Rising worldwide internet use and dependency, a rapidly progressing tech and telecoms sector, and the expedited rise of hybrid working due partly to the pandemic, all contribute to eLearning being one of the fastest-growing technology sub-sectors. According to the market research organisation Straits Research, the global eLearning market was worth $215 billion in 2021 and is estimated to reach a value of $645 billion by 2030.
The UK has the largest eLearning industry in the EU, and it’s set for further growth with Technavio analysts predicting that the eLearning market size in the UK will grow by $11.57 billion from 2021 to 2026.
The macroeconomic growth of the industry reflects the benefits of eLearning to businesses at the micro level. The direct benefits of eLearning to your business are not only economical, saving you time and money, but their reach also extends into employee fulfilment, productivity, and happiness which are all positive factors for your business.
Cost savings
The bottom line is that eLearning will save your business time and money. And it won’t be at the cost of quality or effectiveness.
eLearning negates the need for trainers, transport, training rooms, venues, catering, hotels, and materials – all of which have direct cash savings for the business.
Beyond this, the convenience of eLearning saves time – time of trainers, employees taking time out of the business, and cover staff needed.
According to a Brandon-Hall Study, eLearning typically requires 40-60% less employee time than learning the same material in a traditional classroom setting.
After implementing eLearning, IBM found that participants learned nearly five times more material without increasing time spent in training. And every dollar invested in online training resulted in $30 in productivity, saving the company approximately $200 million after switching to eLearning.
Consistency
In a modern workplace and hybrid working world where employees are often working remotely or dispersed across different locations, eLearning can deliver an unparalleled level of consistency.
eLearning means that everyone gets the same training wherever they are in the country or the world and whether they are permanent, temporary, or seasonal staff. It isn’t dependent on the style, mood, or knowledge of delivering in-person training. Businesses can create bespoke eLearning programmes that are exactly on-brand and aligned with the company’s ethos.
eLearning can also enable collaboration across the business by bringing together employees from different departments and geographical areas into a shared online space.
Just-in-time delivery
Rather than being arranged through the restrictions of combined diaries and work patterns, eLearning training modules can be deployed at the point and time of need. For employees, it is what they need, when and where they need it, enabling them to learn in the flow of work and not only being more timely and helpful, but also increasing knowledge retention levels.
One of the greatest benefits of eLearning is its flexibility; it is available at any time for an increasingly global and remote workforce, and it fits with employees’ individual lifestyles.
Environmental benefits
In an era of environmental conscientiousness, we all have a responsibility to become more sustainable and eLearning is one of the ways that businesses and individuals can reduce their carbon footprint through eliminating unnecessary travel and production of resources.
A study by Britain’s Open University found that producing and providing eLearning courses consumes an average of 90% less energy and produces 85% fewer CO2 emissions per student than conventional face-to-face courses.
Learning benefits
With eLearning, students have control over their own learning: they can learn at their own pace, according to their own learning style, revisit materials as necessary, and are not influenced by others in the group. eLearning content is versatile and can be tailored toward specific needs. All of this leads to a better experience for the learner and higher information retention.
The Research Institute of America found that eLearning increases retention rates by up to 60% compared to an 8-10% retention rate of typical classroom training.
Employee engagement
In a world where we consume high-quality online content on a weekly, daily, and even hourly basis, training needs to be engaging and captivating for today’s dynamic audiences.
eLearning embraces the innovation, technology, trends, and style that learners are accustomed to with ever-evolving applications that can be used to increase employee engagement and fulfilment from training.
Gamification (the application of game-playing elements to training), modern digital learning including mLearning (mobile learning), videos, and other interactive content, can all be used in eLearning to make training more relatable and fun – and ultimately improve employee engagement and retention of information.
Scalable
Once eLearning programmes have been created, they can be scaled up and rolled out to as many employees as needed, with aspects like language easy to adapt and change.
To log on to the programmes, all your employees need is access to a computer, tablet or mobile phone.
Refresh, refer, and revisit
eLearning is always available for employees to refresh, refer, and revisit as and when they need to.
It provides employees with ongoing access to key resources that they can reference and access on the go.
This is particularly useful if the training includes technical or detailed information that employees might need to access whilst they are working.
Why we’re the best people to work with
Foster & Forge helps you turn technical know-how into carefully authored and structured eLearning modules and courses that deliver L&D goals, upskill teams and allow you to measure outcomes including employee engagement, and in-house talent growth.
Creating robust, accessible eLearning content takes careful planning. Even if you’ve created courses before, scaling your content for different audiences and territories is a mammoth task.
Our end-to-end service delivered by an experienced team ensures your eLearning project runs smoothly and on budget ultimately delivering a high-quality end product that achieves your objectives.
Click here to schedule a call and discover how we can help you.
