People Development

Have you decided to take a closer look at autism in the workplace? Would you like to welcome atypical employees in your company, but don’t know how to do it in an appropriate manner?

Autism is among the leading taboo subjects in business.

Although autism and employment are very compatible, companies are still struggling to fit in atypical profiles. 

Welcoming and onboarding an employee on the autism spectrum does require a review of one’s Human Resources practices, but the wealth that all employees get out of it, in terms of skills development, is worth the effort.

Here are some concrete advice we would like to share with you for a successful employee onboarding.

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What's in this article

• 1. What is autism?
• 2. Hiring employees on the autism spectrum means cultivating neurodiversity in business
• 3. Onboarding employees on the autism spectrum: a challenge
• 4. Using training to successfully onboard employees living with ASD
• It’s your turn!

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1. What is autism?

From autism to autism spectrum disorder (ASD)

You’ve surely heard a lot about autism, but are you sure you have a clear definition of it?

To start with, autism is not a disease, but a disorder. Since 2013, autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are used to designate autistic disorders and Asperger’s syndrome.

What is autism ? 

The American Psychiatric Association, quoted by Public Health Canada, defines ASD as a ‘neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by deficits in the spheres of language, nonverbal communication and social interactions, combined with restricted and repetitive behaviors, interests and activities.’ 

This disorder usually appears early on in childhood (before the age of 3) and lasts throughout a person’s life. It can cause learning or social integration difficulties.

We speak of ‘spectrum’ because there are different degrees of disorders, more or less severe. Each person lives with ASD in their own unique way.

Almost one in 10 people may be autistic

Autism officially affects 1.5% of the population in Canada. 

That being said, many people are diagnosed late in life, and ASD is largely under-diagnosed, especially among women. Many functional autistic people are never detected, which leads experts to estimate that between 5 and 10% of the population is on the spectrum.

There is a good chance that you are currently working with someone on the spectrum without even knowing it. 

In practical terms, a person on the autism spectrum without an intellectual disability is at high risk of flying under the radar. Because their difficulties are only really visible outside of school, they are often simply seen as introverted.

Are autism and employment compatible? 

Of course they are, provided that people with ASD are welcome and integrated!

Public opinion often associates autism disorders with intellectual retardation, which is inaccurate. In fact, people living with ASD face challenges when it comes with finding and keeping a job.

Although many autistic people are educated, they face communication (verbal or nonverbal) and social interaction challenges.

Finding one’s place in the work space is particularly difficult for these people if companies do not develop specific employee onboarding training.

2. Hiring employees on the autism spectrum means cultivating neurodiversity in business

Neurodiversity in business can have many advantages. 

Wondering which ones? That’s what we’re about to see! 

All companies try to innovate, but few rely on neurodiversity (having employees whose brains work differently) to achieve it. 

However, with a great diversity of styles and capabilities, neurodiversity makes it possible to find new solutions and take innovative, creative decisions. With atypical employee profiles and people who think outside of the box, one can truly build an intrapreneurship culture and improve employee engagement.

Neurodiversity impacts in the short, medium and long term

Over time, if the onboarding goes well, people on the spectrum will prove their skills: direct communication style, strong memory, reliability, etc.

You will also probably notice that your employees develop new skills alongside employees living with ASD: listening, a better understanding of these poorly-known disorders, flexibility on the part of managers, etc.

In other words, inclusion and neurodiversity within teams benefit all employees!

Another point you will surely find interesting is that opening your corporate culture to neurodiversity will allow you to cultivate your employer brand and position yourself as an employer of choice on the job market.

Many people living with ASD have a higher education and can offer sought-after skills. So it is in your interest to expand your candidate pool and welcome qualified, motivated employees.

In the current context of labor shortage, being able to recruit easier and improve one’s retention rate is a notable advantage.

3. Onboarding employees on the autism spectrum: a challenge 

Employees on the autism spectrum often need special attention and support to successfully integrate. The goal is to set up a work environment where each employee can thrive, regardless of their difference, and benefit others.

Welcoming employees on the spectrum is not an impossible task: the better you know the challenges they face, the better you can prepare and help them integrate successfully!

Adapt your communication

The first point you will need to be vigilant on is communication. 

People living with ASD may have atypical communications styles and they may have challenges spotting body language, reading facial expressions and voice inflections.

Need a few tips? Get rid of innuendos and hints, and give clear instructions in order to avoid making communication a source of misunderstanding, stress and exhaustion.

These tips can also apply to the rest of your employees.

Offer accommodations and flexibility

From a practical perspective, some people living with ASD have a hard time socializing or evolving in a highly stimulating environment, because of sensory issues.

As an employer, you can act on these points by adapting the employee’s work environment: you can offer them their own office, instead of a shared one, provide a sound and visual environment that is adapted to them (no neon lights, for example), remote work, etc. 

Create an environment that fosters skills development 

You can provide time management tools and set up work routines to create a reassuring framework that encourages everyone’s skill development.

And when it comes to training, make sure there is consistency between the objectives of a training and its content, and use real examples (stories, case studies, scenarios).

Neuroatypical profiles need to experience things by themselves. Give them time to integrate each training.

4. Using training to successfully onboard employees living with ASD

The good news is that you are not alone in this challenge! There are tools that can help you onboard neuroatypical employees in your company. Using a learning management system is one such solution that will help you implement your approach.

Open your corporate culture through training

It is well understood that when you recruit employees on the autism spectrum you must adapt your corporate culture to these atypical employees.

To do so, you need to make a good part of your employees aware of the topic, for example by explaining to them what autism is, dispel preconceived ideas and give them advice on how to welcome their new colleagues (by setting up good communication practices).

By using a learning management system to spread the use of this new, more inclusive corporate culture, you make sure all employees have access to the same information. And by using automated tracking, you can observe everyone’s progress and ensure that everyone is participating.

You can also develop specific programs for managers, because some of them may have never had to manage employees on the autism spectrum. 

Offer tailored support to employees with ASD 

For employees on the autism spectrum, using a learning management system like Workleap LMS yields certain advantages in terms of skill development, including:

• Gradually becoming familiar with your corporate culture and successfully onboarding
• Tracking the integration of the specific onboarding program you have set up for them (which is an asset for improving employee retention and reducing turnover)
• Training in a favorable environment, at their own pace, with no external distractions
• Choosing time periods when the employee’s concentration is at its best, in order to optimize learning over short periods (micro-learning)
• Customizing the training path according to the employees’ needs (for example, by strengthening time management skills)

The advantages of using a learning management system are twofold: it prepares your teams and therefore successfully onboards new colleagues, while supporting employees with ASD discover their new work environment and acquire new skills.

It’s your turn!

Is your company ready to promote skills diversity?

If so, you can use a learning management system as a tool for your overall inclusion strategy, revealing new skills in all your employees.

A tool is only a tool… it’s up to you to use it the best way possible and focus on human beings at the core of your training. After all, that is what makes all organizations really successful!

The creation of training may seem a very interesting way, but equally daunting, to establish yourself as an expert for several people.

Whether it is for the nobility to share their knowledge, or even with the goal of making the most of their time, it is important to know how to do it in order to ensure the best possible results.

