Benefits eLearning Can Offer To Small Businesses
eLearning is primarily thought of as something that the "big companies" do. This is perhaps because of the fact that the initial costs involved in setting up an eLearning program are relatively high, and thus small (and even medium-sized) enterprises hesitate in investing such money for employee development. However, this is old news. While eLearning is still expensive, it is getting less expensive with each passing day and provides such an ROI that it practically pays for itself in a few years. However, that’s not all, eLearning also provides a plethora of benefits that can help small businesses overlook the initial investments. In this article, we’ll discuss those 5 benefits.
1. Elimination Of Existing Costs
Small businesses fear the initial costs of eLearning, but what they don’t see is that eLearning is going to help them eliminate a number of existing costs. For example, even small businesses hire HR managers. If and when they set up eLearning, they’ll have to buy a Learning Management System (LMS) that will automatically replace the duties of an HR manager, which are to manage staff services and training. Secondly, small businesses do have to train their employees, and they do that by outsourcing training. Training programs that are external to businesses incur costs that are in no way light and will in no way be as engaging or relevant as eLearning. Investing in eLearning will increase the quality of both management and training while saving both time and money.
2. Small Businesses Require eLearning The Most
Large businesses use eLearning because they’re already established and they want to maintain the quality of knowledge and skills their employees possess in addition to developing them to be even better, which helps the organization grow even higher and faster. If you think about it, you know who else needs to grow higher and faster? That’s right, small businesses. Small businesses certainly didn’t join the industry to stay small fries forever, and thus investing in eLearning behooves them. By upskilling their employees, they can save a lot on the costs of hiring new and better-skilled employees, who would certainly demand higher remuneration, in addition to increased sales and the added value to their product or service.
3. Intangible Benefits
eLearning doesn’t just provide small companies with measurable benefits. In fact, the intangible benefits outnumber the tangible ones. eLearning boosts employee morale, increases business opportunities, improves relationships with clients, and increases productivity, all of which translate into business growth. The intangible benefits, however, are highly subject to the quality of eLearning provided.
4. Reduction Of Employee Turnover Rates
One of the prime reasons employees leave a small organization is that at a point in time they realize that they’ve grown too big for their company. They believe that their small organization has provided them with all that they possibly could and that there’s nothing left for them to learn. If an employee believes that their current organization is hampering their growth, they’ll quit without a second thought. eLearning can prevent that from happening by providing these employees a chance to grow without having to leave the organization. It is up to the organization to provide its employees with eLearning courses that improve their personal and professional skills if they want to retain them.
5. eLearning Can Be Used For Employee Branding
People love brands. They give them a sense of identity, trust, recognition, and most importantly they distinguish a company from its competition. But in addition to a name, logo, symbol, and design, one thing that really makes a brand shine is its employees. Employee branding turns the employees of an organization or brand into human billboards, shaping their behavior in a way that they project their brand’s identity through their everyday behavior, both inside and outside of their organization. For an organization trying to make a name for its brand in the market, this is something really valuable. eLearning can provide employee branding training like no other employee training format.
The above points are to give small businesses an idea about the benefits of investing in eLearning. If and when a small business does invest in eLearning, they’ll find that these points are just the tip of the iceberg, and that eLearning will continue to surprise them as they utilize it to its full potential.
