Managing Staff Training over Multiple Locations

Online staff training programs are a great way to train, engage and increase employee productivity and retention. For any business with employees distributed over multiple locations, fast and efficient training can be an ongoing challenge. It’s probably the main reason for the rapid growth in the delivery of online training programs.

According to a survey conducted by Optimum Results, 70% of the responding workers said they didn’t receive staff training or onboarding when they started and weren’t fully engaged in their jobs.

If you take 70% of employees in one retail store, that’s far too many who are unengaged. If your company operates across multiple locations, that’s hundreds or maybe even thousands of employees which is simply bad for business.

Without a central location for data:

• How can you confirm that all employees across multiple locations are learning the same things at the same level of proficiency?
• How can you confirm that your brand and quality standards are being communicated correctly and maintained at the same levels across different locations?

The only way to make these things happen in a cost-effective, timely manner is choosing to implement your staff training program using an LMS or learning management system.

With an LMS in place, you can deliver training content to each individual employee and track their results remotely in a timely fashion.

It may sound daunting, but with the correct approach and some LMS software, it’s easily achievable.

In this blog post, we’ve compiled the reasons why online training is now the chosen solution for onboarding, training and compliance across multiple locations.

1. Why turn to e-Learning LMS Training?

Increasingly, companies are incorporating mobile technology into their employee training programs. Content, such as e-learning modules and video content is made available on mobile devices and is more easily accepted and consumed by workers.

Also, there are a number of other compelling reasons why so many companies are turning to eLearning:

• It’s cost-effective and time-effective and studies show 80% of training is taken outside work hours
• It provides brand consistency and maintains customer service levels across locations
• It’s sustainable, scalable and can be driven from a centralised location
• It’s emerging to be a proven form of training that is MORE effective than live training classes

Delivering training using LMS means huge savings on training materials. Instead of going to the expense of printing out content, shipping, content, and storing the content across multiple locations, the content can simply be uploaded locally (or by the LMS provider) and courses can be assigned to employees who are notified. The e-learning module can then be taken on their mobile devices at a fraction of the cost to the company.

2. How LMS can Ensure Brand Consistency and Service

A major challenge for implementing employee training programs across multiple locations is ensuring service level consistency from store to store. For example, a new menu item added to a nationwide restaurant chain should be prepared in one location just as it is at another.

It’s what the food franchise model is built upon. Because after all, if your customers are not locally impressed with the service, the taste of an improperly prepared food item or the levels of stock items you are carrying then that might reflect negatively on every other store in the retail chain. With so much choice on offer in retail, consumers value and prefer consistency from store to store.

But now thanks to the rise of smartphones and tablet technology, companies can ensure that the relevant training content is being delivered to each store location and can validate that it is being effectively learned and correctly applied.

3. How LMS Provides Efficient Online Learning & Compliance Training

Video meetings and conference calls can be a part of employee training programs, but mobile technology really elevates this concept to the next level. Conducting compliance training on a mobile device is extremely efficient and simply convenient. The employee can fit the training into their own busy schedule, perhaps on a day off, while out on the road, or even out in the field, they can take the training via their mobile device.

Most importantly, your employees can take their online training where it will be applied e.g. if they are learning how to use new kitchen or stock management technology, they can take their mobile device into the kitchen or storeroom to compare what’s on the screen to what’s right in front of them.

4. LMS Fosters Goal Congruence and Nationwide Collaboration

With potentially hundreds of employees across multiple branches or locations learning the same content, there undoubtedly will be different opinions and interpretation of the training content. Interactive eLearning solutions can record this feedback to improve the training experience. Results can be delivered not only to the corporate headquarters but also to the management at other stores.

If part of the training isn’t quite working at one location, employees at another location may have the solution. That way, your workforce is creating its own best practices. Because changes to mobile-based training content are easy to make, updates can be quickly sent to the appropriate employees across an entire company.

This level of collaboration eliminates a lot of the red tape encountered, streamlines the training process as well as empowering workers to embrace and be part of the process instead of just another cog in the machine.