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If you work in a management position at any modern organization, you will eventually need to provide education to your employees, business partners, or potential clients. Getting your office up-to-date on current technologies involves training in the workplace that translates well into improved productivity.
Employee training generates tangible benefits in the real-world workplace. It’s no wonder why over $70 billion was invested in business training in a single year. That’s why it’s a field worth looking into for your own business.
But there are a few things you’ll want to know first. Things like ensuring your company’s resources are invested efficiently and properly.
One of the best ways to boost the potency of workplace training is adopting virtual training labs, which enhance employee knowledge and retention in ways that traditional classroom-style courses cannot. Literacy with new technologies is a requirement for staying competitive in business, so let’s talk about how e-learning in the workplace can boost your office’s productivity.
Affordability is often the greatest limiting factor for many smaller companies. The cost of classroom-based training courses can be onerous in both funds and time. For instance, you have to pay for:
Cloud labs have the benefit of eliminating many of these extra costs. Classes can be given at any time from any location within virtualized training environments set up from a server.
It’s no secret that modern companies, whether in the tech industry or not, deal with computers and digital workspaces every day.
Business skills are best taught in the context of these real-life scenarios in virtualized simulations rather than on paper. It makes sense that you want your employee education to take place in a digital environment.
Since the classroom is set up in the server, every user has access to a powerful workstation equipped with a full installation of the software and operating environment being taught. Discussion between peers and instructors can happen easily with chat rooms, virtual whiteboards, and collaboration rooms.
Younger employees will already be familiar with online communication as well, making virtual learning platforms ideal for training millennials.
This kind of remote desktop technology, when applied to workplace e-learning and self-paced training, is incredibly flexible and powerful. It enables learners to log in through remote computers from anywhere on the planet. The only thing they need is a stable Internet connection.
There are no geographic restrictions to who can take the courses, and every employee can experience hands-on exercises from any location. Whether they’re in a coffee shop or at home, cloud-based virtual labs are accessible.
Don’t worry. There’s no risk in e-learning either. The training session is held independently from your business’s main servers, eliminating the chance of corrupting or losing real data.
All communication, from video lectures to text-based messaging, can be recorded, giving employees the chance to review materials at a later time. Plus, instructors can step in at any point during a lesson to answer questions and keep track of progress.
Over the shoulder learning is a great way for an instructor to help students that are stuck. They can analyze why the student became stuck and step in and provide a relevant solution.
This translates to better efficiency as getting one employee on track doesn’t hold up the entire class. It allows you to provide a more effective learning experience for everyone involved.
Feedback is also instant in a virtual learning environment, which offers your company valuable input on the quality of the training you are providing.
Physical labs are costly to build and maintain. Your IT departments have to configure individual machines, install updates, replace damaged hardware, maintain your servers, and keep the lab running efficiently. Virtual labs reduce the burden on your IT departments by offloading most of these tasks to the cloud.
Cloud-based labs allow you to only pay for the resources you are using. You can easily add more ram, users, and additional environments, greatly expanding the capabilities of your training labs. This is a huge advantage over physical labs where you are required to purchase entire computers, rather than the actual amount of resources you need.
Major companies like Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo are already investing heavily in workplace e-learning for their own employees. The additional efficiency, convenience, and potency can help not only large businesses but also smaller ones just as well.
Don’t be left behind. When the competition gets tough, modernizing your workforce and keeping business partners up-to-date with modern technologies are necessary steps you can’t afford to postpone.