Training employees through e-learning may be expensive, but the benefits outweigh the costliness. In the long run, e-learning saves more money, boosts employee morale, and meets the needs of the organization—making it a cost-effective approach to corporate training.
Let’s have a look at some companies that use e-learning in training their employees:
Merck
The German pharmaceutical giant, Merck, invests so much in innovation. Although Merck utilizes classroom training, they supplement training with innovative e-learning to develop their personnel. It even has an innovation center where people with different ideas share their knowledge.
Merck bases their approach on the microlearning principle, where employees can select which modules to learn. This is a work in progress for the million-dollar company, as they continually improve their modules to include more complex issues tackled in an understandable and timely manner.
This kind of modularization allows Merck to tailor-make their training content that is accessible for all. This also fosters collaborative learning and inspires enthusiasm among the employees.
Toyota
The global car manufacturer, Toyota Motor Corporation, has come a long way since it was founded in 1937. Now consisting of 340,000 employees across the globe, Toyota is the third-largest producer of vehicles in the world.
The billion-dollar company wouldn’t have made it this far if not for its innovation. Toyota Motor Europe, to be specific, uses e-learning in training almost 20,000 engineers and technicians.
Since using e-learning in 2005, Toyota Motor Europe updated its LMS (learning management system) to offer uninterrupted training without needing to be re-certified. Their e-learning platform consists of classes for both technical and non-technical employees.
Through corporate e-learning, the company provides learning materials for its distributors and retailers in different countries.
PayPal
By operating a global online payment system, Paypal has become a trusted financial platform that caters to more than 100 currencies. Did you know that as of 2016, 188 million people preferred electronic money transfers than traditional procedures?
The annual revenue of PayPal even reached $13 billion in 2016, making it one of America’s multi-billion dollar companies.
By operating online, much of their employee training programs rely on e-learning than traditional learning. Paypal takes advantage of their huge following on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They create and moderate private online groups, and invite experts to guide employees and teach brief classes.
PayPal is also a regular user of Udemy for Business, an online learning platform directed at corporate training. Through this privilege, PayPal employees have access to a vast e-library containing thousands of courses which they can review at their own pace.
According to PayPal, this approach is very effective for active learning, with some employees completing two or more training courses in six months. Through corporate e-learning, PayPal was able to cut their training expenditure by over 25%.
Booking.com
Starting out as a Netherlands-based company, Booking.com has spanned over two decades in the travel aggregation services industry. It needs to continually innovate to stay ahead of hundreds of competitors.
Since its acquisition by Booking Holdings, a US-based company, in 2005, Booking.com continues to implement e-learning strategies to guide new employees in honing their technical skills.
When they utilized online tutoring for their employees, Booking.com observed an immediate increase in worker engagement. Employees spent more hours learning on the e-learning platform out of their own accord.
The management specifically wanted to cultivate a culture of active learning and encourage the employees to refine their skills. This allows them to seek for better opportunities within the company, and not outside.
Lyft
Ride-sharing has become a very profitable business. Lyft, a popular transportation network company based in San Francisco, launched its ride-sharing app in 2012. Since then, Lyft has raised over $4 billion in revenue.
For a new company with a novel concept, acquiring the budget for corporate training was an issue at the outset. New employees came with varied skill sets, so determining which specific skills to train also became a challenge.
At first, Lyft provided a half-day on-site training program for their new hires. Unfortunately, this didn’t go very well for the starting company.
So Lyft decided to utilize e-learning instead. Managers used online learning strategies to train and coach their respective teams. Classes were offered to assist employees in learning new skills. Lyft even offered its partner-drivers the chance to learn new languages.
Through an online onboarding platform, managers tracked new hires and guided them accordingly. Eventually, the rookies learned quickly.
Lyft now intends to record all corporate meetings and events to make them accessible for all employees at any time and place. This kind of innovation is what makes Lyft stay ahead of the competition.
Honeygrow
Honeygrow is an American restaurant chain that first sprouted in Philadelphia in 2012.
With an annual revenue of over $500 million, Honeygrow prides itself in the quality of their products and services. By combining intelligently sourced ingredients and the simplicity of wholesome food, they can create sumptuous dishes that appeal to the public.
They also take the welfare of their employees seriously and ensure that their people are well-trained. They have effectively used VR (virtual reality) learning to train their staff using a 360-degree video guide of Honeygrow locations. While immersed in the virtual walkthrough, employees hear a voice-over of the company’s values.
While more expensive than other e-learning strategies, VR learning adds a unique touch to the training. This also gives Honeygrow employees the feeling of being connected.
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), since it was first established in 1958, has been one of the first users of VR learning.
Only a handful of people have been literally outside the Earth, so virtual reality is clearly the best strategy to train NASA explorers on what it’s like out there in the universe. NASA has used VR learning to train astronauts in various scenarios that can happen while in space.
Through VR learning, astronauts can immerse themselves in zero-gravity environments, donning their spacesuits, and even spacewalking. This refines their precision movements to prepare them for the real challenge.
NASA has also collaborated with Microsoft to use the HoloLens, a pair of mixed reality sunglasses, in facilitating the communication between astronauts and ground crew. This allows the astronauts to utilize holographic technology that overlays real-time communication which makes the interaction more real and engaging.
For many of these companies and organizations, e-learning has allowed their people to embrace professional development in a novel approach, which changes their impression on how knowledge must be learned.
Are you thinking of using e-learning to train your employees? If you want them to stay longer and perform better, it may be worth the investment.