With a defined game plan, it is much easier to stop postponing a project and get out of your eternal quest for the perfect "product" or "moment".

Creating training is a simple process, which is made up of several small steps that must be dealt with in sequence.

This is why we present you with more than 30 essential tools to help you break the status quo, take action and create quality online training at a very low budget!

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Preparation

The preparation of a training project can be directly responsible for its success or failure.

This is one of the 3 key steps that deserve to be done with meticulousness, in order to establish the foundations of the project. 

It is at the preparation stage that we clarify our vision and the reason for the training.

Here are different tools to help you become more efficient throughout this step.

Google Calendar

One of the reasons why we often postpone a project until tomorrow, such as creating training, is the lack of discipline. Google Calendar is useful for you in order to enforce deadlines on yourself and force you into action. By setting goals and creating a sense of urgency, you will be more serious in your thinking process and allocate the effort necessary to make it a reality.

Mind mapping

What is mind mapping? It's the art of emptying your head. In any creative project, there is a period when our brain gets carried away and generates tons of ideas. It is our responsibility to put these ideas in order. Mind mapping allows you to take these ideas and give them structure.

The use of a Mind Mapping tool, such as Coggle.it, allows you to relate the different subjects to be covered in your training and materialize your strategic planning. By structuring your ideas, the result of your reflection will give you a summary portrait of your lesson plan, and the educational sequence in which the participant will progress.

Mind Mapping is a very flexible technique that can be used on several levels. It may be helpful, for example, to create a second table for your marketing structure.

Google Forms

Once your structured primary ideas, it is important to go validate if what you aim to teach is what your market is wanting to learn. We often recommend testing your ideas with a survey.

Google Forms allows you to quickly validate the interest of your subjects and collect comments from individuals to improve their content. This tool presents individual results to you, but can also help you target trends based on the collective appreciation of respondents.

Take the time to ask questions in order to properly target the needs of your target audience, to make proposals on the possible solutions that you have identified, on the learning methods that you aim to use, etc.

See this step as an opportunity to find a balance between your supply and market demand. 

Trello

Trello is a free project management tool that will allow you to divide the entire training creation process into a single, more easily actionable task. Each stage of your training project can be identified in a Trello task, which then allows you to plan a number of tasks to be accomplished within an imposed deadline.

We all know the expression “when eating an elephant take one bite at a time”, and well Trello lets you take action under this philosophy.

"Notes" app

Earlier in the project, your brain boils with ideas. It is recommended to keep the Notes application in quick access on your cell phone so that you can take note of each of your flashes of genius. These ideas can easily be added to your Mind Map throughout the project preparation and allow you to work with agility in clarifying your project.

Google Drive

I don't think I'm teaching anything new here, but Google provides you with the Google Suite, including various management and writing tools. Although some people still like to work in Word or Excel, Google offers you equivalent tools, but accessible at all times on the web. The advantage of using the Google Drive suite throughout your project is that it is now easier for you to access your content and therefore easier to get back to work, no matter where you are.

From a Google Sheets file, we encourage you to do the visioning and structuring exercise for your project, by determining the following criteria:

• The general objective of your training
• The specific objectives of each of the modules and lessons
• The short description and length of your training
• The target duration
• The target audience

Content Production

Once the intent of your project has been clarified and you have confirmed the need in your market, now is the time to tackle the most daunting part of the creation process, the production of your content.

Let me reassure you, it's much simpler than you might think. The abundance of tools and applications available for free or at very low cost now makes it possible to create high-quality training without requiring great technical knowledge.

Writing

The first draft of your content will be done in text form. It is therefore important to be aware of the good practices of web writing.

What is web writing?

Web writing is a modern writing approach that uses techniques aimed at facilitating the consumption of text content intended to be viewed on a screen. Unlike traditional copywriting, stemming from the printing industry, web copywriting relies on short sentences, included in small paragraphs, aimed at reducing the visual aspect. The use of short blocks of text makes reading easier, requiring less concentration.

Antidote / Grammarly

We are not all scribes (#confession). To help you take care of your writing, Antidote and Grammarly come in very handy in order to make a primary correction. Available in the form of software and a Chrome extension, the app corrects typing errors and identifies major mistakes.

Obviously, this is an automated service that does not analyze the intent of your sentences. These 2 applications are not intended to replace the work of an editor, but allow you to be able to verify your content in good conscience.

Image creation

Unsplash

The creation of visual content is intimately linked to the quality of the images we present and use. There are now several directories of royalty-free images to allow content creators to now be able to create in good conscience.

Of all the options, Unsplash is our favorite.

By simply searching for a keyword, Unsplash allows you to find a multitude of high-quality, high-resolution, royalty-free images. Workleap LMS also offers Unsplash integration to give you quick access to their directory to choose your training cover image.

As an alternative to Unsplash, we also recommend Pixabay which will give you access to a nice variety of images.

Here are also some additional examples of royalty-free images and banks.

Canva

Canva is a collaborative creation tool that allows the creation of quality support visuals, based on predetermined themes and models and fully modifiable. It is an extremely popular tool that democratizes graphic design, without however requiring great technological knowledge.

Whether content for social networks, formal presentations, legal documents or other Canva quickly positioned itself as a strategic tool to generate your overall visual strategy. 

Easel.ly

The creation of graphics has a major impact on the attention and interest of our participants. For the creation of your PDF documents and layout challenge, the free tool Easel.ly is a very interesting resource to enhance the quality of presentation of your training.

Like Canva, Easel.ly builds on an approach to modifiable themes and models that allows you to popularize statistics or illustrate certain key concepts of your content.

Kapwing

Kapwing is an application that allows you to create dynamic images, GIFS and videos optimized for social media broadcasting. The format is ideal for the creation of the training, but especially in the marketing strategy and virtual presence.
It is a free, online application that is easy to use and offers a lot of design and video editing options.

Photoshop / Illustrator / Indesign

For the most experienced, this bundle of 3 software represents Mount Rushmore of visual creation. Recognized as flagship tools in the graphics industry, these three software allows you to create visuals and make photo modifications like real professionals. 

Although this trinity of graphics requires a good knowledge of technologies, one of the major advantages of the investment of time required is the abundance of free training content.

If you have an interest in image creation and you are a professional autodidact, then learning to use them can be a strategic investment of time and pleasant to consider.

Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are all available in the Adobe Creative Suite.

SmallPDF

Some of you may already have old PDF content to reuse. The tool SmallPDF lets you fix all PDF compression issues to provide the best experience for your users.

SmallPDF allows you to process more than fifteen actions in order to modify, optimize or convert your existing PDFs. Workleap LMS offers a type of lesson optimized for PDFs. It can thus be a simple and quick way to structure your content and offer it as the first version to be presented.

Keynote / Powerpoint

The creation of a visual presentation, accompanied by a narration, remains very current. Unsurprisingly, PowerPoint and its alter ego, Keynote, are therefore still very popular. These 2 apps allow you to create visuals and to synthesize your information in a visual sequence.

This visual presentation can easily be exported in PDF format and be integrated into your Workleap LMS training platform. If your presentation is accompanied by a narration and animations, you can export it in video format.

