Category: Blogpost

17 May 2023
elearning vendors

How can elearning vendors help close skill gaps?

Learning and development is an undeniable need for companies nowadays. It’s because companies can get the best results for their businesses. Companies are implementing training programs to benefit their employees and ensure they reach the pinnacles of growth. Due to so much push, the eLearning industry is increasing day by day. However, companies are also realizing the importance of e-learning vendors these days.

Why are elearning vendors needed?

Companies are putting so much effort into elearning because they don’t want to rehire. In the case of rehiring, a lot of money is spent on conducting interviews, etc. Also, when the new employee has to be trained, it’s better to train the current employee. Also, the existing employee who has been working in the company for so many years has more knowledge about the processes of various departments, so upskilling him is a better option.

  • Do needs analysis

Elearning vendors, today help a company take note of the skills gap through procedures like needs analysis. Indeed, over time, in-house solutions provided by the elearning department are not enough. There are many problems, like their inability to use the eLearning authoring tool and even storyboard.

But when the work is outsourced to e-learning vendors who understand the need for e-learning solutions and the procedure in detail, there can be a heavy impact in fulfilling the abyss of skills. They bring their own subject matter experts who know how to address the needs gap successfully. It should not be too late when the companies discover that they are lagging behind others due to a widening skills gap.

  • Inability to introduce products:

A major symptom of a skill change is the company’s inability to launch new products in the market. Its competitors may be coming with a slew of products, but the company is lagging because it does not have enough talent for that purpose on board. A company can lose its market share due to such a laggard attitude because, over time, customers prefer better products.

The skill gap damages the companies because, in the end, they can only hire employees with certain skills. This is troublesome because they want to move in pace with their competitors but can’t do so because they can’t find someone from the market with the requisite skill.

  • Higher turnover:

When people have to adjust to a job they don’t find themselves comfortable doing, they will quit. Apart from them, with declining sales, the businesses also struggle to meet their salaries. The businesses can’t deliver to the customers what they actually require; hence it’s troublesome for the former. There is going to be a major supply and demand mismatch because people with certain skill levels flood the market, but other skills are rare and overpaid.

How to go about upskilling people?

Companies need to focus on upskilling their employees, but they must consider their existing capabilities also. Some people might have skills that are not known to the senior management because an employee has not been hired in these profiles requiring these skills. Companies should make sure that these hidden employee skills are discovered and that they are upskilled accordingly. This way, the company can easily plan how to move employees between different departments.

  • Hire elearning vendors:

Companies face a problem when they fail to hire elearning vendors. This can prove to be troublesome because employees can’t grasp anything from content libraries purchased by the company. The skills they imbibe from such libraries are unrelated to their roles. Every employee does not need to learn every skill; only elearning vendors can provide useful courses based on the skills required of employees.

Elearning vendors are well equipped to do their jobs and know how a skill gap can be found with a needs analysis.

Only after a needs analysis can a company determine what customized training employees require. There has been a change in the needs of the modern-day workforce due to a lack of demand by customers. Hence, the companies can’t afford so many workers. Hence, employees need to have digital literacy so that they can cope with the introduction of software at workplaces.

  • Introduce upskilling:

The universities are unable to prepare employees for digitalization, which is happening in the corporate sector now. The advent of ChatGPT has also complicated matters even further when some digital skills are obsolete and no longer required. So, elearning vendors with their digital skill teaching programs can help these companies.

Companies have to focus on these upskilling programs to address their skill gaps. Since the skill gaps are huge, the elearning department is insufficient.

Companies have to take elearning vendors on board to help them to get rid of the skills gap; otherwise, they won’t be able to compete with other companies using a smarter workforce prepared through outsourcing elearning. Companies have no option rather train employees because the supply of digitally skilled labor is low in the market. The umbrella of digital skills includes many skills, such as checking emails and using MS Office. These are the basic level skills that are required for most jobs these days. But there is an advanced level of skills also being able to create software which needs programming knowledge and the caliber to upload content on an LMS or a website.

