Recently, our team shared a blog on why eLearning is becoming the standard mode of on-the-job training for government agency employees. But why exactly is eLearning considered effective in the first place? While there are many reasons behind the popularity of eLearning methods, we believe that there are five main reasons why eLearning has become one of the most popular and efficient forms of training in the field of government work. Exploring each of these five reasons will help you better understand how eLearning can help you handle employee onboarding and retraining as well. Let’s get started!
eLearning is flexible and accommodating.
The convenience of accessing learning content from anywhere, as long there is an internet connection, is huge. Let’s say an employee has a doctor’s appointment on the day of a scheduled training event. With traditional learning methods, the employee would either wait until the next event is scheduled, or rely on a colleague to pass along the information.
Online training gives employees the ability to learn the same content whenever they have the availability to complete it. In addition to that, course progress will save as they work. If a phone call comes in during a lesson, they can pause the course and resume their learning afterward. Additionally, employees no longer have to spend hours trying to understand broader topics. With the help of short video demonstrations, they can learn the same content much more quickly.
eLearning helps onboard new colleagues quickly and efficiently.
Onboarding new colleagues quickly and efficiently is vital to running a successful office. eLearning allows for content to be available for new colleagues immediately. They do not need to wait for another person in the office to train them, and content can automatically be tailored to their new role. Employees have the ability to pause video demonstrations if questions arise or if they would like to practice the learned content. If you’ve been in the position of training a new colleague, you know that it takes time to do this well. It is critical that a new colleague can be independently trained in their daily processes as soon as possible so that your office can continue to run smoothly.
eLearning helps reinforce best practices regularly.
There is danger in communicating bad practices to new colleagues. If the person training your new employee is not using best practices in their own work, this will create a continuous cycle of employees not completing their work efficiently. Usually, this type of issue is not realized until several years down the line, and at that point, it is a hard cycle to break.There is value in revisiting best practices regularly. Employees should be able to access course content at any time to confirm they are performing their jobs correctly. In addition to this, online content can be frequently and continuously revised so that information is always up to date.
eLearning leads to higher knowledge retention rates.
Let’s review the findings from three different studies related to eLearning:
- eLearning increases retention rates by 25-60% (Research Institute of America).
- With eLearning, participants learn nearly five times more material without increasing the time spent in training (IBM).
- Organizations using eLearning achieved an 18% boost in employee engagement (Molly Fletcher Company).
How is all of this possible? Online learning allows employees to have more control over the learning process, and employees are able to revisit training materials as needed. Since online learning allows employees to spend less time training, they can return to their actual work faster and put their knowledge to use immediately.
eLearning provides learning accountability.
If you are a supervisor or manager, it’s important to confirm your department has received the proper training in their daily tasks. This can be difficult to track with traditional learning methods because you have no real way to know for certain that someone has mastered a given topic. Any employee should likewise understand when they have successfully mastered new content. eLearning offers rewards upon course completion, such as badges or certification. This, combined with the ability to run course progress reports, gives organizations the confidence that all employees have completed their necessary training.
At MyGov, we understand the importance of offering useful learning tools to help your agency successfully use our software. This is why we launched our eLearning platform, MyGov University. Through MyGov University, we created short, online courses that can be taken anytime and anywhere. Learners can receive instruction at their convenience and watch short videos to understand best practices within each of our modules.
We know it takes hard work to be a successful government agency. To support you in this endeavor, we aim to provide easily accessible tools and resources. This, in turn, will assist you as you continue to build a better community where you live and work. If you would like to learn more about how your agency can utilize the eLearning platform, MyGov University, reach out to our Training team today.
