Page 191 - DMGT518_TRAINING_AND_DEVELOPMENT_SYSTEM

Training and Development System

Notes The new forms of work organizations have created lonely workplaces wherein there are not
enough experts to guide the junior employees for the development of their knowledge and
skills. E-learning solutions can bridge this gap by providing ready information to such distributed
workforce anywhere and anytime, thereby creating an instant expertise.
Traditional classroom training is quite expensive. Business processes and products are constantly
changing, which creates the need for retraining people very often. Thus, if the employees working
across the world are required to be brought together by struggling to obtain visas and spending
millions of rupees for travelling and lodging, then there would be neither time nor resources to
run the business. E-learning solutions can help here by carrying and delivering the training
programme right to the place of learner, rather than forcing him to travel to a distant training
centre.

Employees are already working up to as much as 10 to 16 hours a day. In other words, there is
constant work pressure, stress and burnout, imbalance in personal lives and discord in many
families. Under these circumstances, it is practically impossible to expect the employees stay
longer at work for learning. E-learning solutions can help employees by delivering learning
content at home so that employees can balance their personal lives and learn whenever/wherever
they are comfortable.
Like no other training form, e-learning promises to provide a single experience that
accommodates the three distinct learning styles of auditory learners, visual learners, and
kinesthetic learners. E-learning also offers individualized instruction, which the print media
cannot provide. And instructor-led courses many a times turn awkward at great cost. Thus e-
learning can target specific needs. And by using learning style tests, e-learning can locate and
target individual learning preferences.
Additionally, synchronous e-learning is self-paced. Advanced learners are allowed to speed
through or bypass instruction that is redundant while novices slow their own progress through
content, eliminating frustration with themselves, their fellow learners, and the course. In these
ways, e-learning is inclusive of a maximum number of participants with a maximum range of
learning styles, preferences, and needs.
The potential value of e-learning falls into many areas. The cost of training in terms of travel and
accommodation is reduced with a virtual environment. This type of delivery offers considerable
flexibility.

Example: Large firms with distributed populations could improve internal
communication without incurring high costs by using on-line delivery.
Employee development is a particular issue for large companies with geographically dispersed
workforces as it is for professions seeking to maintain their currency in a global environment:
e-learning provides a potential solution — employees are able to access learning, as and when
required.

In addition, it provides a means of linking rural areas and overcoming the reluctance of the rural
population, be it based upon poor communications or lifestyle or working requirements that
are at odds with conventional campus delivery. The e-learning makes the learning accessible for
many learners who would not have had the opportunity otherwise. Equally important, the
medium could offer the opportunity for learners to take control of their own learning, i.e. the
pace and the sequence of their study.

186 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY