Recently we shared a blog identifying how your businesses could improve its efficiency by choosing to invest in eLearning. There are two types of methods; off-the-shelf training and bespoke eLearning – but which should you choose?
In this blog, we identify some key benefits you could receive by going with a bespoke eLearning approach. Before looking at its advantages, we must first understand what the method is and how it differs from more traditional forms of training.
Bespoke eLearning – what is it?
Bespoke eLearning is a form of online training material that has been specifically designed to suit a business and their employees. Different to traditional off-the-shelf training, bespoke content is developed with you and your people at the centre. It’s what we specialise in here at Olano!
Take a look at our explainer video:
Our bespoke eLearning courses are packed full of interactions, video clips, illustrations, characters and animations tailored to meet your needs.
Now you understand what’s involved in the creation of a course, let’s get into the key benefits your business could experience by choosing bespoke eLearning…
1. Personalisation
As bespoke eLearning is custom-built, it allows you to personalise it to your business and its employees. It means you can create content focusing on key areas to cover and match up with your learning objectives instead of generic content with off-the-shelf courses.
With a bespoke course, you can have it branded to fit your business too. Colour schemes, logos, branded messages or elements specific to business can be implemented. This will help learners feel familiar when working through content, making them more likely to be engaged.
If you want to build a course containing information relevant to the audience, bespoke eLearning allows you to do this. That way, learners will get the most out of their training as all content will be relevant to their roles.
2. Increased engagement levels
Bespoke eLearning programmes have also been found to result in higher engagement levels amongst learners. Research from Technological University Dublin found that bespoke training had “a positive influence on [respondents’] demonstrating” and provision in general.
If the content is relatable for your learners, they will naturally engage more with it. That’s because there will be areas they are more familiar with because they’ve been personalised to them and their roles. This differs from generic training, which learners may switch off to as it’s not as relevant to them.
Let’s say for example that you purchase some off-the-shelf showing your Finance team how to complete payrolling, but the course spends 15 minutes covering a process you don’t use within your business. It makes that section almost useless for learners, which can lead to them becoming disengaged with the remainder of a course.
Another example could be that you are looking to training managers from the construction sector on GDPR, but the off-shelf training speaks to office-based workers. This shortens learners’ patience and makes the training feel irrelevant to their role.
However, bespoke eLearning allows you to include software, unique processes and terminology used within your business. This makes it completely relevant for the audience in mind, meaning they will be more likely to engaged with the content.
3. More effective for information retention
One study from Frontiers in Education found that participants’ perceived knowledge “significantly increased” after completing a bespoke training course. As learners are generally more engaged, it makes it more effective when it comes to digesting information.
The research shows that bespoke eLearning appears to be more effective for information retention. Learners are less likely to need to revisit a course, meaning it’s more efficient for everybody.
4. Employees feel more valued
Employees like to feel valued, which is something bespoke eLearning can help with. Presenting a generic course not directly relevant might make your employees feel undervalued. But if you spend time creating a programme full of content tailored specifically to support your employees’ development, they will really appreciate this.
A happy employee is a more motivated and productive one; this can help when it comes to retaining your people for the long-term.
5. There is more control for you
Building a bespoke course means we would need content that’s specific to your business. Who’s the best person to provide this? You! Nobody knows your business and its employees better. We work with you to extract knowledge so we can build the best and most appropriate course for you.
It gives you more control throughout the build of the course, with regular check-ins and approvals to make sure it’s on the right track. That’s a USP that bespoke eLearning provides that off-the-shelf cannot.
Now we have outlined some of the major benefits bespoke eLearning can deliver, we hope you feel positive about creating great training for your employees moving forward.
Are you now looking to create some content? We would love to hear from you! You can email us at hello@olano.co.uk for a discussion on how we can meet your business needs.
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