How do you train your new employees, so they are fully up to date with advanced systems and procedures? How do you give them insight into complex products and services? And how do you ensure they take your company culture and values to heart?
Perhaps like a lot of other companies you have taken advantage of e-learning and e-training for advancing the qualifications and education of your employees? Online learning delivers a lot of benefits when it comes to educating colleagues and sharing knowledge with them. E-learning and e-training are flexible approaches and can be adapted in many different ways to meet your specific needs. It means you can share the same knowledge with your colleagues worldwide, no matter where your international company’s physical locations are situated around the world.
To ensure that your employees get the most out of your e-learning material, you must make sure that you localise your content to suit the places where your employees are actually located. The translations must match your other content in terms of language, and it is advisable that you leave the actual localisation to an experienced partner who knows what the pitfalls are.
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What is e-learning? And what can it do?
E-learning is online learning within companies. E-learning generally consists of one or several modules with information and knowledge that you must progress through, in a step-by-step fashion, to learn more about a product, the company, procedures or similar. The aim of e-learning is most often to teach, educate, further qualify or inform employees.
There are many software solutions that cover different aspects of online learning. The first step is therefore to cover how you shall use e-learning and what it should be able to do. For example, think gamification, social learning and video conferencing into the process – are you aiming to
incorporate these into your modules?
It will also be beneficial if you consider whether you prefer to use a browser-based solution or software that can be downloaded. The choice should reflect how e-learning shall be
implemented in the company and how you will use it in your employee’s working life.
No matter which specific solution you choose, e-learning as a concept has the outstanding ability to communicate new or complex knowledge. As stated earlier, it can be the ideal tool for training new employees. This will allow you to save internal resources and manhours on training and you can ensure uniformity in the exposition of details and knowledge, which you specifically want to share in the same way with all of your colleagues.
But e-learning can also be used for more than training. For example, you may develop new
products on an ongoing basis, which everyone in the company can learn about at the same time. Perhaps the product has many technical specifications that everyone must know about?
Or perhaps there are some unique selling points (USPs) that every colleague must know
by heart?
Many formats, one single workflow
Recommendations for you who produces material for e-learning
- Consider making the material for online learning as easily accessible as possible for the end user. For example, it will be beneficial if you consider using voice-over rather than
subtitles. Having to read subtitles in a video can be a distraction to the viewer. - Consider the use of language and tone-of-voice in your material. Colloquial language is
perhaps easier and quicker to understand and to de-code compared to language you
normally use in written manuals and instructions. - Consider whether there are several texts over and above the learning material that you need to localise. For example, if you have a whole series of training modules or e-learning material for different branches of your company or organisation, then you probably
already have a kind of a platform for all of the elements. Perhaps you have an “Academy” or a “Campus”, where the provision of online courses is managed and which registers which employees have completed which specific e-learning modules, or whether an online course has been passed or not, whether a course has to be re-taken regularly, etc. A major e-learning set-up requires underlying technology and a user interface. If you localise your online courses, then the user interface should also be localised. - Consider using a review process for the translated material. It can be beneficial if your
in-house trainers/teachers can look at the translation before you go live with the training material. The people who eventually shall modify the training online, often have a clear idea about how they want things to proceed. The material needs to align with this
requirement. - Consider whether you need help with DTP with the translated material. In the case of some programs and software solutions it may be relevant to adjust the layout or set-up when the translations are ready. Consider whether you can and want to do it yourself, or whether an experienced partner should take a look at it.
You are always welcome to use our expertise and experience if you want to get off to a good start or strengthen your global e-learning activities. Contact us today or click here to book a meeting with one of our experts.
