Source: pandodaily.com
Startups have special workforce-training needs. While providing a more unique and exciting environment than established companies, startups also bring training challenges that veteran companies don’t have.
Because startups require employees to take a more hands-on approach to building a brand from the ground-up, people have a chance to shape the company from its inception through launch and development. This entrepreneurial spirit gives each employee the chance to be a partner in the overall organization.
Yet what goes hand in hand with these opportunities for employees to dive in outside of the traditional roles that they were hired for is that people must be able to effectivelyparticipate in areas outside their job descriptions. For a startup to be successful, its teams must be able to ramp up quickly to develop skills outside of their core areas of expertise — as well as within them.
New companies have an even greater need for employee training and education that’s best delivered when new hires first come on board. Giving startup employees the tools that they need to succeed from day one is the best investment you can make in your workforce and your company.
Fortunately, online training can help shorten the learning curve. As is true of industries globally, an increasing amount of education is taking place online. E-learning is rapidly approaching the halfway point for corporate training, now accounting for 40 percent of all corporate training hours, up from 37 percent in 2011. And by 2015, 25 million post-secondary students in the United States will be taking classes online.
It’s easy to understand why. There are many advantages to e-learning — particularly for startup companies that need to consolidate training time as much as possible. No time or money is lost on travel or organizing a training event. Learners can set their own pace of understanding and assimilating information. Online training courses can be easily and quickly updated by simply uploading new material, or automatically importing content from Web pages.
Once you understand the importance of sufficiently training startup employees, the next step is to identify the learning programs that work best for your teams. Because startups are generally smaller in size, and lack the bigger budgets of established companies, it makes sense to conduct a cost comparison of your training options.
To understand the potential cost savings that online learning can offer startups, consider the following case study from Training Magazine of how eLearningArt created comprehensive online training programs for their employees, which helped improve their product development while saving a significant amount of money and time.