Blended learning can help corporate training programs increase the effectiveness and decrease the costs of their curriculum. Supplementing in-person training with digital content can help employees retain and apply the skills they need to be successful.
Every year, companies spend millions of dollars investing in employee training and development. According to the Association for Talent Development’s 2016 State of the Industry Report, companies spend an average of $1,252 per employee on training and development a year.
While companies have good reason to be investing in their employees, many studies have shown that employee training and development doesn’t yield the results companies are hoping for in their workforce. The Great Training Robbery, a paper by Michael Beer, Magnus Finnstrom, and Derek Schrader coming out of Harvard Business School, discusses how the $164.2 billion training industry doesn’t necessarily result in effective organizational change or improved performance.
So, how can corporate training programs improve their effectiveness and increase their ROI for companies?
One way to increase effectiveness and ROI on corporate training programs is by incorporating elements of blended learning. Blended learning is when you complement in-person training and classroom instruction with online applied learning. Many companies have used blended learning techniques to increase the effectiveness and decrease the cost of corporate learning and development programs. Here are five reasons why your corporate training program should use a blended learning strategy:
Blended learning provides more engaging content for employees to learn new skills.
According to the American Society for Training and Development, employees lose 90% of the skills they learned in training once they go back to their jobs. Applying blended learning concepts to corporate training can ensure that employees are not only remembering training content, but also applying it to daily work life.
Employees lose 90% of the skills they learned in training once they go back to their jobs.
Dr. Eduardo Salas, a professor of organizational psychology at the University of Central Florida and a program director at its Institute for Simulation and Training, believes that many corporate training programs don’t use learning science to design their curriculum. Blended learning allows programs to create content that is going to be most effective for the employee’s learning style.
Bite-sized content that is more fun and visual is easier for workers to consume and remember. Supplementing in-person training with online content can also create a more personalized experience for employees.
With blended learning that is also adaptive, employees can utilize assessments to focus on improving their weaknesses and building their skillsets. Personalized content recognizes that all employees aren’t in the same place for their training or development. Employees need an adaptive learning experience to help them grow and develop in unique ways. Blended learning can also help companies distribute preparatory training before in-class instruction or refresher content after training.
Personalized content recognizes that all employees aren’t in the same place for their training and development. Employees need an adaptive learning experience to help them grow and develop in unique ways.
Blended learning helps a company introduce more fun and social content to a training curriculum. Creating opportunities for competition and collaboration can not only improve the effectiveness of training, but also make it more fun for employees.
You can reach more people using blending learning.
In-person instruction can come with a hefty price tag. The cost of travel, lodging, and other logistical considerations adds up, and many times only senior leadership is even able to make the trip anyway.
Blended learning allows more people to access more content at their fingertips. Online training content is easy to scale globally across multiple offices. It allows for consistent messaging and on-demand learning. Many corporate training programs focus on long and expensive one-time learning episodes. Online content can increase access to training by providing content to employees who might not be able to attend in-person instruction.
Through eLearning, managers – who might be flown out to attend corporate training – can come back to their teams and share learnings and insights that they can teach and apply in their employees’ daily work through online content.
Blended learning is more cost-effective than in-person training.
Ernst & Young was able to cut its training costs by 35% using blended learning techniques. They were able to condense 2900 hours of classroom training into 700 hours of online learning, 200 hours of distance learning, and 500 hours of in-person instruction.
An e-learning approach to corporate training can save approximately 20% in the first year of implementation and up to 50% in the following years. Customizing online content for your training program may increase costs on the front-end, but it will overall make more scalable and cost-effective training content for your employees worldwide.
An e-learning approach to corporate training can save approximately 20% in the first year of implementation and up to 50% in following years.
It’s easier to track progress using online learning.
According to Dr. Eduardo Salas, the first step of any training program should be a training-needs analysis. Who needs training? What kind of training is needed?
Many corporate training programs don’t measure the effectiveness of in-class learning, but online learning systems allow for companies to consistently track the progress of their employees through constant assessment and feedback collection. Blended learning allows companies to understand the needs of their employees through skills assessment that could also allow them to provide more meaningful in-person training as well.
Through bite-sized content and repetition, online learning can make it easier for employees to develop long-lasting good habits in a way that one-time classroom instruction can’t accomplish. eLearning systems make it easier to view the progress and access analytics of your employees every step of the way.
Learn how Verb utilizes blending and applied learning content to deliver effective and engaging bite-sized training to your employees at goverbstg.wpengine.com/discover.