Planning For Success: eLearning costs and how to reduce them

Introduction

In today’s world, speed, change, and technological advancement are constantly pushing businesses to perform better, produce faster, and learn more, so that they’re able to evolve with customer needs. This means innovating new ways to provide the ultimate customer experience by embracing the power of the latest technologies and adopting flexible practices and modern approaches to managing people.

What happens to those who don’t keep up? Well, sadly, they tend not to stick around for too long. They’re pushed out by their more progressive competitors. This is why an attitude of continuous learning has become the vital ingredient for developing a sustainable competitive advantage.

This is best achieved through frequent training in a wide range of soft skills (e.g. leadership) and hard skills (e.g. sales techniques). Training might sound like a simple solution, but there’s a catch. There just never seems to be sufficient time or resources for continuous training.

Why? Probably because only 8% of leaders recognize the business impact of learning and development^[i].

Minimizing the costs of training so that training ROI improves becomes a real pain point for training managers. Especially when a small budget seems to leave you with few options apart from a generic and unengaging classroom workshop.

You see, trying to cut down by creating a one-size-fits-all program usually leaves learners pondering how relevant the content is to their roles and career ambitions. And cramming a year’s training into three full days just leaves them feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. The result? Real learning takes a back seat, and the financial investment (albeit small) just doesn’t pay off.

That’s probably what Benjamin Franklin meant when he once said that “an investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. He wasn’t far wrong. But really, training and development isn’t like investing in a savings account. It’s more like paying for rent. Because just like a home is a necessity (rather than a ‘nice to have’), training is necessary for business growth.

Training offers almost endless benefits for both employees and businesses. Like, more satisfied and confident employees, reduced staff turnover, and higher productivity levels and general business performance.

Fortunately, you can have it all. Because effective, high-quality training that engages learners, and pays off in tangible business results, doesn’t have to break the budget. Especially when you embrace eLearning techniques and a suitable Learning Management System (LMS).

In this book, we’ll discuss the different costs associated with training, and how you can make the most out of your training budget while still meeting your learning objectives. Whether you’re just starting out, or you’ve been embracing eLearning for years, you’re just a few pages away from learning how to create engaging and cost-effective eLearning courses, with a positive ROI. Let’s begin!

[i] LinkedIn 2017 Workplace Learning Report: https:// learning.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/learning/enus/pdfs/lil-workplace-learning-report.pdf