Exporting in PDF or video format allows better access to content, as presentation source files can be problematic on mobile.

The Envato network

Whether for image, video or sound creation, the Envato network offers professional models and files for sale at very affordable prices. 

We really like VideoHive, Audiojungle and GraphicRiver. These 3 branches of the Envato Market will allow you to give a professional appearance not only to your training but to your business. All models are modifiable so they can be used as a project base for future customizations.

The creation and use of animation of your logo at the beginning and end of the video also called “graphic signature”, is one of the good business practices which allows giving a guideline in all your content, while solidifying the positioning of your business.

Video creation

Kannelle

The cell camera market has been very aggressive in recent years, and this is to the benefit of users. Your phone can now be the basic tool for creating your training.
Kannelle is the video for all collaborators. All-in-one video solution, Kannelle lets you create professional videos on your cell phone in 15 minutes, without any special skills.
The mobile app works in 3 simple steps:

1. Guided scriptwriting: choose according to your needs among various scenarios: training, interview, tutorial ...
2. Image capture: Kannelle guides you to film yourself or your employees in a professional manner
3. Editing: Insert images, music, etc.

Bacon Camera (IOS and Android)

When you use your smartphone as a camera, you can use your device's native app in automatic mode. This approach will allow you to create quality videos with ease. 
You will, however, have several limitations as the app will automatically take care of all concepts of brightness and volume management. Although useful, this puts you at risk of unpleasant surprises in the event of a change in ambient light, or surrounding noise.

The Bacon Camera app allows you to use your video camera, while now giving you access to the different manual settings that a DSLR camera could offer you:

• Focus
• iris opening
• ISO/ Sensitivity
• Audio control
• Etc.

If you don't want to invest in a professional camera , this app is a must.

Camtasia

If your interest in online training is real, you must have heard of Camtasia.

Camtasia is software that simultaneously records your screen, voice, and camera, to create dynamic video presentations. The software includes a simple and easy-to-use editing software to allow you to choose what should be presented on the screen throughout your training.

Sharing your knowledge has never been easier than with this tool.

As an alternative to Camtasia, we also recommend Screenflow, a different approach to a similar product

Loom

Loom is a very easy-to-use app, similar to Camtasia, which allows the creation of video presentations. The application records your screen, while simultaneously integrating your camera into a tablet overlay.

This free tool allows you to record in 720, while the free formula allows you to create videos in high definition. The application also has the advantage of having a function which visually illustrates each mouse click you make on the screen. This function is therefore very useful to help your participants not miss anything of the action.

The videos created with Loom are downloadable in .mp4 format, so very quick to integrate into Workleap LMS.

Adobe Premiere

For web users, Adobe Premiere is a very interesting option. Also included in Adobe's Creative suite, Premiere is the company's video editing software. It is one of the major players and is used in the television and film industry.

The application requires a basic knowledge of video principles but can be learned in a few hours. Remember that you are not looking to create a film, but online training.

By keeping a perspective on the expectations of our participants, they do not expect a video filled with effects, but a visual medium that keeps attention on the fundamental quality of the content.

All of our videos are edited on Premiere. It is one of Workleap LMS key tools. We highly recommend it, although we are aware that it is less suitable for beginners.

Like Photoshop, the investment of time required to learn the software is a strategic investment, considering the increasing importance of video in your marketing strategies.

iMovie / Windows Movie Maker

For beginners, native software has proven itself in terms of ease of use. Whether iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, these 2 free software give you access to the basic tools for video editing, often more than enough for the needs of our customers.

By starting on one of these 2 software, you will be exposed to the basic concepts of filming and video editing. This is a good way to get started with video without financial risk.

Distribution

Just like any story is only good once read, training is only of value if you consult it. Creating your training is not the end of the process, but only the springboard. 

The outreach strategy must be considered early in the process. Certain measures must be taken before the creation of your content to be able to have all the pawns in place on D-day.

Here are various tools that we recommend to help you manage and increase the reach of your content.

Training platform

Your content is created, but you still have to integrate it and give it a structure. Using a platform like Workleap LMS allows you to create, host, manage and sell your training.

A training platform manages for you all technological dissemination portion, allowing you to focus on what matters, create content.

Zapier

Speaking of automation! Zapier is an incredible tool to gain efficiency. The tool acts as a roundabout between thousands of systems and applications and allows several of them to be linked using common triggers.

Google Alerts

As an expert, you have a duty to know more than your students. Google Alerts is a good way to stay up to date on your industry and area of expertise. It is also a very effective method of staying abreast of the reputation of your training and the comments that mention it.

By setting up an alert on a word or set of criteria, you will receive alerts to keep you up to date on what Google deems relevant to inform you. 

Bit.Ly

In order to always better measure the impact of our actions on the web aimed at generating traffic, Bit.Ly allows you to create shortened links that thwart certain social network algorithms while collecting data on the number clicks on each of the channels used.

The use of short links allows you to limit the number of characters in your publications and to group your initiatives under a single measurement management tool. We recommend this tool if you do not plan to use Google Analytics. The two tools being of the same nature, the data generated by Bit.Ly could distort your data in Google Analytics.

With all these tools, you should now be equipped to create your first training. Obviously, even if we have the tools, it can be useful to have access to expertise. This is why we invite you to write to us! We are always happy to be able to contribute to the success of our customers.

Labor shortage, digital transformation, and employee retention. All hot topics in the human resources sector. Marie-Pier Blouin, Human Resources Specialist at Panthera Dental and Bodycad, gives us her views on these major issues appearing increasingly on the agenda of SMEs (small and medium enterprises).

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What's in this article

• Think differently
• What would you gain from using such a platform?
• Fears and risk management
• Presenting such a project to our bosses
• Conclusion

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As we know, the shortage of manpower is the subject of the hour, the one that everyone is talking about.

Why? It's simple. All businesses, without exception, are affected. 

It's good to talk about it over and over again, but shouldn't we rather change angles?

Talking about solutions and no longer about the crisis we are facing?

What are the best readily available strategies and tools that we can use to reduce the negative effects of this crisis on our businesses?

We will tell ourselves, the shortage has started and this is only the beginning, the next ten years will undoubtedly be tinged with this reality, whether we like it or not.

This will certainly make our recruitment process more complex than before in addition to evolving in a market in the midst of a war for talent.

Indeed, the current market is imbued with these questions: who will offer the best salaries, the best benefits, the greatest flexibility, the most beautiful offices and the best "job"?

What if, on the contrary, as an organization, we could offer professional development by allowing continuous training and enrich the expertise of our employees rather than relying solely on monetary values?

And what if we were to leverage our internal resources, develop them to make them ambassadors of our employer brand, of our corporate colors?

Think differently

So let's roll up our sleeves and apply the best practices available. Let us retain our talents and eliminate the loss of knowledge of our businesses resulting from retirements or the conquest of new challenges. 

The first solution we have to think about is that of developing the skills of our employees.

To do this, it is important to combine our knowledge, our know-how, and our interpersonal skills which circulate and live in our company. It is necessary to use our content experts, our "elders" who have experienced the evolution of the business to accumulate every corner of information that shapes the identity of our organization.

