Over the past few years, workplace environments have significantly changed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which fast-tracked digitalization across all industries.
Currently, one in five workers work remotely, and this trend is not expected to slow down. By 2025, 32.6 million Americans will work away from the office.
With the flexibility of remote work being the norm, employees now access critical work information through digital and online tools and even through their personal devices, increasing their productivity.
These changes highlight the benefits of employee online training—flexibility and accessibility to name a few—which explains why the growing interest in e-learning shows no signs of slowing down.
The global corporate e-learning market is expected to experience an annual growth rate of 15% to $50 billion by 2026.
Whether you want more online learning after seeing positive results, or whether you’re considering trying it out for the first time, it’s important to understand what it looks like, and how it can benefit your company and your employees.
So why does online training get so much hype? Read along to find out more.
What is online training?
Online training, also known as e-learning, virtual learning, or digital learning, is training that takes place remotely over the internet.
Online training is convenient, cost-effective, and engaging. Modern online training platforms now come with user-friendly interfaces that make learning intuitive and fun.
Some training programs support communication between students and instructors through methods like messaging, chat, or email. Learning is typically self-paced and customizable, making it a more convenient way to train employees.
What does online training look like?
E-learning courses deliver interactive content in various media formats and modules, including graphics, video, audio, web links, quizzes, and more.
It can support Learning and Development (L&D) programs that range from employee onboarding to compliance training. It can also power ongoing education initiatives like upskilling and cross-training across departments and customer education when introducing new software.
Many e-learning platforms offer customization options that enable companies to create brand or organization-specific training content. This makes it easy for companies to personalize learning experiences.
As learners interact with the platform, you can track the results. Then you can change course materials as needed to maximize the benefits of online employee training.
Top benefits of online training for employees and employers
87% of employees believe they'll need to learn new skills throughout their careers, and many voluntarily turn to online learning for professional development.
According to Michelle R. Weise, author of the book “Long Life Learning,” the complexity brought by technological development means we will “need to develop skills and knowledge at a pace—and on a scale—never before seen.”
In fact, we can expect to see by 2029 that 23% of jobs will change worldwide due to technological advancements.
We’re already seeing the effects of worker’s anticipation to change on online learning. Since the pandemic, the learning platform Coursera has experienced a 3-fold increase in enrollments. And just what have people been learning?
Searches on Coursera for learning on GenAI increased by four times from 2022 to 2023, prompting Coursera to launch over 35 courses or projects on GenAI with more than 570,000 enrollments worldwide.
Their most popular courses of 2023 also included plenty of Google courses on technology, digital marketing, and user experience, reflecting a hunger for learning on technology to meet the complexities of our increasingly digitized world.
This learning outside of working hours, which we found amounts to a whopping 70% of most learning undertaken by company employees, reflects a growing acceptance and preference for online learning.
Employers who take advantage of this interest and offer online training programs that directly relate to employee growth within the company can reap many benefits because it shows that you're investing in their future.
80% of employees say that upskilling, training, and coaching would make them feel more satisfied with their job because, according to the 2023 LinkedIn Learning Report, career advancement is the number one reason employees want to learn.
So, what are the top benefits of online training? Here are some of the advantages of e-learning:
1. Increased flexibility
Employees have busy work schedules and lifestyles. With a taste for remote work, they are now demanding better work-life balance.
71% of remote workers say that remote work helps them balance their work and personal life, which is good because employees with a healthy work-life balance perform better at their jobs.
There has also been a rise in accessibility awareness, highlighting that online learning when executed well is more accessible than traditional learning.
Online training methods offer the flexibility to enable employees to learn at their own pace in their preferred learning environment with the materials that best align with their learning styles.
E-learning is also ideal for mobile and microlearning, so employees can study whenever they want in a time-conscious way. This on-demand learning style is a plus for employers seeking ways to offer many different and more engaging types of training on a single platform.
The best part? Employees who learn at work are 47% less likely to be stressed, and 39% more likely to feel productive and successful than those who do not spend time learning at work.
Online training allows you to tailor a variety of courses to your company's requirements and your employees' needs. Whether you use online training by itself or in conjunction with other employee training methods, e-learning can offer the flexibility to make workplace training more manageable for employees.
2. Provides employees with continued access to resources
Everything employees learn within an extended training session may not be used right away—or even frequently.
But it still needs to be remembered for use in the future.
Online training provides continued access to learning materials and resources when they're needed.
Instead of searching through files or wasting time seeking information, employees can simply log into their accounts to review educational materials for reference.
3. Cut training costs
From venue and transportation fees to hospitality and meals, the requirements of in-person employee training can quickly get costly and time-consuming.
Plus, employers are often forced to choose between stopping production during a busy workday to train employees or securing a venue for group training.
Enter e-learning.
With e-learning, businesses can create targeted learning materials and online training courses that are easily accessible to employees anytime, any place.
Employers don't have to worry about the costs of venues, live instruction, lost work time, travel, meals, and more.
And employees can better distribute their work around the training, whose more convenient format can even reduce employee learning time to get faster results.
Online learning takes between 40% to 60% less time than traditional learning.
4. Increased engagement
Traditional training methods often take a check-box approach to learning. From onboarding to compliance training, the objective is to quickly distribute information.