Moreover, companies are now digitalizing their supply chains to outdo their competitors; hence, employees must have digital skills.

Therefore, employees must be trained on these skills by elearning vendors for companies to advance.

11 May 2023
online training

Why online training loses its impetus?

There is a strong focus on training now because of the changes.

Online training is getting so much attention from companies because employees quit when they don’t get any success in their job goals.

They suffer from low morale because they feel they are not trained enough to continue their duties. The employees also feel a lack of encouragement because they suffer from continuous job insecurity due to their inability to fulfil their duties.

They don’t feel satisfied because of being employed and, as a result, suffer from burnout due to overworking to please the boss. There is, as a result, a higher payout of healthcare costs by the company leading to a shortage of profits. Therefore online training is necessary for old and new employees so that the former are more confident about their job duties. They feel relaxed that they are contributing towards their own and company goals and hence do their duties excitedly and even relevantly, not making any trial and error decisions.

Continuous learning has become necessary for employees because otherwise they can’t advance in their careers.

However, there are too many distractions in this kind of training, including surfing the internet on Smartphones. Even the notifications make a noise all the time. There are many reasons why employees drop out of courses. There are only 88% of employees who complete online courses.

Benefits of online training for employees:

  • Better decision making:

With better knowledge, employees’ ideas hit the target, leading to more profits for the company. Companies must provide online training; otherwise, the employees will pursue such courses and quit their jobs. In a survey about the employees who had quit their jobs in the last 6 months or were planning to leave them in the next 6 months, 83% said there was no professional growth in their current jobs.

In this survey, most respondents were pursuing a course or had already completed the course.

Professional growth accompanied by a salary hike is also very important for employees. Hence, companies must provide short training to employees for progressing in them and to prevent them from quitting their jobs. Many topics are friendly for short-term training, like technology, finance and insurance.

  • Timely help when employees don’t know something:

It’s also confusing for companies when employees should pursue the course. Indeed, the company cannot force the employees to pursue the course during office hours because that would mean they have to push their work. Also, they can’t be made to sit after office hours because that would mean missing out on family time.

The employees should be allowed to pursue the course with their schedule. Best of all, the course should have JIT components so that employees can learn from the course when they need the information.

Why employees drop out of courses?

  • Don’t hold any value:

The first reason employees drop out of courses is that they have not paid for them. So they are not bothered about quitting them. For employees, such courses are free, so they don’t consider them valuable. Also, no one gets to know easily that an employee has left the course in between.

It’s not like a classroom course when you just start missing the attendance to leave the course, and everyone gets to know. But despite the accompanying embarrassment, employees are quitting the offline courses also.

Moreover, in the online learning courses, employees study alone.

Indeed, employees don’t have anyone to take help from. It can happen that an employee has been given an onboarding course where he is the only one to join the company. So, he can just consult HR for some help and noone else.

But when many employees have joined the company simultaneously, there is no dearth of consultation. You can talk to fellow joiners through a chat forum or even join them through discussion rooms. They can also video call the other employees and seek advice about how to solve a problem in the course.

  • Not properly planned courses:

Unorganized courses can also cause a problem for learners when they cannot focus on them. For example, if the lessons are of 1 and half hours duration each, then the learners lose their concentration and patience. With such long lessons, it also becomes tough for the learners to retain the information.

Therefore, the lessons should be shorter durations so the learners can adjust them in their schedule, like 30 minutes. With such short-duration lessons, learners don’t need to make any special effort to study daily.

  • Well structured courses:

The online training course is not perfect for all employees, especially if it is not made to order. The learners can feel bored with the information in the course and inundated because it’s irrelevant to them.

There must also be a way to make the course interesting for users. For example, there must be bullets used in the courses. With such bullets, employees can understand the course pretty well. Apart from that, concise sentences should be included in the course so that the audience does not have any trouble reading and understanding them. If employees need any resources to corroborate the information included, it must be provided to them. The best way to design any course is to include videos in it.