Once this step is completed, what do we do with this large amount of information? 

In fact, at this point, it is important to codify it.

Although this exercise may seem tedious, it is important to do it early in your business and not postpone it until tomorrow. As you grow, the longer you wait, the bigger the task will become.

It is at this moment that it becomes necessary to take these intangible resources which circulate free as the air in our organization and to put them on paper. Then sort it out. Yes, sort them!

It is important to keep only true and up-to-date information to avoid the spread of erroneous data.

It is also at this time that it is important to think about using the tools at our disposal to simplify our lives, such as a customizable training platform, easily accessible on the web, which will allow you to bring together in one place this information and knowledge.

By combining and structuring your information, you will be able to easily develop your own training and distribute your own content internally using a specialized management tool. Workleap LMS represents a good example of this type of tool at your disposal.

What would you gain from using such a platform?

The benefits are numerous.

First, flexibility, lots of flexibility. Both in terms of knowledge acquisition and accessibility to your content. 

A training management platform offers you online access, without time or travel constraints. Constant access 24/7 and anywhere!

Whether to allow periodic refreshment or the posting of new training, Workleap LMS allows you the speed of execution and access without geographic restriction.

Whether your employees are located in remote regions or even in another country, an online platform is ideal for transferring uniform knowledge from one end of the world to the other!

Indeed, a cloud platform increases your reach at local, regional, national and international level!

By managing the content yourself, you also choose the language in which you distribute it to your employees, while ensuring the quality and veracity of what you distribute as information.

It is also a greater flexibility in the learning approach of your learners who will now be able to respect their own learning rhythm, by taking breaks or by reviewing a passage which has been less well-received.

Respect for the learning styles of your learners, through the use of diversified learning strategies, can significantly increase information retention.

Through the use of videos, tests, readings, you will allow a more interactive pedagogy and adapted to several learning styles.

Yes, all this is possible to set up with a little sweat and Workleap LMS!

You will also gain by promoting the autonomy and empowerment of your employees.

They become active learners by having to take charge of their training and their own development. They will go at their own pace and develop the best methods to promote their learning.

You will have a significant return on investment in your training budget!

Once your training has been developed and posted online, all you have to do is keep it up-to-date according to developments and the evolution of your company or your products.

You will be able to use and reuse each training and put your energy into developing new courses.

No more expensive room reservations and payment of travel expenses!

From anywhere and anytime, everything will be available on Workleap LMS!

You will make better use of your training budget.

Once you have used your content experts to develop tests and exercises, content and videos, you have just released them for all future training that will be done online rather than in the classroom, for example. 

This saves you resources which had to reserve time to train one or more employees at the same time for several hours.

In addition, once everything is condensed on a training platform, your expert becomes free again so that he directs his energy on his main tasks and projects, while at the same time developing your resources.

A good three for one, in terms of saving time and efficiency and reducing costs!

Fears and risk management

Let us recall our context of labor shortage, a particular context where companies are constantly in a war for talent.

What are we doing to attract this workforce?

Many companies are currently revisiting their corporate image and culture, dangling it from left to right to attract the best talent.

If you are looking to stand out, rest assured that you will give off a modern image by using innovative technologies that are easy to use and easily accessible!

A great attraction for young and old alike attracted by technology! 

Sounds good, listing all these benefits, but you still have to take action.

This action can nevertheless intimidate several types of people:

• The person who has never had to develop training or work with an e-learning platform like Workleap LMS.
• The person for whom technology is a barrier.
• The person who needs personal support, to see and be present in real-time. 

Indeed, it is important to talk about our fears, because they exist and can be a brake preventing us from putting into place tools that can greatly improve our lives.

So let's go, let's talk about it!

Think of all the training that you currently offer in your organization. Take only the onboarding training, the one about health and safety at work, the one about your quality system and finally the time invested in companionship.

Now, to make it more easily explicit and tangible, let's add quantitative data to make it less abstract. 

Let's say that the total time invested in training is 40h for a new employee, it is also 40h investment for a trainer. Let's say we are able to reduce at 15h time invested by your house trainer, it gives you already a gain of 25hours. At an average salary of $ 23/hour, you already save $ 575, but at this stage, you do not calculate that your trainer who has been released will be able to perform these tasks with added value for the organization, so it will be a gain of 25 hours for production, for example.

For a product that takes 1 hour to make by this person only, I therefore have a gain of 25 products made by this person. At an average profit of $ 500 per item, I therefore have a gain of $ 7,500 in production. In the end, for a new employee, it is a little more than $ 8000 in gain that I have. I let you calculate according to your number of annual hires! 

This example only considers pecuniary benefits! To this must be added the efficiency gains of your HR department in terms of progress monitoring, training planning, re-planning of training for absentees, etc.

Once your information is coded, we gain in retention of this information and we eliminate the risk of loss during an involuntary departure.

My philosophy in life is that everything can be learned. There are many technologies that allow you to quickly, efficiently and inexpensively learn the knowledge you need to develop.

We are talking, for example, about the good old Youtube with which you are certainly able to watch some tutorials to learn about editing videos, and this, absolutely for free! 

With a little practice and certainly some beginner mistakes, you will be able to quickly and easily develop your video capsules.

Otherwise, who says that someone around you is not knowledgeable in the field and would not be happy to pass these tips and tricks on to you.

Workleap LMS is a platform made and developed by people who have knowledge of the market and the technological reality that surrounds the world of training.

By listening to the needs of the different market players, they adapted their platform so that they really correspond to the needs of small and medium-sized businesses.

Their goal was to make everything as user-friendly as possible!

What does it mean?

This is because the platform has been strategically developed so that each step is simply the logical continuity of a process for creating training. On paper and via the web, Workleap LMS will not make you lose your bearings, they will direct you to the next step.

In case you are really lost and disoriented, know that the Workleap LMS team will be able to quickly answer your questions to develop your training without problems and pitfalls, they will certainly not leave you in misery!

I grant you, it's not the same. It depends greatly on the points of view, openness, and interest in the technological aspect.

For my part, I prefer to see it as a positive aspect.

We know that human beings experience a lot of emotions and cross many states of mind daily. Thus, he may not be in a good state of listening and absorbing the information that is transmitted to him.

It may be that a major project has recently arrived in his chair and that the planned three-hour classroom training is really bad for him.

Therefore, allowing an employee to train by himself during a period during which he is in a better position to promote his learning is definitely a gain for the organization.

Indeed, if he can back up, start listening again, pause to take notes, then the employee is autonomous and learns at his own pace. This flexibility greatly promotes learning. 

Have any questions? The content expert or colleagues remain accessible for the refinement of the information transmitted and to be acquired since this is not all that can be taught via a web platform.

Remember that unless your expert leaves, interactions and communication remain key elements for your organization. It is important to combine the technological aspect and the human aspect to efficiently transmit the richest and fairest information possible to your employees.

Your trainer will have to send feedback to his student to allow him to improve while recognizing his faults and weaknesses and making him able and autonomous to carry out his tasks.

Technology always comes with technical problems.