This usually takes place in a traditional classroom and comes in the form of presentations or instructional videos whose main consideration is compliance and not necessarily employee engagement.
Plus, due to its flexibility, online learning more easily supports continuous education through feature-rich platforms that offer multimedia content, interactivity, and gamification.
Such opportunities help learners get excited about new opportunities and stay engaged during training activities.
According to a study on an L&D study on European employees, 80% of employee respondents would be more likely to work for an employer that prioritized continuous learning and development.
5. Boosts retention
Varied and interactive content, including engaging features like videos and gamification, social learning features that increase engagement and user participation, and that have been shown to increase retention.
As a result, employees are more likely to complete voluntary courses and seek out available training programs, increasing their chances of learning more while on the job.
So it makes sense that with e-learning, adults retain content up to 3 to 6 times more than when they consume content traditionally.
Employers benefit from this increased employee retention with higher performance rates and more company loyalty.
6. Easy to scale
From startups to multi-level corporations, businesses are constantly growing and changing. As they change, even more benefits of online training for employees come to light.
Whether your goal is onboarding new employees or enhancing your L&D programs with more robust offerings, online learning is ideal for scaling training with your business growth.
Training needs can change rapidly and unexpectedly. Online training can handle fluctuations like a sudden hiring increase.
You can also create training requirements for a new software system with minimal disruption to your HR department or workflows.
Plus these days, corporate training has multiple use cases beyond internal employee onboarding.
With partner enablement and customer education on their radar, companies can leverage the flexibility and scalability of e-learning to empower their growth.
7. Accessibility anytime anywhere
In today's constantly changing workplace landscape, employees aren't as likely to be gathered in a single location.
Over a third of workers with jobs that can be done remotely work from home all the time.
These numbers and the growing interest in gig work and the freelance economy enable companies to hire employees from distant locations.
Today’s workforce is also incredibly diverse, harboring individuals with multiple accessibility needs that are much better addressed by online learning.
Online training supports this diverse workforce by allowing employees to complete courses anywhere in the world with only a device and an internet connection.
Learners can access virtual conferences, webinars, and training events in real time or review archived sessions and online training materials more conveniently when necessary.
The benefits of e-learning are many and are easy to see. But to reap them, it is important to employ a learning management system (LMS) or learning platform that will deliver the online training to your employees, customers, and/or partners.
Why consider a learning platform for e-learning?
KCF Technologies, a US-based company, builds solutions for industrial machine monitoring, complex solutions like SMARTdiagnostics, their comprehensive hardware and software for industrial machine health.
KCF Technologies complex products require not only the right digestible content but the right delivery.
They first thought of traditional training but travel costs, scheduling difficulties and a finite number of qualified trainers quickly put an end to this option.
They also thought of creating a YouTube video training series, but using YouTube would not give the company any way to validate learning, monitor course completions, or offer testing and certification, which their clients would need to ensure compliance and safety.
That’s when KCF Technologies decided to use a learning platform that would allow them to deliver training to multiple audiences—employees and clients—in an engaging manner, and track the progress and results for future improvements.
The results? $1.5 million in savings on training costs alone, and an engaged customer base eager to learn, spending over 12,000 hours learning.
Top three benefits of online training platforms
1. User-friendly functionality
E-learning is typically carried out by high-quality learning management software designed with the user in mind to make learning easy.
Typically, learners only need basic computer knowledge and internet access to complete online training courses.
E-learning enables employees to access course materials from a central location with a single account. They can also complete a variety of tasks, from reviewing coursework and videos to completing quizzes and offering feedback.
Some learning platforms even offer the ability for learners to share their knowledge, which can then become searchable for others to find.
2. Easy content creation and management
Online training is easy for employees to use and for employers to manage.
Most modern e-learning platforms offer content authoring functionalities, enabling you to design training content, including videos, audio, print, infographics, tests, and surveys, on the platform and immediately add it to the curriculum.
With reusable content and simple features like drag-and-drop, content management is equally easy.
Learning management software can automate many administrative tasks like session reminders, course assignments, and event email notifications.
3. Measurable results
Developing training programs isn't enough to remain competitive in the modern workplace. Your learning and development curriculum must be effective.
Without metrics, you have no way of knowing if your training materials offer any value to employees.
E-learning platforms that offer online training make it easy to track how users respond to training materials and vital criteria like knowledge retention and understanding.
An advanced e-learning platform will have the tools to track attendance, course completion, certificates, and activities.
When you choose an LMS with built-in tools, you can administer quizzes, assessments, tests, and surveys to get deeper insight into how employees learn and their opinions about your training programs.
You can then use this data to eliminate what isn't working and improve your training programs.
Even better, comprehensive learning platforms also offer advanced analytics so you can align your learning and business goals.
Now over to you: is online training right for your organization?
The benefits of online training for employees make it an ideal choice for companies across a variety of industries and work environments.
Plus, did you know that you don’t have to bypass traditional training that also has its benefits?
Through blended learning, online training can easily be integrated with in-person instructor-led training and social learning methods like mentorships for a well-rounded L&D program to help you meet organizational objectives.
If you’re just starting your e-learning journey, check out our comprehensive e-learning guide to learn more.
Plus take a tour of our learning platform to see why over 3,800 businesses around the world trust us with their e-learning capabilities.