Educating Your Workforce

With the shape of business rapidly changing from week to week, the need for skills is also ever changing. CEOs all over the world implement a number of on-the-job training strategies, but what are the benefits of e-learning?

The business world is ever changing, adapting and growing – and so is the demand for skills. Despite the clear need for upskilling workforces – especially in this ever-changing and rapidly technologically developing world – many organisations still don’t implement any training at all. This is despite 58% of CEOs being worried about the speed of technological development and 72% worried about geopolitical uncertainty. A recent Close Brothers Business Barometer revealed that just under half (47%) of SMEs in the South East do not provide management training for their employees, despite an overwhelming majority (82%) believing that having strong leadership capabilities contribute to success. The barometer also revealed that three quarters (75%) of firms situated across the South East believe that SMEs need to have leaders throughout the company, regardless of level.

Whether introducing a new technology, entering a merger or a new market, there are many things that can go wrong: at the top of this list is poor leadership and communication, leading to an estimated 70% of organisations failing to successfully implement their potentially integral projects. This doesn’t mean that they don’t see the need though: 94% of respondents within the Global CEO survey believed that upskilling their workforce is important to achieving their organisation’s business strategy.

However, employers, specifically owners and CEOs of small businesses with comparatively small turnovers come up against barriers. The largest barriers employers face in these situations include: constraints due to cost, lack of interest from senior staff and employees’ reluctance to engage in learning. Many see inadequate current technology infrastructure and ensuring people have the time and space to participate in learning to be major barriers also.

It’s understandable that most consider one of the major barriers to be cost, and especially for smaller companies, as average training spend per employee appears to decline with organisation size increase. For example, the survey found that organisations with 50–99 employees allocate around £700 per employee, which falls to around £500-£600 for organisations with 100–249 employees, £483.19 for those with 250–499 and £339.35 per employee for organisations with more than 500 employees. So what’s the answer?

Employee training practices have always traditionally taken the form of on-the-job training, conferences and formal education courses. Although these types of training are viewed to be highly effective by employees and line managers, more and more CEOs are choosing a more up-to-date format of training: e-learning.

The latest Global CEO survey by pwc, an annual survey which aims to inform and stimulate the debate on how businesses are facing today’s challenges, suggested that for the first time ever, over half of respondents (54%) report using e-learning. Out of the 1,300 CEOs surveyed in over 77 countries, another 39% of those currently not using it plan to implement it in the next 12 months.

E-learning appears to be becoming a key component in organisations’ training and learning strategies, and that’s not surprising in this technology driven, on-the-go society. But what are the specific benefits that organisations achieve from using e-learning over other forms? Most respondents (almost three-quarters) of the Global CEO survey viewed its flexibility, constancy and immediacy as a large benefit of using e-learning over other methods. The flexibility of e-learning and its ability to simultaneously reach an unlimited number of employees are also considered to be significant benefits. This form of learning and training means that employees don’t have to be in the same place at the same time for a set period of time to complete it – they can complete the training in their own time and at their own speed. E-learning is also believed to be more effective than face-to-face training, because the learning is put into an applicable and well-known context. The opportunity for transferrable knowledge makes for more transferable skills training.

On the other hand, the results of the survey indicated that e-learning is mostly used for IT training (70%), technical training (45%), health and safety (34%) and induction training (33%). E-learning is much less likely to be used for training in ‘people skills’ like management training (23%) and interpersonal skills training (13%) and even less likely to be used in topics such as diversity (9%), foreign languages (7%) or teambuilding (3%) training. This may be something that will be developed in the near future, with more and more companies demanding – and needing – leadership and management development and training over other forms in order to succeed.

Business should note that skills must be developed in order to deal with a more demanding and competitive organisational environment. To remain competitive, organisations need employees with strong business acumen, as well as leaders/managers with the ability to lead the organisation through times of change, and this may often take training, whether on or offline. Employees themselves need to be able to respond to change by being more adaptable and employee training, including management, communication, or more specific skills training is the key to ensuring this.

Approximately 90% of CEOs believe there is a direct link between investment in leadership development and business performance, but it often isn’t seen as an essential business activity. Make time for develop leadership skills, and invest now so that in the future the company can keep building its assets and reap the benefits.

Mike added: “An effective leadership training programme will most certainly help in creating a winning atmosphere within any business. Those who have responsibilities for managing others need to be properly trained in order for their business to run smoothly and increase the chances of success.”