It’s that time of year when people write lists of gifts they hope to receive. The reality is that so often we end up with items that don’t suit us or are totally inappropriate. The same can be said for Learning & Development managers who get saddled with outmoded LMS platforms and boring elearning modules, when what they need is edtech that’s current and fit-for-purpose. So what should your organization be buying to future-proof your L&D?

1. Open source learning management system

Why open source? As there are no per-user licence fees, it tends to be more cost-effective. It also means there are thousands of developers worldwide working on keeping it up-to-date and bug free. The use of plugins means that open source LMS is scalable and flexible, so it will adapt to your organization’s needs. Open source doesn’t mean one-size-fits-all; a Totara partner can customize the look and functionality to fit you like a glove.

2. Learning on the go

A cell phone app that allows training to continue 24/7 is today’s must-have for mlearning. The most cutting-edge apps are those where users can access files and complete learning modules – even when offline. This means no matter how far ‘off the grid’ an employee is, they can still continue training.

3. Knowledge sharing / social sharing

In today’s go-go culture, your employees need access to fast learning. As younger, less experienced people replace retirees, they need a knowledge repository where it’s easy to find a specific topic to fill the gap in their skillset. Video content should be taggable, so it can be visited, revisited and shared as necessary.

4. Engaging Content

Converting conventional materials to digital is not enough. Truly engaging content is based on visual learning and contains interactive elements like quizzes. Real-life scenario videos involving your team make learning absolutely relevant. Gamification mechanics such as badges and locked levels inspire learners to push on and beat the leaderboards. Social learning promotes friendly competition between colleagues.

5. Training

To utilize the full potential of the latest edtech software requires top-level training from experienced experts. Whether it’s learning all the roles and functions of an LMS like Totara Learn or becoming familiar with Articulate Studio for instructional design, training is the backbone of an effective L&D program.

Organizations may feel upgrading their edtech is an unnecessary expense, however truly effective training should realize a great ROI through increased productivity and engagement, as well as reduced staff turnover.

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This spend can be linked to concerns with:

• falling sales
• the apprenticeship levy
• competition

Retail Sales Index: showing the slump in sales

According to the Retail Sales Index, sales are declining.

We saw the recent slump in Next’s sales in 2017 adversely affecting their profit and cited a “combination of economic, cyclical and internal factors working against us”.

Also, we saw John Lewis slash staff bonuses to the lowest level in over 63 years to protect their future.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk | Data: ONS

Competition

Another factor affecting this change is competition from online sales. In grocery for example, companies like Acado in the UK are providing more and more reasons to buy online, with new entrants such as Amazon building on their current business model to now deliver food produce.

Increasingly, competitors are entering this crowded and aggressive marketplace where:

• the product range is wide (i.e. home cleaning items, personal hygiene goods and foodstuffs, such as crisps and ready meals); and
• margins are low.

In order to compete for retail shelf space, customer facing employees need to know exact information about products at a given time.

The apprenticeship levy

Another criticism in the training industry has been how the apprenticeship levy has been introduced.

Retailers feel that this is an unnecessary tax on their revenues given that most of them are already running training and graduate programmes.

As the size of the retail sector is approximately £3bn they will pay around £235m for the levy this year.

How can we measure training impact as a return on investment?

Here are several tips on how to measure the impact of training in your FMCG business

Sales revenues

Running product sales training, or coaching is a simple win.  When you are releasing a new product, why not link the Learning and Development team with the Sales and Marketing team to produce supporting training materials.  As sales increases, you can demonstrate through learning assessment how this effected knowledge of individuals and therefore sales results.

Customer net promoter

Some businesses ask you to fill out a net promoter score at the bottom of your receipt.  There may be in some cases a cash prize or holiday if you win.   If you are rolling out a customer service training programme, you can assess the its results by the customer net promoter score.

For example, how many customers are filling out the feedback via net promoter, low number means your employees are not doing their job.  If they are feeding back, how good is this feedback, is it positive?  You can then link in the customer service training programme results to your net promoter.

Employee engagement

Most businesses send out an employee engagement survey, this is to ‘check in’ and for the head office to understand where people are feeling engaged or not.  This would be on top of the one to one’s with managers.  Typically more engaged workforces have a learning culture, you can evidence how many effective training programmes have been rolled out over a specific period and link this data to increases in employee engagement, then you can evidence the impact training is having.

Learner feedback

From training courses that you run, whether they are face to face, or blended, you can always ask for feedback.  You can use the ‘happy sheet’ to gain this, but most organisations are now using their online learning portal to gain this feedback, which means it’s much easier to aggregate and analyse the data.

Mystery shopping

FMCG businesses outsource their mystery shopping to other businesses who specialise in this area.  You can use this feedback to understand the impact of your training programme.

For example, you may run a training programme about management of aggressive behaviour in store.  You could ask the mystery shopper to approach several stores to raise complaint and potentially use aggressive behaviours.  Following your training programme, you can ask the mystery shopper for independent feedback on how this was handled.

Therefore, with these challenges in the FMCG sector training has become more important than ever.  We need to leverage our skills in our teams to bridge the challenges in sales decline.

The benefits of training

In our experience, we are seeing that these employees have benefitted from training on:

• Product knowledge
• Professional selling skills
• Bespoke sales training
• And much more …

Once trained, they are far more effective in negotiating shelf space with retailers to increase distribution and sales.

For more information about how other FMCG corporates are approaching learning programmes, you can read more about:

• Zara
• Hotter Comfort
• Dominos ; and
• Clas Ohlson here.

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Scalable, efficient and fast

Elearning is flexible enough to quickly create and communicate new training materials to all employees throughout the company. Most Learning Management Systems are scalable in terms of the ability to handle a growing amount of work in an efficient manner as well as in terms of meeting the different needs of employees working in different countries.