05 May 2023
leadership training for a diverse workforce

Why is leadership training essential for a diverse workforce?

Leadership training has assumed an important role in society so that people of all backgrounds have jobs. This is important so that people can become leaders despite different ethnicities and genders. There is an underrepresentation of minorities when it comes to leaders.

A poll found that although African Americans are 12% of the population of this country, their representation in leadership roles is less. They have only 3.2% of these roles. How to fill this gap?

A company can gain a considerable advantage when it has diverse people in the company, especially when it comes to succeeding in the overseas market. With distinct people at the top, it knows all about the culture and customs of the place.

It also has no trouble comprehending the language and can make sure that the employees grasp the language, thanks to the native employees of the company who know everything. A company can also get insight from diverse people into whether the product it plans to launch will succeed in their market.

Benefits of having a diverse workforce:

  • Launch products in foreign markets with ease

When it comes to launching new products in the foreign market, the most important thing is branding them right. With wrong branding, the customers cannot understand the product’s USP and why they should get it.

For example, when translated, any tagline that works in the US may fail to work in a foreign country. Hence, foreign people in top management who can suggest their versions of the tagline and the product are necessary.

  • Hire foreign talent at lower rates. 

When a company hires from a foreign talent pool, it means hiring talented employees who are not available in its own country. There is also a shortage of local employees unwilling to do some kind of work for which foreign employees are easily available.

Sometimes, having a diverse pool of employees is simply cost-saving. Therefore, leadership training is important so foreign employees can be promoted to top ranks because they are cheaper than their local counterparts.

  • Easily expand into foreign markets. 

When the business has a better talent base tanks to a foreign workforce, it can adapt to any situation, which is necessary for the unpredictable environment. You also gain a comparative advantage in this regard. For example, a company that cannot sell goods in the local markets can definitely head toward foreign shores. This is all possible due to the foreign workforce, which can detect a need in their markets. Once such a need is found, the management consisting of foreign employees can understand how to adapt the product to meet the demand. For example, due to the global recession, many countries move to foreign markets when they don’t have local demand. That’s where having foreign people in top management helps them significantly customize the product.

How to manage a diverse workforce?

  • Proper communication by a certain group: Companies face challenges hiring people from diverse backgrounds. It has to ensure that everyone feels their voices are heard. Some people are also shy to speak up, particularly those from the East Asian cultures.

So, they must be encouraged to speak up and share their opinions with the rest of the team. Hence, leadership training is important to have assertive employees who know when to express their opinions when needed. Companies need to ensure that although they have people from diverse backgrounds, everyone expresses their opinion.

  • Interaction between teams: 

The companies also have to ensure communication among different teams so that they talk to each other. There should be no communication gap between teams because of their inherent prejudices. For example, there can be stereotypes in the workplace which can also prevent development. So, the morale of other people working in the company can be reduced.

There can also be hatred between different groups; only leadership training can eliminate it.

This hatred has to be mitigated so that people from these ethnicities openly talk to each other and knowledge transfer happens. For example, the biggest stereotype is that all Asians are very intelligent, which is untrue.  The top management’s job is to see that this does not happen.

How can leadership training help? 

  • Inculcate Respect for each other’s values:

It’s the leader’s job to see that the employees respect the diverse values of each other. A communication policy should be in place so that employees know that they can’t avoid communication with people of a certain race. The employees should be told the advantages of diversity so that they don’t resent talking to the other person or mingling with him.

  • Ensure the following rules:

It’s the leader’s job to see that employees follow the right strategy for diversity. The upper management can set down the rules, but it’s the leader’s job to ensure that they are followed. Leadership should hence display a model behavior regarding diversity that all employees can follow.

Employees can’t negate any rules set by their leaders. Hence when a leader respects people of other backgrounds, the employees will follow suit. Leadership training can serve the purpose of teaching the model behavior to a leader. Hiring an employee from a different background can also command respect for diverse people.

