In the present scenario, the pandemic situation made a paradigm shift in organizations and the way they work. Irrespective of the size of the organization a shift towards “digital” has been the primary impact of the pandemic on organizational culture. This transformation is not about developing digital products, but it’s about leveraging the speed and quality of work using digital technologies.

In such cases, when we think about leveraging employee productivity and linking it with continuous re-skilling and upskilling, we need to think about re-designing the learning process or methodology to suit the speed of organizational transformation.  Obviously, it is not the time for traditional classroom training. Here comes the role of eLearning.

In this blog, we will discuss in detail, how to increase employee productivity with eLearning in organizations seeking transformation and speed.

Employee Productivity – Key to Organizational Success

Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of an employee. Efficiency includes two key factors – work and time. In simple terms, productivity is a measure of how much work is done within a given time period.

Employee productivity and an organization’s success go hand-in-hand, because employees collaborate in a variety of teams at work to achieve the organization’s objectives. Teams are linked and dependent on one another, as each team provides outputs to other teams, which they can use as inputs.

Thus, employee productivity improvement in the workplace is a crucial duty that can be accomplished by ongoing skill development, such as re-skilling and upskilling. E-learning is the only option in these circumstances because traditional training methodologies can be expensive, time-consuming, and tedious, especially for remote and distributed workforces, with rapid changes in business, structure, and strategy.

Improving Employee Productivity

Employee productivity is dependent on many factors, some of those are interlinked. It is a “Cause and Effect” scenario, in which there is always a cause for the productivity curve going up or down. If we can understand the cause, we can control the effect.

In this section, we will discuss those factors or causes, how those linked to impact employee productivity, and observe that eLearning solutions can be used to leverage each of these factors. An eLearning solution is a platform or tool that enables organizations to create, deliver, manage, track, and administer online learning content and courses, also referred to as Learning Management System (LMS).

Here’s the list of the interdependent factors that are linked to employee productivity:

1. Employee retention
2. Employee engagement
3. Professional growth
4. Ease of learning
5. Changes in roles & responsibilities
6. Collaboration and knowledge sharing
7. Ramp up skill with business transformation

Let’s now look into each of these.

1. Employee Retention

Organizations cannot make their workforce productive if the employees are not motivated enough with new skills, and hence, keep quitting. They feel driven and match their performance with organizational growth if there is a clear and visible path for advancement inside the company. eLearning is the means to show employees their growth path through continuous upskilling or re-skilling. An increase in the skill level results in the high productivity of the employees and the turnover rate goes down.

2. Employee Engagement

The pandemic situation, work-from-home, and remote teams led to stress, burnout, anxiety, and a lack of work-life balance. This can be addressed by providing employee engagement activities through eLearning. For example, employees can join courses for painting or music classes. Such engagements help individuals to develop better mental health, cognitive capacity, and ability to relax, thus getting rid of stress and related difficulties. As a result, this will add to the productivity of the employees. Read this article for more information on this topic.

Linked factors: Employee engagement, Stress level, Work-life balance, Motivation, Productivity

3. Professional Growth

Organizations include various functions and professionals with diversified expertise. Such professionals, as employees, need to grow in their respective domains. For example, in a healthcare institution, the caregivers need to continuously learn about new technology or caregiving methods. eLearning courses can be customized to suit such expert roles with specific upcoming skills and knowledge. These courses will further improve the employee productivity in the expert domains.

Linked factors: Customization, Expertise, Productivity

4. Ease of Learning

Employees have their regular work and assignments and if they have to attend training programs in the classroom, at fixed time slots to learn new skills, they need to either skip their work or miss the class. Also, the pace of learning is not the same for every learner. So, even if they are willing to learn new skills to improve performance and productivity, they may not get to the level they want to achieve due to (i) missing the fixed date/ time or (ii) not being able to make time to learn (iii) difference in the pace of learning. eLearning programs can address all these difficulties because they can learn anytime, anywhere and at their own pace of learning. Additionally, they can access the learning content on any device e.g. mobile, tablet, laptop, etc.

Linked factors: Ease of learning, Productivity

5. Changes in Roles & Responsibilities

Changes in roles and responsibilities are a part of the career growth of employees. While taking over higher responsibilities, it is necessary to learn the skills required for the new roles. The faster the learning, the better the productivity. With the help of well-designed eLearning programs, case-study simulations, etc. employees can learn faster and get to the required level of productivity.

Linked factors: New roles, New skills, Productivity

6. Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

Employees acquire specialized knowledge, expertise, and information over time, as a part of their work experience. Sharing these across teams scales up the productivity of other employees. A knowledge-sharing platform, as a part of eLearning solutions, can be used efficiently to do this along with collaborating and seeking inputs or guidance from peers, managers, and experts. To know more about the benefits of knowledge sharing, read here.

Linked factors: Knowledge sharing, Collaboration, Skilling, Productivity

7. Ramp Up Skilling With Business Transformation

To ramp up the skilling keeping pace with the business transformation, the eLearning platforms are the best solutions, where the required content can be delivered on time, with specific learning path, for every key stakeholder. Here, employee productivity can be scaled up by administering their progress and evaluating their skill level for the new level of business.

Linked factors: Content delivery, Learning path, Tracking & evaluation, Productivity

Conclusion

We have seen that to improve employee productivity, using eLearning solutions is the best way. However, to use this effectively, we need to understand the underlying causes that create the effect and address the causes. Also, there is always a bonus that comes with productivity, such as employee retention, holistic growth of the organization, etc.

If you have any inputs or suggestions on how you or your organization are addressing the employee productivity with eLearning, do add your valuable comments below.