A recent Harris poll that surveyed approximately 250 IT decision-makers discovered this impressive statistic: 81 percent of the respondents said that tablets had increased their organizations’ productivity. Many of this majority added that the increase was 20 percent or more.
Numbers such as these show how companies are taking advantage of the vast potential that tablet technology has to offer. With the right solution, this potential can extend into employee training initiatives, which in turn can lower operational costs. When your workers efficiently learn the skills required to be successful, they are more productive, and a more productive workforce saves money and helps your company’s bottom line. Here are some ways tablet training technology is helping organizations decrease operational costs:
Hands-On Training
Many previous corporate training methods took employees off the floor. Workers would be sent to a windowless room in the back of the store, sat down in front of a TV, computer terminal, or three-inch binder, and directed to absorb the content being thrown at them. Even if the employees were diligent about learning the training material, that knowledge still would take time to translate into practical application once they left the depths of the warehouse. With the latest tablet training technology, workers can learn essential skills as they actually perform them, on the floor or in the field. The time required to become proficient at something is decreased, and the quality of the learning is vastly improved.
Faster, More Productive Rollouts
Introducing a new item at your store can take time as employees become familiar with it. Becoming knowledgeable with the product is important, as is setting up floor displays and properly running any promotions mandated by corporate. If stores aren’t diligent, a rollout can be merely unproductive or escalate into an expensive disaster. Tablet training technology streamlines and strengthens the rollout process. For example, if a restaurant is introducing a new menu item, the cooks can watch—in the kitchen—how it is prepared on an iPad and follow along, pausing and rewinding as needed. This increases the chance the rollout is a success while reducing the resources needed to achieve that success.
Managers Can Manage
Operations managers are busy people. Many are proactive and eager in teaching workers necessary skills, but it’s not always the best use of their time. With tablet training technology, a manager can hand an employee an iPad or Surface loaded with the eLearning content necessary for the job. This frees managers to concentrate on the multitude of other duties necessary to ensure operations at their stores are running smoothly.
More Training for More Employees
Versatile employees are valuable assets; workers who can fill multiple roles increase efficiency and counter any gaps caused by vacations, sick time, turnover, or peak shopping periods. The challenge with creating versatile employees is training them in additional roles—you can’t simply pull a worker off the floor (and create another gap and/or pay overtime) to learn skills he or she might use only a couple times a year. However, because tablet training technology both cuts the time required to learn new skills and improves the quality of that learning, employees can, almost seamlessly, become multifaceted.
How has tablet training technology helped your company lower its operational costs?