  • Create a strategy for diversity: 

It’s the leader’s job to devise a strategy for diversity in the workplace. The upper management then decides the goals so that strategy is attained. When such goals are correctly devised, the leadership can ensure that the strategy is implemented and employees follow the company’s diversity philosophy.

25 Apr 2023
L&D increases digital fluency

How can L&D contribute to Digital Fluency?

Automaton is here to stay, and there is no denying it. Companies have to focus on how to reskill their workforce in the wake of this change. One of the ways to do so is to make them digitally literate so that they can operate the machines run by software. Hence, Digital literacy is an important skill needed in today’s times. When an employee knows how to handle all the software in the company, he does not have to be trained.

Digital literacy has expanded these days. Earlier, it only meant the ability to use computers. But now it also includes the caliber to operate smartphones and the various apps installed in them. If someone can’t operate the mobile phone apps, he loses access to many things. For example, someone unfamiliar with a PDF document might have trouble opening it on a smartphone. So, his means of communication is cut because he can’t decipher the document. Apart from smartphones, IoT devices also require digital literacy to operate.

Digital fluency has superseded digital literacy

Digital literacy ensures that he can easily use different technologies. But digital literacy is not enough now. The employees can’t be taught every software extensively as new technological developments happen with time. They must ensure that they adapt to the nuances of any new software. This is known as Digital Fluency.

Over some time, the employees must be able to understand new technologies through internal training(L&D). Therefore, adaptability to technology is the need of the hour.

How to build digital fluency?

Innovation is also another important quality that is required nowadays. The focus of the company should encourage employees to come up with innovative ideas often. In fact, L&D programs should teach employees how to give the best solutions to companies and not do everything the way it has been done before. Without being creative, employees can’t get ahead in their careers.

Companies’ use of Saas platforms to have productive operations has increased substantially, and hence digital literacy can’t be ignored. The employees can only move from one software to other if they are digitally literate to some extent.

Digital fluency can’t be expected without digital literacy. To build digital fluency, organizations must try to make their employees digitally literate. Therefore, Digital literacy can make or break it for companies these days. If the employees are not trained in using any software, it can be a hindrance.The reason for digital literacy among employees could be the dearth of such education in formative years. Hence a company needs to focus on training such employees.

Also, another reason could be that the employees didn’t have any employment previously and are freshers. Hence this is also a reason why a company needs to train such employees digitally.The lack of digital literacy is also common among older employees.

Need for digital fluency

An employee can only be digitally fluent once he knows how to be agile. He can be agile once he knows how to analyze things. With good critical thinking, he does not have to worry about a company implementing new technology. After the pandemic, employees have to adjust to new roles; when employees are not agile, they can’t be shifted to these roles. The pandemic is just the beginning; employees must become resilient to changes in their job duties.

Employees are now being trained and shifted by companies to roles that are not the same as their current ones. This is only possible when employees have decision-making capabilities.

Hence if an organization does not want to face the negative consequences of digital illiteracy, like lost business and wasted man-hours, it must digitally train employees through L&D.

Moreover, having digital literacy is quite useful in online learning because it helps the learners to explore the e-learning documents quite carefully. They can ensure that all the facts in e-learning are correct before learning anything. He can use search engines to verify the facts stated in any elearning document.

How can e-learning foster digital literacy?

Learners who are taught how to use software through e-learning fill their digital literacy gaps.

 Apart from that, digitally literate learners can benefit others by sharing their knowledge and vice-versa when discussion forums require them to answer questions requiring further investigation into the workings of the software.

Elearning also helps in supporting digital literacy. Learners who complete eLearning assessments can also gain a lot, especially in drag-and-drop quizzes. Sometimes, learners also have to go online to gain the knowledge to complete the assignments. This also helps them in building their computing skills. For example, they learn how to bookmark websites for further reference.

When the eLearning resources are not enough, they browse through the internet to acquire more information and, in the process, become digitally proficient. 

