Keeping Your Employees on Track with eLearning

When it comes to employee training and education, eLearning is essential. It offers greater engagement, faster completion time, greater information retention, and numerous other benefits. However, you can’t expect your employees to keep up with their training on their own. If you don’t have the right structure in place, the right incentives offered, and the right overarching plan, you might just find that they’re falling behind. Thankfully, it’s not that difficult to keep them on track with eLearning.

Create a Schedule

One of the first things any business must do is create a schedule for eLearning. If your employees don’t know what they need to do or when they need to do it, you can bet that the training will not be completed. By creating a schedule and providing it to your employees, you take the first step toward ensuring that they stay on track. The schedule can be paper-based (think of a desk calendar or wall posting) or electronic. Of course, computerized schedules are recommended, as you can combine these with automated reminders so they don’t forget what’s coming up.

Be Flexible

A rigid schedule for eLearning sort of defeats the purpose of having such a flexible format. Build in malleability. Be flexible. Give your employees options for completing their training when it works best for them. For instance, you might find that many of them prefer to take coursework at home or during break times. Others will prefer to do it during business hours. The point is that by providing a flexible schedule, you can accommodate a greater range of needs and help each employee stay on track.

Make Sure Tests Are Completed

The bulk of employee training will be informational, but you need tests interspersed throughout. Not only are these important for gauging employee information retention and skill building, but they’re also important for tracking progress. Diagnostic, formative, and summative tests all provide you with critical insight into employee development and growth. By analyzing test results, you can determine which workers are on track, which are lagging behind, and which ones need to revisit certain modules or units to round out their training.

Don’t Force Irrelevant Coursework

One problem with a one-size-fits-all approach to eLearning is that a lot of the material your employees slog through isn’t actually pertinent to their position or their career trajectory. Simply put, there’s no point in them taking this training. It’s a waste of their time and your money as a business. Don’t force irrelevant coursework. Customize the training path for your employees based on where they are, where they want to go, and their personal and professional strengths and weaknesses. Remember that there’s no such thing as an all-encompassing approach to training.

Gamification Makes Employees More Willing to Train

If your employees are struggling in the area of motivation, consider gamification. By creating training games integrated with your LMS, you can encourage your employees to spend more time training, and even ensure that they retain more of the information they learn. Gamification has become incredibly important, and has been successfully used by companies ranging from global businesses like Delta to small businesses in your own back yard.

Use Positive Encouragement

Positive encouragement can go a long way toward making your employees actually want to complete their training. Incentivize it by offering a day off for anyone who completes a certain number of modules by a certain date, or with another perk that offers value to your employees.

Use these tips and tactics to track employee progress with eLearning and to encourage them to stay on course. With a highly trained staff, your business benefits and your employees will also reap rewards.