How to choose online training that suits your organisation

Learning and development is a fundamental part of a successful organisation. It should be an obvious “yes” for organisations when it comes to the decision on whether or not to invest in training staff. However, it’s not an easy decision to choose the right training courses for your staff when there are thousands of courses available.

There are a number of factors that should be considered when choosing a training provider and their content before you commit yourself to spend on training. This includes approvals and accreditations, content, course duration, usability, and pricing.

But before you spend hours studying the pros and cons of each training provider, you need to know what learning outcomes you desire from your training - and to know that, you need to know who you are training.

Some questions you should find the answers to before considering your training are:

• What duties do your staff perform?
• What training would benefit them?
• What’s the best way to access training?

Approvals and Accreditations

The first thing to keep an eye out for when looking to choose training for your organisation is approvals and accreditations. They give a clear indication of high-quality training at first glance. With some approval bodies more reputable than others, it’s absolutely necessary to also check out the legitimacy of these organisations.

Approvals and accreditations also give added value to the qualification and certification your staff receives upon completing the course.

Content

This can often be one of the most challenging factors to judge, as many training providers are unable to or choose not to show potential clients the quality of their content before committing to a purchase. If a training provider truly does offer great content, they’ll want you to see it before you buy it!

Content should be engaging, up-to-date, and easy to understand. Also, training should also be as engaging and interactive as possible to boost engagement rates.

Price

Although it’s not necessarily the most important factor in investing in the right training for your staff, it is often the deciding factor for the decision maker.

More traditional training methods can take up a lot of working hours and cost a lot of money as a whole.

eLearning is often a much more cost-effective solution for organisations looking to train their staff quickly and efficiently. We explain in our blog the effectiveness of eLearning and why it is rapidly becoming the preferred method for delivering training.

Course duration

As previously mentioned, face-to-face training can take up a lot of company time if not delivered effectively.

Courses can be more efficient for organisations if employees are able to undertake it in their own time, rather than in block chunks. Training is much more effective when it is short, to the point, and engaging. That’s why we introduced our bite-size eLearning courses, some of which take just 15 minutes to complete!

Take a look at this study for example; it states that:

• 89% of people want training anytime/anywhere they need to do their job;
• 85% of people want to be able to choose training times that fit their schedule; and
• 80% of people believe frequent/regular training is more important than formal workplace training.

More often than not, isn’t enough to put a group of workers in a classroom for a day and telling them they’re done for the year.

Usability

User interfaces need to be designed in a way that puts the user first. They need to be easy-to-use and navigate. If employees can’t easily navigate through their training process, it will negatively affect their overall learning experience.

Breaking down courses into bite-size chunks that are designed around a clear structure can help the information to become easily digestible.

Your training should be able to meet the needs of everyone within your organisation. You should think about if the training (eLearning specifically) offers:

• Subtitles & transcripts
• Translations for multiple languages
• Off-thread resources to enhance and build upon the training

Considering iHASCO?

We at iHASCO are committed to you and your organisation's individual training journey.

With various approvals from the likes of IOSH, RoSPA, and IIRSM, as well as CPD Accreditation, you can trust that our courses are of a high standard.

We thrive from the quality of our training - so much so that we offer everybody the chance to try any three of our courses for free!