  • Through assignments:

Online learning(L&D) can benefit learners when they are asked to prepare a PowerPoint presentation or create a blog from all they have learned. This helps them strengthen their knowledge about such software and also helps them in better retention of newly gained knowledge. 

  • Through webinars:

You can also ask the learners to present their knowledge through a webinar. For the presentation, they may need to post on social media accounts. Hence, they start understanding the importance of hashtags.

When hosting a webinar, the learners also comprehend how to use the video conferencing tools and set up a meeting through them. Learners also browse through video channels to find the best information for a webinar. 

19 Apr 2023
maximize retention after an elearning course

5 ways to ensure knowledge retention after an eLearning course

There has been an upsurge in the companies learning needs. But it’s not enough to offer e-learning courses. Companies must also know how to make employees retain them.

Whatever has been learnt in an elearning course must be imbibed by the learners. For this, they must be sent tasks which involve repetition.

For example, multimedia has an impact on the human mind. It’s true that people remember images and videos more easily than text. In fact, animation can explain the most complicated of matters to human beings.

The same concept applies to quizzes where the learner can apply his knowledge and improve, and this way, he recalls the knowledge.

Techniques to ensure knowledge retention:

  • Active learning:

Active learning involves ensuring that the learners discuss with the trainer. It’s like holding classroom sessions with the trainer when the elearning is over.

There the trainer can ask questions from the learners, like giving them case studies to solve. The active learning approach is crucial because it involves both parties, i.e. the teacher and the learners.

If the learners are facing problems with whatever they have learned, they can ask the trainer about them. The active learning sessions can take place until the learner is fully clear about the concept. They can involve a single session or several sessions.

  • Use of micro learning:

The elearning course must be designed keeping in mind that the energy levels of the learners are not high after working at the job. Hence when at the end of the day, the learners log on to their PCs, they must go through a well-designed and crisp course. Whatever the course is, it should contain only relevant information so that the learner does not end up watching useless information. So instead of a long course, divide it into smaller modules.

The course must consist of micro-learning modules such as brief videos which learners can watch and understand easily. Whenever the course is too much lengthy, learners don’t have time for it and can’t even remember it. For example, a course with longer modules containing impertinent information can cause cognitive overload. Apart from small videos, some portions can be managed through podcasts also.

  • Reflective learning:

The learners must also get a chance to reflect on the information. Reflective learning is also crucial to ensure that the learners don’t forget much. Hence classroom sessions are important where the learners can be asked to question each other so that everyone recalls the concerned information. The students also get to know what information they are unable to recall or apply and hence need a revision of the same topic.

For the same purpose, it’s also necessary that the eLearning vendor includes a quiz after every module. Quizzes in an elearning course are a better way to make learners retain information than summative assessments because it makes sure that the learners remember just the relevant portions. When the learners can’t score passing marks on a quiz, they must review the module repeatedly. If the learners commit a mistake in a quiz, they need to go through the same material. When students cannot use their learning to solve the problem, this can be done by the teacher to ensure that they understand the material better.

  • Spaced repetition:

Spaced repetition is a useful technique in the case of eLearning because it ensures that the learners can easily remember concepts taught in a course. This is done through flashcards. The company can get such cards based games. In such games, the learners are shown flashcards which have difficult concepts frequently but less tough concepts only randomly. This ensures that the learners can retain the intricate concepts. 

  • Use of stories:

Learner retention can be improved when a story is told to them before a concept so that they can relate to it. It’s better if managers tell such anecdotes because they know the real-world situations of the jobs where such knowledge can be applied.

The e-learning courses must be interspersed with stories where simulations are shown to employees about the course. 

To conclude: 

Self-paced learning is not an easy task. It’s important that the learners are guided about how to manage time so that it does not take a toll on their health because they are managing their job along with the course. Hence the e-learning course must be designed properly because if it’s not, the learner has to grasp extra knowledge, which he does not require for performance at his job.

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    He was a German psychologist who is known for discovering the forgetting curve. According to this curve, the biggest decline in memory happens within 20 minutes, and then 1 hour.