.

With every advanced technology and e-learning benefit we’ve discussed, the future of HR and employee development looks more digital, personalised and engaging.

Engaged employees are more likely to stay involved, loyal and productive, so there’s a lot for HR leaders and employers to gain.

By Jenny Marsden

Jenny Marsden is the associate director of service at BrightHR, UK. A version of this article was previously published on the BrightHR blog.

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