Developing Custom eLearning That Improves Employees’ Performance
Knowledge is not enough. Your employees might be provided with a flawlessly design for the online training course, but this doesn’t mean that they will automatically be able to use the imparted information. When you are offering your employees an online training experience, your main concern is how they will apply the knowledge to improve their skills by motivating them to perform better. Effective online training means facilitating the application of knowledge, as it is directly linked to performance improvement. But which is the most effective approach to performance-focused online training? Undeniably, custom eLearning development. Why? Because only an online training course especially designed for your employees can really reflect your company’s needs and specific performance issues you want to address.
Standardized online training courses cannot simulate your workplace’s unique circumstances. They can only provide your employees with generic knowledge that may be interesting, but under no circumstances can guarantee that it will be absorbed and, most importantly, put to use, if employees will not be able to see its practical application. Aligning your online training strategy with your company’s unique requirements will engage your employees, by making them feel that someone is listening to their needs, and significantly improve their job performance. Interested in knowing how exactly custom eLearning may affect your online training? In this article, I´ll show you 5 ways in which custom eLearning helps your employees master their execution skills and successfully complete their work tasks.
- Provide real world customized challenges.
To understand the critical difference between standardized online courses and custom eLearning, compare information sharing with knowledge acquisition; pre-defined design and navigation with unique design and navigation; stock images with tailor-made visuals; standardized interactions with acustomized interactions. Motivating your employees is the key to enhance their job performance; after all, how they cannot be motivated when they’re offered an online training solution that has been especially designed to meet their needs? Provide your audience with more sophisticated training material and help them make a big step towards better performance. Use real life based scenarios and simulations that require your employees to analyze situations and make choices that have consequences; this way you will ensure that when it’s time to handle an actual problem or an actual customer, they will deal with the case successfully, as they will have learned from their mistakes during their online training experience. Furthermore, presenting your employees with a challenge that simulates the exact circumstances of their workplace creates an engaging eLearning experience that helps them better understand your eLearning objectives: There are many cases where employees fall behind in their skill development simply because they haven’t completely understood what their company expects from them. When your audience is presented with eLearning goals via custom eLearning that has been designed based on their specific needs, it is more likely that all miscommunication will be eliminated. - Consider the option of custom mobile learning
Mobile learning is an already well known alternative to eLearning, that allows learners to learn whenever, wherever, using mobile devices, such as mobile phones or their tablets, provided that internet connection is available. But could custom mobile learning be a key to your employees’ performance improvement? Certainly. Customized mobile learning apps, custom short videos, and custom animated avatars emphasize real situations that your employees face daily and help them put your eLearning content to use. Furthermore, short quizzes, audio clips, and job aids that have been created especially for your company, allow your employees to view and listen to them as a point of reference at a moment of need. This allows them to expand their knowledge base and their skill sets and improves their performance. Needless to say that custom mobile learning can and should be brand aligned, as this reinforces your organizational identity and your employees' sense if belonging, as it makes them feel as part of something bigger and special, fact that motivates them to want to try harder. - Take advantage of social media
Integrating social media when developing custom eLearning can also be very effective; your employees spend most of their time there anyway, so when given the chance to enhance their virtual classroom experience by participating in online discussions where they can ask questions, share their concerns or advise others, they can effectively build a working community of actual practice. By creating custom online training content to share through social media, you encourage your employees to collaborate with each other, develop solutions together and, most importantly, be motivated to put what they are learning to use and improve their performance. - Include custom games and animations
Do existing eLearning games and animations meet the exact goals you set? This is simply an online training dream come true. Developing custom eLearning enables you to make use of customized games and animations, which can effectively increase the interactivity of your eLearning course and allow your employees to make real time choices while seeing their consequences of their actions in a risk free environment. When your employees are able to make decisions in gamified situations that trigger their interest by simulating their actual work circumstances, they get more engaged in the learning process and more capable to deal with similar situations when faced in real life. Furthermore, while eLearning animations can be a useful tool for engaging your audience in any event, when aligned with your learning objectives and your employees’ needs they become even more powerful. Apart from being fun to watch and getting the message across more effectively than text or even video, custom eLearning animations can be particularly versatile. They can be used to emotionally engage your employees and enhance their performance, to encourage them to test their skills in a risk free environment, or to ensure that your learning objecives are clear to them. - Use assessment tools to measure the effectiveness of your customized online training.
Performance evaluation is essential for performance improvement. Your employees will feel more productive, if they are given the opportunity to see how their performance affects the bottom line of the organization, because they feel that their achievements impact directly the success of their company. To effectively measure your employees’ performance and motivate them to improve it, always offer them concrete and constructive feedback throughout the online training process. Evaluate their skills, provide them with opportunities for further development, and even consider incorporating a reward system into your custom eLearning course. Also, have in mind that feedback works both ways. Ask your employees to evaluate the effectiveness of your online training strategy by completing surveys or participating in interviews that will provide you with valuable data about your eLearning course design. All in all, measuring the success of your custom eLearning course will not only give you the opportunity to make respective revisions, updates and improvements, but also to measure your employees’ satisfaction, achievement and performance levels. This way, you will help your workforce to fine tune their skill sets, modify their non productive behaviors and significantly improve their work performance.
Now that you know how to develop custom eLearning that improves the performance of your employees, you may want to know more about the benefits of custom eLearning: Read the article 9 Reasons To Develop Custom eLearning Than Engages Employees and learn why developing custom eLearning will increase your employees’ engagement levels.