In fact, technology can sometimes be capricious by putting a stick on our wheels. A little bug here, a little bug there. Is this enough to justify the status quo? Should we continue to push back the inevitable? When we accept that some minor problems may arise from time to time, we can direct our decision-making process accordingly.

When you're looking for tools and systems, don't shop around for a list of features. Instead, assess the customer experience.

The goal is not to look for a tool that has no bugs, but rather to find the best provider that will be available to assist you when that happens.

Yes, every technological element that adds to our lives comes with its share of problems and adjustments.

Don't worry, with the Workleap LMS team, you will quickly have access to someone. Yes a real human being made of flesh and bones, which will quickly respond to your need. This is one of the things that sets the business apart from the competition. Beyond the tool, the team itself is part of the added value.

Let’s take a look at the beneficial effects it brings and bet on the gains rather than the few irritants we may encounter.

Remember that as you use it, nothing prevents you from making suggestions for improvement so that the product meets even more needs. 

Presenting such a project to our bosses

What would be your strategy, as an HR, to have this project unlocked with your Chief Financial Officer or your boss?

As a Human Resources Specialist, I understand and see that the reality of the job market and recruitment is changing.

No matter what type of industry, we are all starting to feel the effects of a labor shortage.

Within five years, I would have to practically triple the number of employees, and this, only in Quebec City. This, without counting the international development which will lead us to recruit employees in various European countries and in Oceania.

Unfortunately, the reality is that the number of applications I receive is decreasing, despite all the initiatives we are putting in place. So, my goal is to keep my current team in place and develop them further. Provide them with the elements necessary to improve their productivity and equip them to continuously improve their working methods.

As the professions that we have within our organization are all more specialized than each other, I often seek to find juniors whom I will develop in the image of my organization.

Currently, we are pairing them with our experts for long-term support, which slows down the achievement of our production objectives.

Using a platform like Workleap LMS would allow me to free up at least 20 to 40% of the training and coaching time, which can be used to continue production. There would remain only the continuous and precision support that comes with the production of 100% custom products.

You should know that it does not only improve the lives of trainers and trainees but ours for HR too.

How you may ask? Well, if you're like me, you manage Bill 90 (1% law) with the tools you currently have at your disposal, a good old Excel spreadsheet, for example. 

You manually enter each hour of training, each salary and each training cost to ensure you have enough investment to meet the criteria of the law. You take the time to take each timesheet and enter it in your table.

In the past, I spent almost five to seven hours a week doing these operations.

Thanks to Workleap LMS' dashboard which updates in real-time, get the latest information on your most recent activities and accumulate your data for Bill 90 as and when training is carried out on your platform! What better way to save processing time and data entry?

Do you bathe, or even drown, in the attendance registers, training certificate and exams?

You dream of a zero paper management!

Do you spend days scanning documents to keep your proofs?

Increase your efficiency via the Workleap LMS online platform!

Among other things, it will allow you to enter your training material: videos, images, text and PDF files, in addition to allowing you to develop quizzes to validate the knowledge acquired. 

That's not all, transmit skills recognition via automatic success transmission directly in the user's profile. Workleap LMS also allows you to issue recognized professional certificates!

Conclusion

Technology surrounds us and will continue to shape the reality of the job market. We will evolve with it with the aim of improving our lives and our performance at work.

In today's environment, technology seems to me like a lifeline. The one that will allow us to keep our heads above water and the business afloat. The one which, once back on solid ground, will allow businesses to flourish, grow and develop.

However, for a business to continue to flourish and grow, it still needs people who will guide it in the right direction.

Let's put these exceptional resources on these people, who make our businesses what they are.

Let's bet on them so that they become ambassadors of our knowledge and performance. 

Let's do it by using technologies that allow us multiple gains. Let's do it with specialized tools to simplify our quick, as with Workleap LMS, your online training platform!

Creating and changing processes sounds big, doesn’t it?

Rest assured, it can be elementary, with a small-step approach.

Process management can be defined as a way to review and improve the steps of your business processes. By understanding how these processes work or don’t work, you can begin to see where there is room for improvement.

Please know that business process management is not about making thighs perfect, but rather about improving them. Even small improvements can make a big difference in your business.

You’re in the right place if you don’t know where to start! 

We’ll explain how you can get started in process management, and do it simply.

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What is business process management?

Business process management (BPM) is the process of creating, implementing, monitoring and improving business processes. This approach considers the entire process, from start to finish, and looks for ways to make it more efficient, yielding better results.

All the departments in your company have processes that can be documented and centralized!

Here are a few examples :

• Production : Machine operation
• Customer service : Customer appointment calls
• Marketing : Marketing a new product
• Human resources : Onboarding new employees
• Executive management : Creating an annual budget

The importance of BPM

Why is business process management important?

Because it makes your business more efficient. 

And that is important!

A well-planned process can contribute to continuous improvement, reduced costs and delivery times. Inversely, poorly conducted processes potentially cause delays, errors and many other inconveniences that you would gladly do without.

Reduce time waste

When processes are well managed, they tend to run more smoothly. This inevitably saves your business time and money by reducing time and effort loss. 

For example, if you have a process set up for handling inquiries, each request is processed efficiently and in a timely manner. This reduces the time you spend on each request and can also reduce customer frustration by ensuring that requests are quickly processed. 

Minimize error risk

Another benefit of business process management is that it helps minimize error risks. 

For example, an expense approval process ensures that all necessary information is collected and reviewed before the report approval. This reduces the risk of approving incorrect or incomplete reports, which could lead to costly errors.

The end of blame culture

When everyone knows what their roles and responsibilities are, there is usually less blame when things go wrong.

For example, a complaint process allows everyone involved to know exactly what to do and whom to contact when complaints are received.

This minimizes accusations and blame, which sometimes (often) occur during problematic situations.

No more lack of data

Another problem that can be solved through BPM is the lack of data. It can be difficult to assess and track progress when processes are not properly managed. 

This usually leads to situations where data is not available for making informed decisions.

What happens when a manager has to authorize or refuse an employee’s leave, but does not have data on their vacation or sickness days bank?

The manager can make decisions that are not in the best interest of the company. On the other hand, if this process is optimized, the data is available and easily accessible.

A pleasant working atmosphere

A company that implements clear processes usually benefits from a more pleasant working environment.

When things work well, there is less stress and therefore fewer problems.

To get your employees involved in documenting their work, you can value their expertise and delegate the responsibility of creating processes. They will be more inclined to follow the processes if they have actively participated in their development!

Which types of processes need to be managed?

Most business processes can be conducted in more than one way. However, there are certain types of processes that it is particularly important to manage well.

Here are some of these essential process types:

• Customer service processes
• Sales processes
• Marketing processes
• Human Resources processes
• Financial and accounting processes
• Manufacturing and production processes

These processes can be grouped into three broad categories:

1. Integration/system processes
2. Human-centric processes
3. Document-centric processes

Integration/system processes

These are the processes that involve interaction between systems. For example, a process that involves the transfer of data from a system is an integration, or system process.

By connecting systems, you can create a single source of information for all your data.

For example, you could connect your accounting system to your customer relations management system (CRM). This will allow you to see each customer’s financial data, as well as sales, marketing and support data.

