Benefits of e-Learning: Part 3 – Reduce Trainer Dependency

For decades corporations and governments – and the training industry – have relied on competent trainers to train their workforces. This system works effectively for small organizations that work in a specific domain from one or two locations. For large organizations that work in multiple domains and have branches in several cities across the globe, creating a training infrastructure that depends purely on the availability of trainers poses several challenges.

On close analysis we found that there are four major challenges that large organizations face in Instructor-Led Training or ILT:

• Availability of Effective Trainers: Most organizations find it difficult to retain quality trainers who can, on the one hand, train their new hires about the organization’s processes and, on the other hand, sharpen the knowledge of the existing workforce to meet the competition.
• Variety of training versus availability of trainers: Large organizations need to conduct different types of training. This means they need a large number of trainers at different locations. If they try to use one trainer for different types of training, they risk losing the effectiveness and authority of the training. With versatile trainers already scarce in number, this can further complicate the issue.
• Style of Training: In ILT, the personality and style of a trainer drives the training. Learners have to adjust to the trainer’s style and personality. This can hamper the learning process, especially if there several trainers.
• Cost of Trainers: Finally, good trainers are often seasoned professionals with good communication skills. Such professionals are scarce and often demand premium price. A training infrastructure entirely dependent on the trainer is certainly prone to escalating the training budget.

While trainers will continue to play an important role in employee training, e-Learning can help organizations to overcome the various hurdles that arise due to lack of good quality trainers.

Most organizations conduct a significant percentage of courses just to pass on certain information to employees in a structured manner. These courses do not require much of trainer intervention. Organizations can develop or convert these trainings to e-Learning modules. Learners can be asked to go through the courses at their own convenience. Any queries during the training can be resolved via electronic communication, like e-mail, chat or discussion forums, which are often integrated with the Learning Management System.

The information embedded in the e-Learning modules can be easily refreshed as and when the need arises. Compare this with trainer or instructor-led training where learners need to be provided printed training material.

In addition, interactive e-Learning modules engage the audience as effectively as a trainer does and deliver consistent information in a consistent style. Thus there are least chances of learners getting different information from various trainers or from one another.

While development of e-Learning modules can cost high in the beginning, however, as organization switch to e-learning and develops a significant amount of module – various elements of e-Learning can be reused/ duplicated across the modules thus bringing the development costs significantly down.

Thus e-Learning not only helps in maintaining consistency in the training, it also helps organizations to reduce their dependency on trainers and generate significant cost savings. If you are looking to start e-Learning in your organization, please contact us for a free trial of e-learning or LMS.

Note: This post is the third part of the debate on the benefits of e-Learning.  Read the first part here.