There are many factors in play when trying to gauge the return on investment of new employee training software for your business. The financial outlay is a given but what other factors should you be looking for when evaluating a new system? We’ve broken our list down into three areas of focus: Employees, IT, and Operations.
How will it benefit your employees?
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Does it support mobile? Smartphones and tablets are everywhere and people are comfortable using them. The portability of these devices allows for use at the point of execution. This means your employees can learn where they work for better retention and immediate use of new skills.
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Can they send feedback? Communication upstream is important to the success of your learning program. If a procedure has changed due to the operating environment, your staff needs to be able to get the message to managers and your training department’s content creators.
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Can they track their progress? While it’s good for managers to see learning progress, your employees also need to see how they’re moving through the program using employee training software.
How will it benefit your IT department?
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Is the system easy to deploy & manage? Your tech department will be helping with setup, rollout, managing permissions, and ongoing support of devices and software. Do them a favor and partner with them so they can help you look for employee training software that makes it as easy as possible to do all of those things.
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Is it easy on your network? Supporting and managing your company’s internal infrastructure is a constant battle for IT. The less bandwidth that your learning system uses, the better. Also look for the ability to update content and redistribute back out to all devices off hours, saving crucial operational bandwidth.
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Does it allow for secure erase of remote devices in the event of theft or loss? This is a non-negotiable security requirement. No system should get your consideration if they do not have this feature.
How will it benefit Operations?
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Is it easy to create content? Current learning environments should allow for a variety of learning material - videos, text documents, PDFs, images, etc. - and it should be easy to create and import those into your employee training system. The employee training software you chose should also be able to make the content available to employees on or offline.
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Can you solicit content from the field for use? As mentioned above, having employees in the field create documents and video for use in training helps further engage them and gets them involved in contributing to the learning process. People know when video content is staged, so having it filmed in the field gives it authenticity.
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Does it allow tracking of compliance reports? When managers can track access reports, it helps make sure that employees are in compliance. Not just with company information but with federal and local laws. Managers can also track store opening and closing checklists to make sure process and procedures are being followed.
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Does it have simple, easy-to-read dashboards? We’ve all seen spreadsheets of raw data and it can be intimidating. Instead of having each manager or executive create their own human-readable reports, look for training software that makes the information available in dashboards.
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Is it easy to update materials? When it’s effortless for your training staff to create, post, and update content, it saves time for everyone. IT doesn’t need to get involved and your employees get the most up-to-date information in their hands with just a file transfer. No paper, no printing, no problem.
These are most of the requirements you should look for but every company will have their own special needs. Good employee training software solutions will have a positive user experience for everyone involved while also being feature-rich. Look for a system that addresses all of the above - you’ll be on your way to a successful rollout.