To integrate multiple systems, you need to use process integration tools. These tools automate the data transfer process between systems.

Human-centric processes

These are processes that involve people. For example, a process that involves customer service is a human process. 

The key is to help employees better understand processes, and guide them through them.

Human processes are the most difficult to manage because they involve people and, unlike systems, people are unpredictable. However, human processes are also the most important part of a company, since they have a direct impact on all these aspects:

• Employee productivity
• Customer service quality
• Interpersonal relationships within the company

Document-centric processes

These processes involve… well, documents.

For example, a process that involves creating or approving a document is a document-centric process. This can be a product or service listing, a policy, a form, etc. 

The lifecycle of a process

All processes have a lifecycle. The lifecycle of a process is the series of steps between its creation and its completion. 

The lifecycle of a process typically includes the following steps:

• Planning and design
• Implementation
• Execution
• Monitoring and control
• Optimization

Planning and creation: design

The first step in the process lifecycle is planning and design. At this point, the process is being designed and created. This generally involves: 

1. Defining the goals of the process;
2. Designing the process;
3. Creating any documentation needed.

This documentation must then be shared with everyone involved and centralized in an easily accessible location.

Implementation

After designing a process, it must be implemented within the company and the relevant team. This process is applied during this phase and sometimes requires a change management strategy.

In the list of best practices, this step often requires: 

• Training all employees involved in the process;
• Implementing all required systems;
• Testing the process to make sure it works as planned.

Execution

Once the process has been implemented, it must be executed. This is the stage where the process is actually being followed by a member of your team, who can give feedback. 

This is the crucial moment, since it is during the process execution phase that it yields its final results. 

Monitoring and control

Once the process has been executed, it is monitored and controlled. This involves following the process to make sure it is working properly and making the necessary changes, if needed.

All processes must be updated at one point or another.

How do you monitor and control a process?

There are many process management tools that you can use to do it. These tools help track process performance, identify problems, and make necessary changes.

Some of the most popular BPM tools include:

• Process mapping tools
• Process improvement tools
• Process follow-up tools

Optimization

The last step of the process lifecycle is optimization. At this point, the goal is to improve the process and make it more efficient. 

This could include :

1. Changes to the process itself
2. Changes to specific systems of the process
3. Changes to people involved in the process

Best practices in business process management

There are many things you can do to make sure your BPM is efficient.

Here are some of the most important process management practices:

• Set clear goals
• Create a process that aims to achieve these goals
• Efficiently document each step
• Train all employees involved
• Centralize documentation for quick access
• Test and track the process to make sure it works as planned
• Make any changes needed, regularly

When considering its most fundamental elements, business process management turns out to be a pillar to improve the organization, efficiency and productivity of your company.

However, it is important to remember that BPM is not a miracle solution, it requires special attention and organization.

But it is oh, so worth it!

Turn your employees into process champions

Your employees hold your company’s in-house expertise and organizational memory: don’t risk losing it all! 

You should develop your employees into internal procedure champions and involve them in the content creation process. By sharing this task with your main employees, you ensure greater longevity for your team’s knowledge.

Engaged employees will be more inclined to adhering your BPM anyway.

A learning management system (LMS) is a software-based platform that supports the administration and delivery of corporate courses, training programs, and learning and development programs. An LMS is typically delivered as a hosted service or software as a service (SaaS), meaning it is Internet-based and requires no installation, thereby making it perfect for modern learners.

An LMS helps companies deliver training materials and because it's accessible on mobile devices, it makes it easy to reach people wherever they are. An LMS works well when it's scalable and adaptable to the needs of your learners. It offers features like course creation, scheduling, reporting, analytics, and much more. Most importantly, it allows you to combine multiple types of learning into one cohesive experience.

The power of an LMS as a training management system lies in its ability to support a wide range of learning strategies, including both formal and informal methods of learning. For example, you might use an LMS to provide training on how to perform certain tasks, certify employees, promote compliance, or develop your brand's culture.

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Who needs an LMS?

LMS systems are used globally, across numerous different industries, and for enterprises of all size. They are useful for corporate training, so they are used by SMBs, non-profit organizations, cooperatives, etc.

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Discover how an LMS system can benefit your SMB

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Types of learning management systems

The benefits of a learning management system are evident, but it can be difficult to decide what type of LMS will most benefit your company and your learners. Below is a list of some of the most common types of learning management systems on the market.

Cloud-based vs. on premise

A cloud-based learning management system (LMS) is hosted on a secure server and allows users to use it via multiple devices, including smartphones and tablets. This type of software offers several advantages over traditional LMS solutions. Cloud-based LMS such as Enterprise LMS are easy to implement, require no upfront costs, and offer scalability. They're often used by organizations, such as SMBs, non-profits and coops to provide online training courses.

On-premise LMS are traditionally offered as standalone products, meaning they must be purchased and licensed separately from the rest of the courseware. These systems are usually customized to meet the specific needs of each organization. 

Closed-source vs. open-source

In both web-based and installed software, you have closed-source and open-source learning management systems. However, there is no such thing as a purely open-source system. Open-source LMS primarily derive their name from the fact that they are free. They are also considered open-source because they often have communities of users. 

This kind of system has its advantages and disadvantages. On one hand, it gives you freedom. On the other, it comes with responsibilities. You must accept that everything you do is being watched. If you want to make changes to something, you must ask permission. If you want to use someone else's code, you must acknowledge where it came from. 

Objectives of a Learning Management System

The main objective of eLearning systems is to enhance the learning experience and manage and track online training. An eLearning system does not just deliver content. It also manages enrollment, tracking, and reports. Most eLearning systems are web-based and are utilized in various organizations for training purposes.

They are used in various industries and settings like finance services, compliance training, computing-based training, online assessment, collaborative learning, application-sharing, etc. Some eLearning systems also incorporate a performance management system that includes employee appraisals, competency management, skill gap analysis, and so on. 

1. Enable mobile learning

One of the key purposes of learning management systems is to enable mobility while learning. A mobile LMS provides your team with instant access to organizational training materials whenever they're needed. This gives employees more freedom to learn without being tied down to their desks.

2. Streamline learning processes

An online learning management system allows employees to easily access important information about company policies, procedures, and processes through a central hub. Employees can access important documents such as job descriptions and handbooks from anywhere. They also have one place to go to find helpful tutorials, videos, and Q&A sessions.

3. Engage employees

These days, employees are more distracted than ever and companies are paying the cost. Learning management systems provide workers with a blended learning experience. Content is presented in various forms including written, audio, video, etc. to support learning objectives.

4. Track and assess performance

An LMS is a great employee training tool. Apart from imparting instruction, it can enable businesses to keep track of the progress made by their employees. It allows businesses to check in to see how well their employees are doing, and whether or not they’re following through with the required tasks. 

Employees and managers can also utilize the LMS to check if anyone needs to review certain principles to get a better understanding of them. The LMS can also help ensure that training goals are being met.

5. Save money

A learning management system saves businesses money because they do not have to pay trainers to travel and update employees on new materials. By setting up an LMS, businesses remove the overhead associated with teaching new information to employees, such as compliance training costs, boarding, lodging, etc.

