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Podcast 7 min

What is online training?

Every team has a story to tell, and we’re excited to create a platform to share these tales with all of you. We’re pleased to announce the release of episode 1 of The CoLab Podcast!

30 Sep 2020 by Rocco Brudno

G’day Mates!

Welcome to the very first episode of the CoLab podcast. My name is Ryan Macpherson, CEO and Co-Founder of Coassemble, the online training platform revolutionizing how teams train. For this episode, I’m joined by fellow Co-Founder and CPO of Coassemble, Jude Novak. Today Jude and I are going to talk about online training, what the benefits are, how it started, and what you need to look for when shopping around. Let’s dive in, shall we?

About the CoLab Podcast

The CoLab Podcast is the best business training advice from experts in the field on sharing knowledge and growing teams successfully at scale. In each episode, host Ryan Macpherson will chat with guests about entrepreneurship, strategy, management, leadership, and the value of elevating the employee experience. Ryan will also share his insights on proven methods & strategies that helped teams grow.

To listen to the full episode, click below to hear CoLab in this post for you to enjoy. You can also find us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts.

What you’ll learn in today’s episode

Many teams are learning how to share knowledge and grow effectively at scale. Though the topics and guests will be different, we’ll always be looking through that lens to create a powerful employee experience. In today’s episode, we’ll dive into:

  • Why you want to train your team
  • What is the evolution of training
  • Why Online Training?
  • And more!

Strap in, it’s gonna be a great episode!

What are the benefits of training your staff

One of the most crucial and important components of your business is your staff. Whether creating new solutions to improve your offering, or working with your customers directly, your employees are the reason it all works.

So it stands to reason that creating an effective training program that enhances your staff would benefit your company. When asked by Jude why training your staff might be beneficial, Ryan had this to say:

“Training can have a big impact on both the individual and the business. If a team member is performing better because they were successfully trained to do so, that can have a direct and positive impact on your business.”

Ryan Macpherson

Team training has been proven to increase your team’s productivity, a focal point of an effective employee experience. Engaged staff also tend to stay with your company longer, improving your employee retention rates.

What is online training?

Training has always been seen as a system—such as part of an onboarding or review process. Now, with the transition to online platforms, training has become more agile and helps individuals improve week on week with the ability to pivot where and when learning can happen.

That agility is exactly why online training can be so effective for teams seeking to grow at scale. By rapidly creating and sharing contextually relevant knowledge, you’re able to evolve your team’s growth in a productive and efficient way.

The other benefit of online training is making knowledge easily accessible to your team. Traditionally, training had to take place in a designated space or location, with hard lines defining how your team could access it. Online training removes these barriers by leveraging accessible and mobile-friendly content that can be delivered virtually anywhere your team wants to train.

What makes great online training

When you’re building online training, it’s important to ask yourself these three questions:

  1. Do you have an expected business outcome for online training?
  2. What information do you currently have?
  3. What do you need to know about the learners that will be trained?

Online training needs to have an intentional goal. There will always be policies and procedures training, but what are the expected outcomes? Understanding that before delivering training can ensure your goals are met by your team.

Legacy content such as your training PDF’s, instructional videos, and presentations all can be great to use for online training. You’ll have to convert them into engaging training content pieces, but having them available can save you a lot of work.

Lastly, your learners, the people you want to train, should be the focus of your online training program. Building a training process that starts with your team and works for their benefit guarantees higher engagement and success rates. Trust us, we pioneered the learner-first model of training and we’re here to tell you it’s the future.

“The beauty of online training, when it works, is that it is authentic.”

Ryan Macpherson

Online training was always known as just a “dump-and-go” style of making a PDF and giving it to team members. This was neither effective nor efficient, but the cost was always the barrier between engaging eLearning and teams that could leverage it.

How much should it cost to do online training?

Back in the early 2000s, a single online training lesson experience would cost roughly $50,000 dollars. This was because the process was very expensive and time-consuming and required a lot of resources such as graphic designers and web developers.

eLearning or online training was very similar to what the website development space went through. Fast forward to 2015, and we start to see companies like Wix pop up that completely change how long online content creation can take. To get eLearning up and running even at that time, you needed training designers, an authoring tool, an LMS or online training platform, and a cloud server to run it all.

But in the last two years, online training has seen an explosion of growth thanks to rapid eLearning authoring tools and all-in-one online training platforms. These tools create a great user experience that also benefits learners and the training process. Teams are able to train faster and more efficiently, increasing productivity and ultimately your bottom line.

How can I implement online training with my team?

The most important part of understanding what is online training is knowing that within your own team, training is already happening. Your lead sales rep is already giving pointers to new hires. Your marketing writer is helping your social manager write copy.

This knowledge, like your legacy content, is easily transferable with an online training platform. By empowering your team and managers with tools to improve their access to right knowledge, you guarantee higher engagement and ultimately success for your employees.

Lastly, you want to ensure your online training content is contextually relevant. Whether you’re delivering it via a training platform or creating a knowledge library, you need to make sure the information is relevant and up to date. If your team needs training on communications and can only find a PDF that’s five years old, that’s guaranteed to fail.

Putting your team’s needs as the focus is a huge part of how you can implement online training successfully. The learner-first model is a great place to start and provides you with a proven strategy to start training your team.

Subscribe to learn more

The CoLab Podcast is a twice-monthly series that will include guests as well as Ryan providing expert knowledge on sharing knowledge, employee experience, and growing teams successfully at scale. To stay up to date, click subscribe wherever you enjoy listening to podcasts to receive the latest episodes.

Thanks for tuning in and we’ll see you next time.

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