14 steps to implementing online corporate training!

Deploying corporate online training in an organisation may not be one of the easiest tasks.

However, two actions are very important for its success: planning and executing in an organised and well-structured way.

For that, in this post, we suggest a step-by-step with 14 items for you to follow and succeed in implementing distance education in your company!

1. identify your needs

As a first step, identify your training needs that can be met with e-learning.

Then assess the extent to which these needs are aligned with your business strategies, and which can reduce costs or achieve your sales targets, to justify the investment in developing and delivering online training...

2. Formalise and document online training needs

This means that in order to identify e-learning needs, you must have a formal process for collecting and documenting training needs.

Specific surveys and feedback forms completed by employees and management will help you identify their training needs and opinions on training delivered online.

Key leaders need to be involved with online training initiatives.

This will help them recognise the need to integrate e-learning into their training programmes.

3. Identify the appropriate types of training to apply in the online modality

Not all training can be applied at a distance.

For this, it is necessary to choose appropriate subjects.

You should do this by testing the programmes you have identified for online application and provide students with the material in both traditional and online settings.

By evaluating learners and comparing scores, you can assess the effectiveness of offering these training programmes online versus traditional methods.

The results will help you select suitable training programmes to be applied at a distance.

4. Assess the acceptance of e-learning in your organisation

The next step is to check your organisation's willingness to accept e-learning.

There are 7 important factors you should consider before implementing e-learning:

• Psychological;
• Social;
• Environmental;
• Human resources;
• Technological;
• Financial; and
• Content.

Explaining each one further, we have:

1. Psychological:

Assess the attitude of staff and senior management towards e-learning. Is this a well-accepted learning modality in your organisation? Do leaders support the idea of online training? It is important to do this kind of assessment so that the training you apply has the desired uptake.

2. Social

Address the interpersonal aspects of the learning environment. Assess whether the learners are sociable and interactive with each other.

3. Environmental

Make an assessment on the internal and external factors in your organisation that may influence online learning.

4. Human resources

Assess the availability of staff, internal and external (from a supplier), which will impact the success of the training.

5. Technological

Assess your employees' technical skills, their ability to deal with the technology applied in the online modality...

6. Financial

Assess the budget required to implement e-learning.

7. Availability of content

Assess the availability of content for conversion into e-learning.

If, among the factors listed above, some barriers are identified, it does not mean that you cannot implement distance education in your company.

In this way, it means taking the necessary steps to improve the poor factors for the success of your online training deployment.

5. Identify potential barriers to deploying online training in your company

Even after the decision has been made to invest in online training in your organisation, you may still face some barriers that will prevent its successful adoption or leverage its benefits.

These barriers include:

• Personal barriers: employees who do not want to take responsibility for their own learning and their resistance to change;
• Learning style barriers: your students fear that e-learning will not suit their personal learning styles;
• Instructional barriers: employees are not updated on the benefits of e-learning, so they cannot understand how they will gain personal benefits. Their reluctance to learn is an instructional barrier.
• Organisational barriers: the cost implications of e-learning compared to traditional training methods.
• Content barriers: factors include high expectations of the course, irrelevant material, inadequate quality and information and poorly designed assignments.
• Situational barriers: an employee's circumstances and situations that influence their ability to perform the course.
• Technological barriers: the quality of the ead platform, internet connectivity and navigation problems can be some potential barriers.

Identifying these barriers and finding solutions will ensure better results for the implementation of distance education in your company.

6. List the benefits to applying online corporate training

An important step in implementing distance education is to get top management buy-in for your e-learning proposal.

For this, you list the benefits found to training online.

In this, you should include:

• The training applied face-to-face with its shortcomings;
• Advantages of e-learning and how it will solve the problem;
• E-learning cost factor: should include the cost of planning, pre-implementation and implementation, staff training, new equipment, vendor and consultant costs and other ongoing costs;
• The economic advantage as a result of using e-learning for training compared to face-to-face training methods.

7. Get buy-in from top management

To convince senior management of the benefits of implementing e-learning, do a side-by-side analysis of the cost of providing an hour of e-learning versus a classroom session.

