How to Reduce Costs When You’ve Gone Over Budget

In fact, businesses that actively train their workforce often spend unnecessarily high costs on their training programs. Maybe you’ve gone over budget while planning an eLearning course, or maybe after reading this, you think you might be spending funds on tools you don’t need.

Whatever the case, not all expenses are “expensive”, and your training doesn’t have to be either. In this chapter, you’ll find ways to reduce the cost of training employees without compromising quality. Because, often, the problem isn’t unnecessary training, but unnecessary spending on training.

Move Training Online

When it comes to finding a balance between training quality and cost reduction, eLearning can be a game changer. This isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a scalable way of making training activities, materials and assessments available to many busy employees all over the world.

And they can access the content most relevant to them, in an engaging format, whenever they need it most.

eLearning courses can be updated quickly and easily, and often require little to no time from a live facilitator. This means less time and lower costs for each course presentation. But that’s not all.

Here are few other ways you can reduce your costs when you move your training online.

Incorporate forums

Discussion forums create a space for convenient peer-to-peer learning and communication, without the need for those common offline costs (like venues and catering).

They also create an opportunity for learners to answer each other’s questions, in turn saving time on multiple (and sometimes redundant) emails and in-person conversations with a facilitator.

Change your LMS

We’ve already learned how important it is to find an LMS that meets your training needs. An LMS that is simple to set up, with functionality suitable for your learning objectives and powerful reporting capabilities, will save time and money – eg. easily accessible reports mean quicker and easier identification of employee skill gaps and measurement of ROI.

If your current LMS isn’t enough for your needs, or it’s too much for your needs, don’t be afraid to make the change.

While switching to a different LMS might be costly in the short term (and feel like a hassle), it’s one of the most important elements of your entire training program. So, think long term. By making the change now, you’ll be saving time, money and a whole lot of work later.

Make webinars your new classroom

Videos not enough? Move live workshops online with webinars. By removing the need for a venue, travel, and catering, webinars lower the average training cost per employee.

The facilitator (or expert) is able to address multiple employees at once, in a real-time space for engagement. And if someone can’t make it, it’s no big deal. Instead of hosting the webinar again, learners can watch the recording when they get the time. This, of course, saves on the cost of training employees.

Keep it mobile and accessible

eLearning cuts training costs because learners are able to take their training anywhere, and access it at a time that benefits them most. This mitigates clashing schedules and the need for meeting rooms.

Make sure that your training content is mobile compatible and easily accessible so that your learners are able to engage in constant microlearning in a way that’s most relevant to their jobs, their existing skills levels, and their development needs.

This kind of tailored accessibility won’t only save employees the time of working through training content that isn’t relevant to them but will reduce the pressure on support staff as well.

Leverage Resources Inside And Outside The Business

It’s funny (and not funny) how many businesses turn to outsourced skills and expertise, which come at a premium price while ignoring all the free ones! Not to mention the untapped opportunity to leverage the people who know your business best – your employees.

Here are a few ideas that can cut down the cost of training employees by using your resources better.

Create internal trainers and experts

You can probably think of a number of your employees who’ve got specialist skills, international experience, or years of knowledge. If you’ve got the right people for the job, use these knowledgeable and experienced staff to train other employees.

This could involve pairing up newcomers with experienced employees, or building mentorship relationships. This won’t replace formal training altogether but could substitute elements of your eLearning courses with practical on-the-job learning, which would reduce the average training cost per employee.

Find supporting resources online

It’s not always necessary to reinvent the wheel. We live in a time when information is freely available at the click of a button.

So, when skill gaps are identified, find existing online content and materials that could be linked to in your training program. This will save you the time and costs of developing new content for your courses.

Monitor feedback, and take it seriously

Teaching staff what they already know is not only redundant but can frustrate them. Before you start training your employees, use quick and easy automated assessments to find out what they already know.

Then, once employees are engaged in the training program, ask them for continuous feedback on which parts of the training they find useful, and which parts are redundant or irrelevant. This will help eliminate those elements of an eLearning course that consume unnecessary staff time, giving your employees more time to be productive.

Find UX reviewers in-house

For training to be effective, it must be an intuitive and engaging learning experience. But identifying improvement areas in user experience (UX) can take time, and sometimes costs in the form of external UX designers.

Instead, turn to the people who have experienced the training design first hand – internal employees who have completed the training before. This will not only save on the cost of external fees but will also result in an improved training experience for future learners.

Improve Assessment Feasibility

Assessing learner performance and providing feedback can be one of the most time-consuming activities in the facilitation process. And the more staff you train, the more time it takes and the more costs grow.

An effective cost reduction strategy is to develop assessments in a way that enables instant grading, automated feedback, or moderated peer reviews.

By investing time now into the development of clear, automated feedback responses to quiz questions, branching scenarios and what-if analyses, you’ll save tens of hours later on. This also means immediate feedback for learners when they’re most engaged in the content.

By utilizing peer reviews or including a self-assessment activity, learners will not only gain from the activity itself but also from grading and providing feedback on the work of someone else.

Let’s recap the chapter:
By implementing the cost reduction strategies you learned in this chapter, you’ll be able to identify the aspects of your training program that can achieve the same objectives, with less time, and at a lower cost. Even small changes could turn your staff training into a high-quality learning experience that fits comfortably within budget.