Jan has 15 years of experience in training and has focused entirely on e-learning since 2016. He loves starting new projects and always has a few good ideas for those who want to get started right away.
Making valuable e-learning
Any quiet period within an organization is an ideal time to invest in internal management. It can be used to optimize processes, automate activities, implement software migrations and develop training courses.
For companies with an existing e-learning environment and strategy, building training courses consists of four steps:
Writing a creative concept;
Writing scripts;
Producing materials (video, interactive content, texts and tests);
Uploading materials and setting up the training in the Learning Management System.
The first two steps in particular - writing - require time from a specific group of employees who have the expertise that needs to be transferred into the e-learning.
With this in mind, we ask you the question: Which e-learning course are you going to build tomorrow?
Could you use some more inspiration? We'll give you some ideas below.
Training for Human Resources / Onboarding
A few months ago, we spoke to a care institution. With 2,000 employees and a high turnover of approximately 20 per cent per year, they recruit 400 new employees every year. The organization has an intensive onboarding program of 24 days. A quick calculation tells us that the organization spends 48 FTEs a year on training. And that does not include the trainers themselves, taking care of the facilities and planning all these sessions. What wastes a lot more time is the waiting time between joining the company and attending the first set of training sessions. Without attending these training sessions, the employee is not yet allowed to participate in the critical processes. That is, of course, a waste of time.
The healthcare institution itself estimates that they can provide two thirds of the training courses digitally. This means that an employee can start on day 1 and can get to work much faster. Moreover, for many people, attending an online training course is quicker than attending a classroom course. The fast learner no longer has to wait during the training for the learner who needs a little more guidance. And the student who needs a little more time can repeat the training as often as he or she wants without the pressure of a group.
Our customers also tell us that thanks to e-learning, the quality of the familiarization process has gone up. New employees always come on board in hectic times and every new employee seems to be an exception to the normal onboarding process. By offering new employees a fixed program and monitoring progress, the same quality can be delivered to everyone during onboarding.
Do you need help to achieve this? We help you prioritize, structure and realize the onboarding program. As soon as these matters are clear, we will create the training with the highest priority with you.
Training on Information Security
In order to be able to demonstrate a good policy on information security, many organizations have themselves audited for the ISO 27001 certificate. This certificate not only means that you have your paperwork in order when it comes to information security, but also that you have properly secured this in the organization. Of course, obtaining the certificate is not the only reason to start working on information security. Preventing leaks and damage to reputation are reason enough to take this seriously.
For information security, it is important that all employees are on board. After all, all employees have access to sensitive information and can contribute to the (continued) protection of this data. It is therefore important that these employees are not only aware of the guidelines, but also that they change their behaviour to ensure that they work with data in a different, safer way.
A training course is often used to raise awareness. In a classic situation, for example, this is given once a month and employees must follow it once a year. Subsequently, a central administration keeps track of whether each employee has followed the training in the past year. This is a lot of work and can cause resistance.
By using e-learning for information security, the organization can ensure that every employee sees the correct version of the information. New employees can follow the course immediately after being employed. Attending the course may even be a requirement for them to gain access to sensitive data. In order to maintain awareness among existing employees, we recommend that you publish a new version of the course every year. This will then be made available to all employees and they will be asked to complete it within a certain period of time. The certificate list for this new version of the training can then be placed next to the employee database on a regular basis, after which people can easily be reminded.
An Information Security course is not difficult to make. Nevertheless, we are happy to help you on your way. We work together with a partner who already has the scripts ready to use, so you don't have to adjust a lot to make them suitable for your organization. As soon as you've done that, we'll add your logo, produce the videos and make sure the training is online within a week.
Product training
Training focused on products is among the most popular types of training among our customers. It is not just software companies that make extensive use of online product training. For example, we also see e-learning being used for physical products such as machines and medical equipment. Suppliers use these training courses to train not only customers, but also partners.
The main reasons to use product training are:
Customers ask for it so that they can learn location- and time-independent;
It creates scalability so that the company can grow rapidly without being dependent on the human factor;
Quality can be monitored without having to audit (international) partners on training skills;
Savings are made on facilities, transportation and hiring external trainers.
Alternatives we see in this market for e-learning are (e-)books, YouTube videos, Knowledge Base articles and video calls. Although each of these alternatives has its own advantages, none of them can deliver the professionalism and scalability of e-learning.
We recommend using e-learning for the most commonly used functions of the product and making alternative sources of information available for the lesser used functions.
We would be happy to come and meet you and give advice on your product training. Based on our experience with product training, we can guide you in all areas of production. We can already develop an online training course for you after we have followed it in class once. But we prefer to work very intensively with you, providing the didactic structure while you provide the knowledge.
Training around a certain expertise
This is the type of training that really makes you a trainer. You know a lot about something, for example: a new tax law, a management style or a method you have developed yourself. These are training courses that become a product themselves and therefore need to be very well thought through. Writing a creative concept can help you with this. Calculating the business case behind the training is also very important. If the training is going to become a product, it has to pay for itself.
An important advantage of offering this type of training is that you are probably the only one within your niche or market who offers this training. With a range of training courses that can be followed directly, you will be seen as the expert in your market. If certain courses go well, it is also easy to choose which (follow-up) courses you will invest your time and money into.
Could you use some help? Because you are the expert and we probably don't know the subject matter very well, we will guide you through the process and give you tools to help you write an effective script. We are also going to help you with the most labor intensive things, such as recording and editing video. You are in charge of the content and we will do the rest.
About Maxcademy
Our company provides customized e-learning for organizations. We have a great deal of experience in transferring classroom training content to online and ensure that all the possibilities of e-learning are used optimally. We provide the student with an experience that is pleasant to follow by avoiding long pieces of text and making extensive use of video and interactive content. In doing so, we make as little use as possible of unnecessary gimmicks that add little to the learning experience. Our goal is to build a training course that is not only fun to follow, but also easy to maintain due to a modular structure.
Want to know more? Contact us here.