Higher engagement

The variety of elearning techniques can make learning more engaging. For example, social learning can improve collaboration. Another great ways to use elearning for employee engagement are through gamification or personalised learning.

Higher learning retention

All different elearning tools used for employee engagement are expected to increase the knowledge retention.

Saves time and money

Elearning helps to reduce the time away from workplace as well as to save the money spent on trainer and employee commutation, trainer costs and infrastructure rentals.

Capacity and consistency

It is very important to make sure that all employees throughout the company get the same quality training. Elearning offers the opportunity to engage all employees in consistent training and it can help to achieve high levels of coverage amongst your target audience.

Lower environmental impacts

By delivering training online and testing your employees using online quizzes and tests, you are significantly reducing the paper consumption as well as reducing other waste caused by travelling for training.

Easier to measure learning activities and impact

Using a Learning Management System (LMS) makes it very easy to track the activity and progress of learners as well as to build reports.

Flexible

Elearning is very flexible in terms of providing learners with the freedom to learn at their own pace, when they want and where they want.

Accessible

Elearning materials can be made accessible on any device (laptop, tablet, mobile phone) and at any time. This can be very useful for providing same learning materials to learners throughout the business in different locations, this is great for international companies. The accessibility factor is very important in terms of learning provided to remote workers.

Appealing to millennials

As the number of technology savvy millennials rises in the workforce, it is clear that any modern organisation should provide some elements of elearning to the employees. It is beneficial for the learners in terms of meeting their needs, increasing engagement and ensuring their knowledge retention.

If you want to learn more about different corporate elearning solutions available, visit the Webanywhere website.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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Implementing a strong training strategy for charities can be a challenge. Although it is important for them to develop their staff and make sure they have the management and interpersonal skills required to do their job, charities rely mostly on donations, and therefore must use their funds carefully and constructively. It is important for them to find cost effective solutions.

1) Improve flexibility

eLearning, in particular if an open source platform is chosen, allows staff and volunteers to access training anywhere, at anytime and from any device, whether they have access to a desktop or mobile during their working hours. Employees can train in their own time, at home, on the bus, even in the break room.

2) Increase staff retention

Charities currently have a staff turnover of 22%, and despite showing that the third sector economy is healthy, it’s also very costly for charities as they incur costs linked to staff departures and recruitment. One way to improve staff retention is to offer career progression and training. Investing in staff and volunteers’ CPD can not only make them remain in their job, but also bring some real returns as they upskill and become more efficient.

3) Improve onboarding and training quality

With eLearning, onboarding training can be done before new recruits even start their job. They can do it from home in their own time, therefore reducing the onboarding time dramatically. eLearning also gives the opportunity to create interactive and engaging content for onboarding and staff development, which can lead to a more effective knowledge, skill set acquisition and retention. Types of engaging content can include: videos, quizzes, games, simulation, animated content, case studies and problem solving scenarios.

4) Cut costs

One of the most significant benefit of eLearning is that it reduces training costs. It costs out the need for face-to-face training sessions, printed materials and off-site training along with expenses linked to them (accommodation, food, travel etc). Training can also be done outside of working hours saving man-hours. Although, an investment is required to implement the platform, in the long run, the cost of maintaining the platform is very low compared to face-to-face training. Open source allows for the development for bespoke development, completely tailored to organisations’ need, avoiding the costs of unnecessary features offered by proprietary systems.

5) Extend reach

eLearning can also be used to train your staff and volunteers on specific Marketing campaigns, and can even be extended to the wider public to increase knowledge and awareness for the cause your are supporting.

An example of how eLearning can achieve this is the work Webanywhere have done with Breast Cancer Care. We produced an online course as part of their B-Aware campaign, developing both the content and platform. This course is an integral part of their campaign, which aims at raising awareness about early detection of breast cancer and improving survival rates in Scotland.

If you are in the third sector and would be interested to find out more on how eLearning can help, book a free no obligation consultation session with one of our experts. Contact us now on 0113 3250 750 or fill in our contact form.

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A successful LMS deployment depends on more than just the technology involved. The strategies that the management team use to launch the LMS are just as, if not more, important if you wish to ensure it is a success. We’ve examined several key techniques that you can use to improve take up within your organisation.

A Central Resource

Modern businesses have large numbers of systems in place. Using your LMS as the central location to point staff at the right system for their need will increase uptake and ensure that the LMS is the first system users look to for information.

Gamification and rewards

The Mozilla Open Badges system makes it easy to create game based incentives for staff, this can encourage further uptake of the LMS. As well as this, league tables of team results and prizes for the best scores can encourage healthy competition.

Mobile Access

These days most staff have access to at least one mobile device. Ensuring that the LMS is easy to use via mobile will mean that staff can access learning materials conveniently and on a platform that they are familiar with.

Blended training

The LMS can be used to host preparatory work for a face to face training session. It can also host notes from the session and follow up work to ensure that knowledge is embedded. Combining this with the ability to book sessions online, means the LMS is central to face to face training.

Bitesize “Just in Time” training

An LMS is an ideal platform for “Just in Time” training. This can allow users to look up facts and check information on company processes or tasks (like on a search engine). This can make a workforce more efficient and increase ROI on the LMS.

Social Learning

Forums and chat rooms are an ideal place to get staff to share ideas and answer each other’s questions. These can be hosted on an LMS and help encourage communities. Collaborative work and glossaries can also help you leverage staff experience.

Mandatory Learning

Hosting mandatory training and inductions on the LMS helps to ingrain it as part of your company’s culture. This ensures all staff get used to taking training online and can help them see other resources that are available.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas about how to increase usage of your LMS. If you have any questions or want to find out more please get in touch.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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