Rapid eLearning: An Effective Way to Reach Millennial Workers

The ‘corporate jungle’ has an uncompromising law: It’s the survival of the fittest.

Until about a decade ago, there was no need for such a law. But with a surge of new entrants in the corporate sector, there has been intense competition between companies for a place in their respective industries; and true to the law, only the fittest have survived and succeeded. The onus to succeed has always been with the workforce, and today, millennials make up a majority of that workforce.

They are aware of their obligations, and proactively seek relevant and current knowledge, to help them shoulder this tremendous responsibility. On their part, organizations made the shift to technology-enabled learning (eLearning) to provide intense training that satisfied the training requirements of this knowledge-hungry, globally-dispersed, tech-savvy, workforce, that will settle for nothing less than ‘instant gratification’.

But, consider the following absolute truths that are rampant across industries today:

1. Knowledge changes at a rapid rate
2. An increasing number of workers are working from remote locations or are constantly on the go

The immediate concern is, “Can eLearning keep up?”. The truthful answer is ‘No”.

The Rapid Change of Knowledge

Knowledge changes rapidly. Compliance laws and regulations, product updates, new product releases, company rules and policies, safety procedures, industry practices, and trends that impact the industry, are just some areas that undergo change.

Whether these knowledge changes are radical or incremental, it’s clear that:

• To remain a contender in the ‘claim to industrial fame’, an organization must find a way to impart up-to-date knowledge to its millennial workforce.
• The rate at which new knowledge is imparted, must be faster than the rate at which it changes.
• The only way to stay current and relevant is by providing millennials with continuous learning.
• Millennials must be provided with opportunities to upgrade existing skills, and/or learn new skills to increase their productivity.
• Without regular and concurrent knowledge updates, productivity will suffer, lessening the chance of success.
• Many times, current knowledge is hard to come by; and companies must research and delve deeper to find and understand these knowledge changes. There is a danger that:

1. Gathered information will be misunderstood or taken out of context.
2. Companies will make hasty, unnecessary, illogical, or irrelevant changes based on the information they find.

Either way, immediate iterations must be made, to avoid counterproductivity.

Until recently, eLearning could do this with ease. Unfortunately, the rate at which knowledge gets outdated, has steadily increased; while the time to create or update a course via traditional eLearning strategies, methods, and tools, hasn’t changed.

Millennials – The On-The-Go Generation

Organizations have extended their reach to attract a global customer base, before their competitors do. If an organization is incapable of making an impression on its global, target audience, it can be sure that its competition will.

So, the millennial must proactively reach out to prospective customers, armed with information that they might need. In other words, as well as being able to preempt a prospect’s requirements, the millennial must be ready with the latest industry knowledge that could seal a deal.

But, the millennial worker has no time to attend classroom training sessions; and traditional eLearning takes long to create. Clearly, traditional eLearning is not the solution.

Rapid eLearning Development – A Relatively New Solution to a Relatively New Challenge

There is a new and better alternative to traditional eLearning; it’s called rapid eLearning. As the name suggests, rapid eLearning development is the rapid development of online courses.

Here’s how rapid eLearning development can come to the rescue:

• The rapid eLearning development process makes use of user-friendly, ‘rapid authoring tools’ that can be used to develop courses quickly.
• Rapid eLearning development tools can be used to update, iterate, and even create courses from scratch.
• The rapid eLearning development process is truncated, and therefore reduces the development time of a course by almost 40%.
• A new course can be created in a matter of weeks – a big improvement from traditional eLearning development that runs into months.
• Since it’s easy to use and can be used to create rapid courses, it can be used on a regular basis, to create courses for continuous learning, while remaining within the stipulated budget.
• Super-quick updates help organizations provide current knowledge – a big advantage especially when handling difficult, hard-to-convince prospects, or prospects that need immediate answers.
• Emergency fixes can be made almost instantly. So, learners are not provided wrong information.
• Classroom training PPTs can be speedily converted to eLearning and quickly rolled out to a globally-dispersed/on-the-go workforce that has no time for traditional training methodologies.
• Downloadable, readymade templates make it easy for organizations to start working on a course faster.
• Courses can quickly be made more interesting and engaging by quickly adding interactivities.

Rapid eLearning fits the bill! It’s a clear win-win situation all the way – both for the millennials and the employer.