eLearning and How It Can Improve Your Workforce
Laura Fields is an educational writer who tries to give high-quality resource material to teachers and students alike. She deems it important to try and improve the ways of studying and teaching in order to reach a higher level of comprehension and understanding among students.
The work environment has shifted dramatically. Most developed nations have outsourced a majority of their manual and industrial labor, leaving their populations striving for high-skill and service jobs.
The higher the technical requirement, the more difficult it becomes to train for that job. The skill floor is getting higher and higher.
In addition, most schools and colleges are inefficient at what they do. More or less, colleges cost as much as buying a new house (at least in the US), while the actual knowledge taught is miles wide and inches deep.
Sure, specific jobs such as doctors and chemists cannot get by with being an autodidact. Yet, for most positions, the training will be done on the spot.
Overall, hiring practices are slowly adapting to the new technological landscape. Companies can gain access to more talented recruits due to eLearning. And from the standpoint of the candidates, the benefits are numerous.
As noted by Laura Fields, a writer from Bestessayservicesradar, some of their most dedicated and passionate contributors are self-taught freelancers. Some of these people were ahead of the curve, as they eLearned their skills years ago before the current pandemic.
What is eLearning?
When discussing most college curricula, the words “needlessly bloated” come to mind. Say, for example, that a person aspires to become a Java developer. Well, they will sign up for college only to find that they will spend 3-4 years learning about everything under the Sun.
And even if they are taught Java, it is a very abridged and modest amount of the entire volume of info that needs to be known. Going to 4 years of college to learn data entry or a single programming language is a waste. There are courses online that can teach you in just a few months.
Going to college for a certain job is like needing a single glass of milk but having to buy an entire cow to get it. Traditional learning is wasteful, and it prolongs the adolesce of people well-withing their mid-late twenties. Going to school for 16-20 years of your life should turn you into a superhero. Yet, the average college grad can barely function in a dynamic economy. Something needs to change.
So, what is eLearning?
eLearning represents electronically assisted learning which offers the student a chance to learn specifically what he/she needs.
This form of education is often cheaper, it doesn’t last four years, and it can be done at your discretion. You can work a side-job while learning Excel in your free time. Also, you get to avoid the dozens of hours of commute time.
As far as the students and candidates are concerned, eLearning is superior in many ways. But what about the companies themselves? Isn’t it better to have colleges do your pre-vetting and give out diplomas as certificates of competence?
This form of education is often cheaper, it doesn’t last four years, and it can be done at your discretion.
LAURA FIELDS
How eLearning improves the employee pool
As mentioned, certain jobs are heavily college-dependent. But most of them are not.
In fact, Human Resources departments often have three primary duties:
- Select and assure that the candidate has the right personality, communication, and interpersonal skills. HR reps assess who you are as a person.
- Test out the skillset listed on the resume to see if the noted qualities were accurately represented.
- Finally, the department’s most abstract duty is to evaluate if the candidate is competent enough to fill in the blanks in his knowledge.
From an employer’s standpoint, very few entry-level candidates will check all of the boxes on their requirement lists.
Information and technology-heavy sectors will innovate and adapt constantly. This ongoing development creates the necessity for professionals to learn and adjust on the fly.
Companies are in the habit of creating vast libraries of didactic material while giving their employees access to those materials. Ambitious employees can learn as they work, upgrade their skills, and make them more likely to get promoted.
For the companies themselves, it is better to have your own in-grown staff of reliable professionals. Ultimately, every corporation seeks to maximize profits and returns on investments.
Employee training used to be a costly action, given that you had to pay for seminar organization, travel expenses, hotel costs, etc. Due to eLearning, it is much cheaper to invest in an online course.
You do not need to host multiple sessions and cycle each group of employees. Trainers do not need to repeat themselves. eLearning courses are a one-time effort, and then you can replicate and distribute the info as required.
Evaluations
Anual or quarterly evaluations can be challenging. Keeping tabs on minute details regarding each employee is very time-consuming. However, eLearning promises to improve not only training but also evaluations.
Progress can be tracked inch by inch, keystroke by keystroke. Engaging tests and exercises accompany even some of the cheapest online training courses.
Having a spreadsheet with your employees’ qualities and faults will be much quicker than playing detective and asking around. You will still have to talk to people, but the hard data will be more accurate than office gossip.
NPI
New Product Implementation is usually an arduous process. Developers, support staff, quality testers need to be updated overnight. This situation can quickly turn into a logistical nightmare.
Thankfully, eLearning methods allow for all relevant info to be delivered to each inbox overnight. It is very hard to describe the advantage of training a few thousand people at a time or at least keep them updated.
Conclusion
For employees and candidates, eLearning is highly advantageous. You can remove all the costly fluff and filler from the typical college experience. It is cheaper, quicker, and can happen at your own pace.
Companies can benefit even more, given the cost-saving nature of investing in a one-time effort. It will also allow their employees to grow and adapt to upcoming technologies.
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