The pandemic has made organizations across the globe realize the importance of developing a continuous learning culture. With the sudden change in work structure and the shift to remote work, it became necessary to ensure employees stay ready to face all kinds of challenges.
Delivering online learning courses is one way to ensure employees acquire the necessary skills to perform well in their jobs. But statistics show that often employees get bored of the self-paced courses and abandon the training midway.
A major reason for this is the absence of social engagement. Learning in isolation from a computer or smartphone can often get boring. This reduces engagement and decreases the chances of employees retaining the training knowledge.
Fortunately, there is a great way to change this and make learning a more exciting and immersive experience for employees. Employee development training can be made more interesting by mixing self-paced eLearning courses with virtual instructor-led sessions.
This combination is called the blended learning approach and it offers employees the best of both worlds. Blended learning is highly beneficial when compared to both the individual methods of knowledge delivery. Here are X key benefits of implementing blended learning in the workplace:
- Increases employee interest in learning:
Blended learning breaks the monotony of self-paced online courses and makes it more fun by including sessions with a virtual instructor. It brings together multiple members of the same team and helps them learn together.
This makes learning fun and exciting and ensures employees stay interested in learning. Since it accommodates different learning styles, it leads to increased employee engagement.
- Saves time & money:
Offering only virtual classroom sessions can take up a lot of employee time. Combining it with self-paced courses reduces the time spent by an employee on a training course.
Moreover, creating custom courses for every topic can get expensive. Instead, using an LMS like Skill jar to conduct a virtual classroom session is an inexpensive way of delivering knowledge of tough concepts.
- Makes learning more interactive:
With the blended learning approach, employees can first go through an online course and then get better clarity on it through the virtual instructor-led session.
This increases their understanding of a topic and helps them retain information for longer. It also gives them a chance to discuss topics that they are facing issues with. This makes learning more interactive and fun.
- Makes learning highly flexible:
It is very challenging for employees to take out time every day to learn from an online session with the instructor. Blended learning gives employees the freedom to choose how they want to learn.
Since both online courses and instructor-led sessions are easily accessible through multiple devices, it ensures employees keep engaging with the training content regularly and learning doesn’t get side-tracked.
- Increased employee satisfaction:
If your employees are not happy with the way of delivery of training, it may prevent them from making the most of the training program. Since no two employees learn the same way, blended learning offers solutions for everyone’s learning preferences.
This maximizes the employee learning experience and enhances their performance. With better performance, employees feel empowered and are able to take on work with confidence.
Conclusion:
Blended learning gives employees variety in learning and captures their attention. This increases the effectiveness of the training as well as the chances of training course completion.
If your organization is looking to gain good ROI on training and meet the learning needs of employees at the same time, implementing blended learning is the best solution. When tailored to the needs of different departments of the company, it becomes even more powerful and delivers exceptional results.