What’s Choosing E-learning Vendor Got to Do with Employee Engagement?

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Right vendor will bring in the correct expertise and proficiency to handle training requirements for your global employees. You will need to hire a vendor who has experience in designing courses for diverse audience. There are many aspects that need to be considered so that courses are designed and developed efficiently as well as effectively for global roll-out. 

Here are important things that the vendor should be able to do.

  1. Bring in eLearning design and development standardization:

Choose a vendor who understands learning design best practices and adult learning principles and can develop standardized templates that makes development quicker and efficient. E-learning is a creative process but also has certain mechanical aspect to it in the form of project management. It requires coordination between multiple stakeholders and therefore requires a well-oiled process and systems in place to ensure that the project is executed seamlessly while working alongside different individuals. Look for a vendor who has developed and can share a well-defined process for e-learning design and development.

  1. Bring in best practices from other countries/ organizations:

Normally e-learning translations involves working with an e-learning vendor and a translating vendor but the ideal vendor for global employee training would be someone who can do both for you. This vendor should have experience working with multiple nationals and has evolved best practices that cater to the needs of diverse audiences. You will benefit from their experience, earned working with multi-cultural and diverse clientele.

  1. Do Translations and localizations economically:

For courses where you are teaching compliance requirements, or best practices in manufacturing it is best that the courses are delivered in the local language. This way, you reduce the chance of misunderstanding and lack of comprehension that could arise when using English courses. So, you need a vendor who is able to translate your courses quickly and economically. At the same time, the vendor should comprehend regional diversities and sensibilities and incorporate the same into the courses through effective localization. This means they would make sure courses are culture-neutral and have a time-tested process that makes multi-lingual translations well-coordinated.

  1. Support learners and admins in different time zones:

You host your courses online but who addresses the concerns of the employees in real-time? This could pose a problem if you have employees working in different time-zones. You should have a trained administrator locally who will address any technical problems faced by the employees. Typically, normal user issues are pertaining to loss of password or access issues. Or else, you could outsource the maintenance of your Learning Management System (LMS) to an outside vendor who could provide the much-needed support to administrators as well as users across multiple time-zones in real time.

  1. Optimize efforts/ initiatives across the globe:

Having a single vendor who handles your e-learning requirement ensures that your e-learning implementation is optimized across different geographic regions that you operate. You will reduce the need to deal with multiple vendors. You don’t need to incur expenses for the same job multiple times. You will consolidate your training initiative and will be able to coordinate and monitor training programs across all your offices with a simple click of a button. So, look for a vendor who not only develops e-learning courses, but also translates them into languages that you desire, host them on to an LMS and manage them for you on an ongoing basis.

How does this result in employee engagement? It does in more ways than one.

  1. With online training, more employees receive training and have opportunity to acquire new knowledge. The quality of training is uniform for all employees, no matter their location. Thus, employees are likely to be motivated with higher engagement and self-esteem.
  2. When employees receive training in the language that is most comfortable to them, it becomes more meaningful and purposeful. Considering regional differences in terms of language, culture, accents and context is essential. Having an international exposure and experience helps to ensure this due-diligence is done.
  3. Training is a two-way activity with the onus of training completion shared with employees. Support to employees during their online training journey is critical as lack of support and guidance can lead to frustration and abandoning of the course in the middle.

The key to employee engagement is bringing in value and purpose in the activities that are planned. Training is a crucial part of it. After all, there is no point in investing time and money in it if your employees are least interested in it. A vendor that understand the demands of designing e-learning for global audience and has the ability to perform the five things mentioned earlier, will be the right choice.

RK Prasad
RK Prasad is the founder-CEO of CommLab India, a 15-year global e-learning company. RK has 29 years of experience in corporate sales, training, university teaching, and e-learning. He is an MBA graduate and is currently pursuing his PhD in Technology Enhanced Learning from Lancaster University, UK. He is also a University Grants Commission certified lecturer in Management, an engaging speaker and an effective trainer.

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