Companies of all sizes are scrambling to get ahead of coronavirus, implementing measures like work from home, office space deep cleaning, travel bans, and more.
The New York Times predicts that the actions “companies are taking in response to the virus may shift workplace behavior over the long term. Telecommuting, which has been in and out of favor for decades, may become more ingrained. The use of digital tools for remote collaboration may also rise.”1
In the training industry, we’re seeing a huge spike in interest in online training.
What else can organizations turn to when their employees are all working from home? And what if those employees want to stay remote when this is over?
COVID-19 is disrupting industries across the globe—will it kill instructor-led classroom training too?
Many journalists have described the workplace today as undergoing a grand experiment or test of the effectiveness of remote work and virtual training.
But as noted in Forbes, “To weigh effectiveness, companies need to go beyond merely tracking the number of employees who complete e-training. What employees are actually learning and how they are building their skills and competencies will determine the relative success or failure of virtual learning experiments.”2
In his article “Covid-19 Boost to Online Learning May Backfire,” education and innovation consultant Michael Horn argues that because organizations and universities were not prepared for the urgency of the switch to online learning, the content they produce will not be representative of the true capabilities of online learning and will actually make people less inclined to implement it in the future.3
If COVID-19 is going to kill ILT, the online training that replaces it must be equally as engaging and effective.
By resisting the urge to throw a bunch of PowerPoint presentations online and call it a day, and instead working with experienced learning solutions experts, companies have the opportunity to devise meaningful training that is effective now and part of a longer-term solution that can remain in place and deliver results long after the current crisis has been navigated and employees are back in offices.
At eLearning Brothers, we’ve helped thousands of companies in over 100 countries move their corporate learning to effective online and mobile learning.
Whether you are looking to build your own training content from scratch, buy pre-built courses, or hire a custom development shop to create an online learning experience, we can help you do it all. And we can help you make sure your new online training is just as effective as your ILT.
We’re even offering some free resources to help you make the switch from classroom training to online learning.
Check out these 9+ FREE training courses on remote work. These courses will help your remote team stay productive at home, communicate with each other, and stay healthy during this outbreak.
Need to quickly build out a training course on a different topic? Download our free Online Training Starter Pack.
Contact us for more information on how we can help you turn your ILT into future-proof online training.
1https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/business/coronavirus-offices-covid-19.html
3https://www.educationnext.org/covid-19-boost-online-learning-may-backfire/