Training Your Team Members Online

In today’s business environment, plenty has been said about the importance of keeping team members well educated and equipped with enough of the latest industry work practices, tricks and procedures to bring maximum value to employers.

Popular belief says that carefully planned employee training programs can help businesses stay competitive by increasing productivity and morale, while at the same time reducing employee turnover and workplace accidents.

Despite the obvious attractions however, many people with families, sporting interests, other hobbies or second jobs simply don’t have the time (let alone the energy or motivation) to attend formal lectures/classes or prepare for scheduled exams.

But thanks to the widespread availability of access to the Internet, as well as the emergence of some increasingly complex interactive technologies, an alternative, more accessible and flexible option for team member development is gradually becoming available.

Marilyn Harvey, an e-learning specialist from the West End’s Training Online International, says the online environment is a “good fit” for adults because they tend to learn in a different way to children. “When an adult wants to know something, they want to know it immediately and are highly motivated to the point where they are able to learn independently,” she says.

Commonly known as e-learning or online training, the provision of a wide range of courses through the Internet has created a new virtual learning environment that eliminates the need to physically travel to and attend class. Also, the delivery of tailored study materials and assessments ‘virtually’ allows individual students to learn at their own pace wherever they want to – whether at home, at work or while traveling.

In his role as a director of Online Learning Professional, Steve Fisher has developed online learning materials for several universities, commercial clients and government departments. ”Certainly the anytime-anyplace ‘mechanical’ nature of online learning has made delivery more efficient and learner oriented,” he says. “E-learning has not changed the way courses are taught, but it does help raise a lot of questions that we never considered when stuck in the classroom.”

The relative infancy of the Internet being used as a proxy teaching tool has understandably lead to concerns over the quality of courses available and the fees and charges that might be involved.

“The reality is that developing an online course is an expensive exercise if it is done well,” says Harvey. The cost of developing a course can range from $10,000 to as much as $250,000, depending on the number of programmers, time taken and the complexity of media used.

“The return comes when an organization is able to reap the benefits that come from having team members who have excellent product knowledge, good understandings of business processes and a strong occupational skill base.”

According to Marilyn Harvey, e-learning expert, there is “amazing scope” for the development and delivery of public courses over the next few years, but there is a very limited range available at the moment outside IT certification courses.

“Most online learning is being commissioned by organizations to be delivered to their own personnel,” she comments. “The motivation behind this is the organization’s own business goals, so the courseware is developed for a very specific audience.”

While nothing will arguably ever be more effective than the ‘live’ classroom-learning environment, online courses and programs have the potential to fill the void created by (potential) students who just cannot afford the time to study the conventional way.

“People are any organization’s most valuable resource and it is very important to ensure they are up-to-date with their knowledge and skills,” Harvey says. “It is well documented that investing in training makes good business sense.”

Copyright 2002, RAN ONE Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission from www.ranone.com.