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Why use an LMS for employee training?

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Benefits of learning management systems

• Provides better control over the entire training process. You can easily set up the schedule for your training sessions, assign tasks to team members, and monitor how well they are performing.
• Helps create a balanced learning experience. Each learner requires a different approach to learn effectively. A good LMS allows you to customize the training session, according to the learner’s needs.
• Makes it easy to communicate with learners. With an LMS, you can send messages to your learners via email, SMS, chat, etc. This enables you to keep your learners engaged throughout the training program. Users of Workleap LMS benefit from the Zapier integration to unlock this tool.
• Improves collaboration among trainers and administrators. Everyone has their own account but different roles can be assigned to optimize collaboration.
• Allows you to make changes quickly. In case there are any mistakes during the training process, you can fix them immediately

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Choosing an LMS to train your team better: why, when and how?

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How to choose a modern LMS?

With so many learning systems on the market, it can be difficult to know which one will be best for your company. Here are tips to help you make an informed decision when choosing a modern LMS:

• Identify your needs. With 600+ learning platforms to choose from, selecting one isn't easy. There are numerous factors to consider when choosing the best solution for your organization, such as the type of learners you have, the type of system that will work best and how they will access the system.
• Decide the features you need. After defining your learning management system (LMS) needs, it's time to determine the specific features, functions, and capabilities you want. This step involves identifying the learning goals, objectives and audience demographics. Once you've determined these things, you'll want to think about how the system will support your organization's current practices and future plans.
• Browse the market. The third step in the vendor selection process is to explore the market. This includes researching the different types of learning management systems, comparing products based on functionality, price, and support options.

The best Entreprise LMS

If you want to get the most out of your learners and reach your corporate goals, a digital learning solution is the way to go. In today's digital age, learning environments are ever-changing and enterprises need to adapt to these changing environments. The best way to manage the learning process is to invest in a learning management system.  

At Workleap LMS, we prioritize learner engagement and customer satisfaction. We’ve designed the best online management platform used for teaching and learning. From user monitoring to personalized learning paths, our LMS system is specially designed to help your business grow.

Each LMS client creates their own training platform and chooses a package depending on the nature of their project. To help you better understand and use our tool, we attach great importance to educational content.

Recruiting has never been so difficult. In Canada, vacancies reached 900,000 at the end of last year, while more than 300,000 positions are vacant in France since 2021.

The reasons behind this trend are numerous and diverse: the field may be unattractive, there may be a lack of affinity with the company’s values, its culture may not be engaging enough, or the company may have a straight out negative image…

Nowadays, developing their employer brand is crucial for companies that wish to attract the best talent. However, for this to work, this strategy must be as well prepared, thought out and rigorously planned as a marketing plan. 

Here’s how to make the most out of HR marketing tools in order to grow your employer brand.

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HR marketing and employer branding: principles and benefits

Employer brand: an HR marketing strategy with dual objectives

HR marketing is about applying commercial marketing principles to human resource management. It provides a better understanding of the job market, and it allows companies to adjust their actions and value proposition (making them unique employers). 

This approach is based on three pillars: 

1. HR communication
2. Collaborative engagement 
3. Employer branding

Therefore, HR marketing is an integral part of the overall HR strategy; it is based on the company’s most precious asset: its identity.

Every business has an employer brand. The question is whether it plays in its favor or not.

HR marketing addresses two business objectives: 

• An external objective: conveying a good image that will attract recruits 

Until a few years ago, candidates had to be desirable in the eyes of recruiters. The balance of power is now reversed: it is the companies who have to make an effort. And while this is not a new phenomenon, it has been greatly amplified by the pandemic.

Candidates are now searching for meaning, both in their career and in the choice of company they apply for. They pay particular attention to the managerial culture and values of companies.

The impact of the employer brand on recruitment is indeed considerable: 59% of candidates reconsider applying if they do not like the information they find about a particular company.

• An internal objective: improving employees’ experience in order to keep recruits

Another challenge the HR marketing strategy addresses is new talent retention. If the goal is to make new employees want to stay, their experience must be positive from day one.

There are many ways to reassure a new employee: providing a schedule of the first week, offering a welcome lunch, training, meetings with other team members…

However important onboarding is, it's often not enough to secure talent. The employee experience is only appreciated if it truly reflects the company’s values and reality. 

Therefore, expectations about work-life balance, management, transparency and well-being at work are particularly high. 

Check in regularly with your teams to assess their well-being at work and ensure a good employee experience.

By integrating HR marketing in your organizational practice, you give yourself the means to effectively address employee experience and employer brand. It is a winning strategy that offers several benefits.

Developing your employer brand: quick benefits overview  

Developing one’s employer brand is a crucial aspect of business. By aligning with your external and internal objectives, this strategy yields several long-term benefits. According to a LinkedIn study, developing one’s employer brand can yield up to:

• 50% savings on recruitment
• 28% less turnover in the company
• 50% more qualified candidates
• 1 to 2 times less time wasted hunting and sourcing potential candidates 

These figures alone should be enough to make you want to set up an effective employer brand action plan!

5 steps for setting up an effective employer branding plan

1. Establish your brand diagnosis 

To get a better understanding of the image that your company projects, it is necessary to establish a global diagnosis of the situation, both internally and externally.

Gather all the relevant information available (your positioning on the job market, the retention rate of your employees, the perception that your target audiences have of you as an employer…).

You can do this through surveys, focus groups or the analysis of HR indicators.

2. Define your employer positioning

Your employer positioning reflects the place that your company occupies in the mind of your target audience, compared to the positioning of your competitors. In order to set yourself apart and make your organization identifiable by your personas, this intermediate step is necessary.

It may seem obvious that you would need to define your employer positioning. But you’d be surprised at how often one can lose sight of the big picture. That is why it helps to take a break,  step back, and, if needed, reorient your goals. 

Ask yourself: what is your differentiating HR value proposition ? 

This is the core of your positioning, the starting point of your marketing plan aiming to deploy your employer brand. It allows you to identify your target audiences and position yourself accordingly, in relation to them.

For example, companies often choose to include diversity as a strong employer brand value. Fab’RH Savoie is a good example: the company develops an inclusive employer brand and facilitates the return to work of long-term job seekers.

3. Identify your target

Having identified your positioning as an organization, you must now identify your target: the candidate profiles you want to attract for your organization.

In doing so, it helps to ask yourself the right questions: What skills are you looking for? What type of personality aligns well with your values? How many years of experience are required?

This step of reflection is necessary because it acts as a first filter between your business and your future recruits. It will attract a majority of potential matches while powering your website and social media content. 

4. Promote your employer brand strategy 

This is it, you are ready to launch. It is time to develop your action plan through best practices. In other words, practices that highlight your competitive advantages, such as being an innovative company, or others.

That is the case of VINCI, a company which, while developing its employer brand strategy, has created an interactive recruitment chatbox on Facebook. Their goal: meeting the need for immediacy and customizing of the new generations.

