9 benefits of online learning
While the recent announcements of the end of the Melbourne and Sydney lockdowns are gratifying to read after a gruelling 24 months, one thing won’t change — remote and hybrid working arrangements have usurped pride of place in the corporate world.
The move away from traditional office cultures brings with it a variety of changes for organisations, including the need to modernise your professional development practices. In-person conferences, live training seminars and full-day professional development courses can be safely considered outdated traditions.
Not only will most of your workforce be absent from the office, the costs of these traditional training sessions will also be hard to justify when a much more cost-effective alternative is available: online learning.
Online learning isn’t just about cost-efficiency, however. In many ways, it’s actually superior to past training arrangements. Here are nine of the top benefits you can expect when using an online learning platform such as eLurn.
1. You’ll save on training costs
Online learning represents a far more cost-friendly training base than traditional live training arrangements. Traditionally, you’ll have to fork out fees for travel costs, bookings, catering, and professional speaking fees — which are either eliminated completely or greatly reduced in online learning.
You’ll also get to enjoy full value for every dollar. For live training sessions, if the workforce is large enough, absent and sick employees can’t be avoided. That means the expensive training costs are never actually covering the full employee base. With online learning, on the other hand, all your staff members have ongoing access to all relevant modules, meaning you’ll get what you pay for.
2. You’ll accommodate flexible learning needs
In today’s modern workforce, staff members no longer stick to a 9-to-5 schedule. They may need to juggle work with childcare and exercise, and it’s hard to find a work-life split when people are working in their bedrooms.
That makes online learning platforms an important solution for today’s busy employee, who needs the flexibility to pursue training and development in their own time. Your team members will be able to visit and revisit our courses anytime and anywhere, as long as they have an internet connection.
3. It gives ongoing access to all users
Traditional live training sessions can be exciting, passionate events, but did you know that people forget 75% of what they learned within six days? It’s worryingly expensive if 75% of what you pay for is ineffective!
eLurn, on the other hand, uses a subscription-based model to give end users ongoing access to the courses your organisation has signed up for. That helps staff members drastically improve learning retention, with experts recommending the scientifically supported ‘spaced repetition’ learning process to help people remember information.
4. It’s easier to manage
On the management side, online learning is far easier to navigate than the event management required for live training sessions. Live training sessions present multiple potential roadblocks: an organisation needs to juggle people’s schedules, find appropriate training times, manage breaks between sessions, and efficiently open and end the session.
All of these concerns vanish when you have one reliable online platform to host all of your training needs. In fact, with our dedicated eLurn support team, your organisation doesn’t even need to worry about managing and troubleshooting the platform, which is all covered in the service offering.
5. It scales with your organisation’s growth
Online learning is far more flexible than traditional methods and scales with your organisation’s growth over time. eLurn, for example, provides over 150 modules, with no need to find classroom space or training time. Any additional staff members can be onboarded onto the same modules with no maximum limit, and our subscription-based model easily accounts for new users.
Plus, as technology is constantly evolving, we constantly update eLurn to make sure it stays aligned with current trends. With the option to host your own customised courses, eLurn easily scales along with your organisation’s needs and follows modern technology trends.
6. You’ll boost your compliance culture
Remote onboarding is difficult, not just for new starters but also for your existing team members. Spare a thought for those employees who have still never met their colleagues yet! With team members never meeting face-to-face, one of the most difficult challenges posed by remote onboarding is how you ensure your workplace culture holds steady.
Here at eLurn, we’ve decided to partner with the Bully Zero Australia Foundation to help solve this issue. We want to help ensure our clients can maintain their supportive and collaborative workplace cultures even through remote onboarding.
Bully Zero is the leading bully prevention organisation in the country. Their comprehensive Bully Zero Workplace Program can raise bullying awareness, minimise negative behaviour, and encourage individuals to step in when they see bullying in practice.
7. You’ll enjoy improved cyber security awareness
Cyber security is one of the most important topics today, with breaches costing Australian organisations an average of $3.35 million per attack. Plus, with modern workforces spread out in flexible working arrangements, there are more cyber threats than ever — 81% of organisations report being highly concerned about ransomware. That makes cyber security awareness training a top priority in the modern workplace.
Here at eLurn, we’ve partnered with industry experts in the Australian cyber security scene to deliver a course with practical tips on how staff members can avoid being tricked by online scams and attacks. We help your team learn cyber security terminology, the modern cyber landscape, and actionable cyber tips and strategies for staying safe.
8. You’ll get feedback, analytics and reports
Depending on what online platform you choose, you could have access to invaluable feedback, analytics and reports. Part of the service offering for eLurn includes regular reports to see how your organisation’s staff members have taken up the courses available to them.
That allows you to better manage the learning journey and engagement of your team. Our reports comprise user-friendly graphs that allow you to easily decipher information at a glance.
You can also elect key stakeholders within your organisation to receive regular emails about course completion rates, both across your entire staff and at an individual level. You can choose to accompany these PDF reports with the raw course completion data and perform your own internal analysis.
9. It reduces environmental impact
Online learning is a far more environmentally friendly option than live training sessions, with an average of 90% less energy and 85% fewer CO2 emissions per student, according to a report by the Design Innovation Group in UK.
Choosing to go with online learning therefore affects more than just your organisation. It also helps us do our part to create the sustainable, eco-friendly world that we want to live in.
Why eLurn?
In addition to the benefits mentioned above, eLurn is an online learning platform that provides several other advantages for staff members looking to improve their professional skillset for a modern workforce.
We are one of the only online learning companies that draws heavily on the expertise of professional, registered teachers as the backbone to our teaching practices. eLurn was uniquely built with guidance from our team of registered teachers in collaboration with subject matter experts from the ICT industry. Our approach allows the platform to blend practical teaching knowledge with deep industry expertise.
eLurn’s modules are designed to accommodate modern learning styles and trends, enabling users to learn with maximum efficiency and retention. Today’s generation of Millennials and Gen Z staff members learn efficiently in small, bite-sized modules and engage with video, graphics, online questions, and other interactive content found on eLurn.
If you’re interested in learning more, contact our team today to discover how our platform can help address your learning needs.
