Some organizations are still finding that their employees are not embracing eLearning. As a result, the employees and the organization cannot reach their full potential. The latest Towards Maturity ‘Learning Benchmark Report’, released November 2016, has some valuable insights as to why some organizations are failing to realize the benefits of eLearning.  In March 2017, Speexx attended the Towards Maturity Ambassador meeting where we discussed the findings of the report ‘Unlocking Potential: Releasing the potential of the business and its people through learning’ in more detail.

According to the report’s authors, one of the main reasons organizations fail to embed eLearning is that leaders, specifically middle managers, fail to articulate the benefits of eLearning clearly to employees. They are not communicating how eLearning can help the business achieve its aims. There appears to be a pressing need for middle management to be instrumental in breaking down employee resistance to spending time on training – 78% of learners find support from their manager essential or very useful and 48% say that it is their manager or director that would most influence them to learn online.

Learn more about this by downloading the Speexx whitepaper “The Promise of Virtual Blended Learning”.

Armin Hopp – Building Skills to Support Organizational Strategy

Line manager reluctance to encourage new ways of learning is one of the top three barriers to achieving desired learning outcomes, cited by 58% of respondents to the ‘Unlocking Potential’ survey. It also found that organizations that are successfully improving business processes and delivering value are using technology to modernize formal learning and integrate talent management, reducing line manager foot-dragging by a factor of over 11%.

Improving Formal Learning

Organizations that are doing best at improving formal learning process tend to be those using a wider variety of technologies in their learning programs. They are more likely to be sourcing useful external learning content and are better at using internal information systems and services to share company documents and provide quick and easy access to useful resources. As many as 84% use enterprise-wide information systems (compared with 70% of companies who are less successful) and 71% use internal learning portals to bring together related content (compared with 44%).

Speexxs’ own research found a growing understanding that e-learning needs to be part of a blended training delivery, embedded into the workflow if it is to be effective. Only 11% of respondents to the latest Speexx Exchange survey thought e-learning would be the most important type of learning in their organization this year, down from 14% a year earlier, while 43% thought face-to-face learning would be most important, up from 22%. At the same time, more than half of respondents (51%) said eLearning provides flexibility and instant accessibility. This apparent paradox arises from an evolving appreciation that blended learning, incorporating coaching and mentoring from line management, provides the most effective learning.

Get more insights by downloading the Speexx White Paper: Making Good on the Promise of Virtual Learning.