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E-learning for employee development

E-learning is finally coming of age. The revolution that is on the anvil in India is e-learning.

Imagine this picture - IT Czars Azim Premji and Narayana Murthy plugged on to iPods travelling in a Lufthansa flight to the US for a few of their precious hours. Wow! Is this "older" generation also listening to iPod music albums of their choice in their free time? Cool isn't it? No, not all the way. Yes, modern day CEOs are using iPod's like Gen-Next and using it in their free hours. But what they listen to and view are not hot albums but analyst briefings, research reports and financial results of competitors!

This is India's knowledge economy at its blooming best. Knowledge and learning are going to make the cutting-edge difference to companies in their quest for global supremacy. CXOs will make the cut in their board rooms only if they are "armed to the teeth" with information about markets, competition, trends and opportunities available on the web.

Upgrading skills

With Corporate India on a growth spree across all sectors, enjoying robust growth plans of 25-30 per cent in revenues, a challenge faced by all corporate is that of hiring and training people on a large scale.

Constant skill upgradation of the workforce today is a key issue, especially when it is distributed across locations. The investments being made in training infrastructure and courseware are staggering.

Training in this knowledge world can no longer be limited to twice a year. It is all about learning anytime and all the time. With various companies undergoing big shift in their strategies moving into new lines of businesses, another key challenges is to educate the employees on the new technologies and services.

New business processes, new channels and growth of the workforce at the operational level mandate the need for training at the speed of lightning. Customer reps need to be trained on new products along with their launch.

It is not just knowledge and its abundance and the need to "entrench" it in the minds of a global work force that is causing this upheaval. The "rate of change" of knowledge is exponential and is dramatising this aspect of training and development like never before. IT leads on this front and technology training programmes become obsolete even before the first series of programmes are run! It is no different in banking, insurance retail and even hospitality. The market has also seen a paradigm shift from IT Training to training on business skills like sales force readiness training, channel training and customer training.

Research firm IDC forecasts that ongoing compliance-training efforts will spur 27 per cent compound annual growth in the e-learning system market over the next four years, with e-learning product sales growing from $6.5 billion in 2003 to more than $21 billion by 2008.

Let's cut to the chase. e-learning is finally coming of age. The revolution that is on the anvil in India is e-learning. E-learning or e-commerce "learning" today has various connotations to it right from being known as enterprise learning or workforce performance management. CEOs today are looking at this enticing medium to answer the clarion call for rapid rollout of enterprise-wide training programmes and employee development. It is now seen as a part of a bigger picture where the employee's training requirements are mapped against his performance.

Accessibility

E-learning is available over the web - it is automated and a global work force can work on it simultaneously. Gone is the need to shepherd 100s of these employees from all over the world into one centralised class room programme costing a few crores of rupees. Web based courseware can be produced whose content is regularly upgradeable and refreshed. e-learning has a full repertoire of content, assessments, quizzes and interactivity. Supervisors can check out employee's performance in training and put them on notice.

Technology is at the forefront of this paradigm shift in training to e-learning. Web 2.0 has converted the web from a passive medium to an interactive one. Tools like captivate and comtasia have enabled the concept of "rapid e-learning" which is particularly well suited for training material that has critical development timelines, goes out of date quickly or changes frequently. The proliferation of devices such as the laptop, iPod and blackberry has created a versatile delivery medium.

Organisation structures are evolving into creation of knowledge management and talent transformation functions. Another area of importance besides the business goals is how training departments demonstrate the change in performance and productivity of the employees and improve employee learning, retention and satisfaction.

The writer is Founder & CEO, Tarang Software. E-mail: ramak@tarangtech.com