Compare the cost of one hour of training, learner time, travel costs, opportunity costs and lost productivity with the development cost of one hour of e-learning.

It is also worth comparing existing training practices and e-learning and highlighting the benefits that e-learning will bring to the business, such as reduced time taken by employees to complete tasks or the ability to undertake new activities.

8. Will you build your training online or will you source it from the marketplace?

Another important aspect to decide is whether there should be an in-house team to create the courses, buy ready-made courses or outsource your requirements to a supplier who provides customised e-learning solutions.

If you decide to create your online courses in-house, consider the effort factors and high cost that go along with hiring and maintaining an extensive in-house team for your needs.

Choose to purchase ready-made courses on the market when:

• The content is readily available;
• The information is generic; or
• You don't have the resources to develop the course.

Building your own course may be the option when:

• You have the necessary human resources;
• You have the time to plan, develop and implement the course;
• The course needs to meet the unique training needs of your organisation;
• The information contained in the course is confidential and proprietary.

In addition, you may choose to hire companies that can develop your training sessions exclusively for your organisation.

This practice is widely used, as there are consultancies specialised in distance education that can attend to your ead project.

9. Do a search for potential suppliers and have a check to assist in your choice

If you decide to outsource your distance education project, choose a reliable and experienced e-learning solution provider. When contacting them, it is important to have a verification check.

This way, you will be able to make a comparison between suppliers, having a clear idea about:

•    The qualification of the supplier's team;
•    Their core business - making sure they perform with e-learning;
•    Experience in terms of years in the business and number of projects implemented
•    Examples of previous work
•    Recording the completion of projects on time
•    Cost of each supplier

10. Decide between small and large scale course development

It is highly recommended to start on a small scale when:

•   Corporate education is implemented for the first time;
•    It has a low investment to implement online corporate education;
•    You need rapid implementation to be able to start your training; or
•    Need to implement a single course or some courses across departments.

Large-scale e-learning can be used in the following cases:

•    It has an already structured e-learning strategy;
•    Have the necessary investment and resources;
•    Need to implement courses across the organisation.

11. Choice of the EAD Platform

The choice of the ead platform that best suits your distance learning implementation project in your company should be made taking into account the following criteria:

• Check that it is user-friendly;
• Be able to customise your online courses area, in this case, customise your Corporate University according to the visual identity of your business;
• Have an intuitive environment for your students to access;
• Have resources for complete management of students, such as: creation of classes with determined periods for beginning and end of training;
• Have full reports on your students' performance;
• Allow access via all mobile devices (tablet, smartphone, desktop)
• Adequate support.

Have a proper communications hub with your students: chat, forum, social learning.

Anyway, these are some important features that should be considered when hiring a suitable ead platform for your distance training.

12. Motivate and support employees to access online training

Once the online training is underway, motivate your employees to access the e-learning course.

Address the problems they may have in using this new training methodology through a change management strategy. The strategy should include:

•    Launch of the initiative with a message from the CEO highlighting its importance;
•    Email campaigns to promote e-learning and raise employee interest;
•    Help staff to clearly understand the objectives of the e-learning programme.

13. Ensure communication between staff and management

It is crucial that leaders understand the objectives of the online trainings applied to their team and the importance in implementing them successfully.

Communication between leaders and collaborators should be continuous and feedback mechanisms are important to solve the problems identified during the first implementation of your ead project.

14. Regularly measure the success of the distance education programme

Regular feedback from employees and leaders will help to evaluate the success of the initiative.

Evaluating employees with realistic goals and success criteria will help measure effectiveness and know what works and what doesn't in the programme.

This will help to make changes to the applied online project and be able to understand, assess and rebuild the identified gaps.

Implementing e-learning is not to be a complicated or difficult task to adopt, provided you know the best practices and follow them.

To learn more about a complete ead platform for your online corporate education projects, you can register at Hotscool and have access, for 7 days free of charge to all the functionalities that the platform has.

To register, click here!