5. Measure the ROI of your employer brand actions

One thing is obvious: developing a strong employer brand takes time. Measuring your ROI is a very effective way to see what works and what doesn’t. The results make it easier to correct the situation or to set up areas for improvement.

The formula is as follows: 

ROI = (gain or loss of investment – cost of investment) / cost of investment

Thus, to ensure that you are on the right path, measure its follow-up by evaluating the different key performance indicators (KPI) you have identified:

• Communication KPIs: number of visits on your website, number of views on your social media posts, number of subscribers, Glassdoor reviews, engagement rates, satisfaction surveys or webinar participation rate, etc.
• Recruitment KPIs:
  -Candidate-oriented KPIs: the number of recruitments vs the objectives, the entry channels of recruited profiles, the cost per hire, etc.
  -Employee-oriented KPIs: the number of breaks during the trial period, the results of internal satisfaction surveys, the absentee rate, the turnover rate, etc.

The employer brand is therefore embedded in a well-planned HR marketing strategy.

Bring your HR marketing strategy to life!

Corporate training is often seen as an important benefit for job seekers. Knowing they will have the opportunity to develop their expertise within their position is a heavy-weighing argument.

Beyond helping train your employees, a platform like Workleap LMS allows you to easily bring your HR marketing strategy to life.

Document and share your team values, internal announcements and best recruitment practices with all your employees! The real success of a brand lies in its reputation, so you may as well ensure you have the best ambassadors. 

As an SME manager, reducing expenses and optimizing your budget are among your top priorities. And one of the hardest expenses to estimate is training. 

Whether it is for continuous training or onboarding new employees, the bill can get steep quite fast.

On the other hand, not training your employees can bring significant losses in terms of efficiency, inconsistencies in the service and a great fragility when it comes to internal expertise. In the end, neglecting training is also expensive.

Training employees is one of the most important investments you can make for your business. But how can you know if the cost of training is really worth it?

By calculating its ROI (Return on investment)!

Knowing how to calculate the cost of training and its ROI will allow you to make a more informed decision before investing in employee training.

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6 factors that affect the cost of training

What is training?

Training is a process that enhances an employees’ skills, knowledge set and abilities. It can be done through in-class learning, on-the-job learning or e-learning.

Knowing how much training costs involves more than just its total price or its price per person.

It involves its real cost and the return on investment (ROI) it will yield.

There are different factors that can affect the cost of training: the type of training, the size of the class and the duration of training; these are some key factors to consider.

The size of the company

You have several options.

You may choose an external trainer. External trainers are specialists in their field, and they sell their expertise. You can also opt for an internal trainer. This would be an in-house specialist who could share their techniques, tools and best practices with their colleagues.

One thing is certain: using an external training company is usually more expensive than opting for internal trainers.

However, if you manage a large company, you may be able to negotiate a better price per person.

Hiring an external trainer is often the most expensive option, but it can be very advantageous: you will be able to benefit from an expert-level training that is adapted to your company needs.

Although this is a cheaper option, there are also costs associated with using an in-house trainer: their remuneration and overheads. 

When choosing a trainer provider, it is essential to compare their price per person with their experience and qualifications.

Initial skills

If your employees have little experience in the field that you would like them to be trained in, it will usually take longer and cost more to train them.

Inversely, if they are already familiar with the subject, it will be cheaper and faster to train them. 

You can do a skills gap analysis to assess the current situation and better target the level that needs to be developed, according to your organizational priorities.

The training method

The teaching method you choose will also impact the cost of training. In-class learning is usually more expensive than online learning. 

And even for online training, there are significant differences between the investment required for synchronous vs asynchronous training. Although setting up a pre-recorded training has a higher initial cost, it often yields a more interesting ROI in the long term.

Think about it: you only create the training content once, and you can reuse it for several years!

The type of position

The type of position will influence the type of training required, and involve online or field sessions, depending on the position needs.

This could impact the total training cost, since not everything can be done online.

The training location 

Off-site training will inevitably be more costly than on-site training. If you opt for off-site training, you will have to consider the venue rental costs and your employees’ travel expenses.

However, this is sometimes the best option, especially if you have employees in several locations that need to be trained. 

There is always the option to hold your training in the office. In this case, you will only need to account for travel for employees who normally work in other branches or work remotely. This is a good middle-ground option!

If you are considering online training, there are no costs related to conducting the session!

Productivity loss

While training employees provide many benefits, it can also lead to loss of productivity. Obviously, employees cannot work while they are in training, and this cannot be avoided.

You also need to think about the amount of time your employees will have to adapt and apply the newly learned concepts, which can vary in complexity.

However, it is important to note that lost productivity is not always a negative cost. You also must measure its indirect benefits.

For example, training can sometimes help avoid potentially costly mistakes!

5 Hidden Costs to Watch out for 

In addition to direct costs of training, there are hidden costs that you need to be aware of.

Trainer’s fees

The trainer’s fee is usually the most important cost of the training. The trainer’s expertise and the duration of the session impact the cost of training. 

Apart from the trainer’s fees, there are also travel and accommodation costs to consider, if the trainer comes from a different location.

Your employees’ time

The time your employees spend in training is another important cost to consider.

When employees are in training, you still have to pay their salary. You might also have to pay replacement salaries, if their positions are critical to the smooth running of operations. 

Material costs

Next, you have to consider training material costs, such as manuals and supplies.

And then, there is the cost of certification, which is inevitable if your company needs staff to be certified after being trained.

Employee travel costs

If your employees have to travel away from their usual workplace for training, they will have to pay for transportation costs. 

For long training sessions, it is often recommended to provide meals or snacks, especially if the sessions are not being held at the office.

Administration

There are costs related to the administration of the training, such as application fees and venue rental. There is also all the time your human resources teams and managers have spent making an inventory of the training to be offered to each employee, and managing registrations. 

These costs are not easy to estimate, but they must be included in your training budget planning.

How to calculate the ROI of your training?

How can you know if a training program is worth the investment?

It can be hard to determine whether a training program is worth the investment or not. You must consider all associated costs, both direct and indirect.

This brings us to the concept of return on investment (the famous ROI)!

The return on investment is a way to measure whether a particular investment is worth making (or not).

You calculate the return on investment by dividing the gain from the investment by the amount of money invested. The result is a percentage that indicates how profitable the investment is.

But how to calculate the cost of training and its return on investment?

There are different ways to do this, but the most common one is to divide the expected gain (benefits) of the training by the cost of the program (the amount you are investing).

(Gain – Amount invested / Amount invested = ROI

A good ROI comes close to 10 (the higher it is, the better).

For example, if you invest $500 in a training that allows you to earn $2000 per year, your ROI will be 3, or 300%.

(2000-500)/500 = 3

(2000-500)/500 x 100 = 300%

Cost of training calculator

Use this table to determine which costs apply to your training and calculate the total amount to be invested.

To estimate the average cost of training per employee, divide each item by the number of employees participating in the training.

Employee training is a real investment

Training is an investment, and like any investment, there are associated risks. 

However, if you choose your training well and manage it properly, it can turn out to be very beneficial for your business.

Trained employees = Employees who are better equipped to meet your business needs.

Employers often consider training to be a cost rather than an investment, when they see it as an expense.

However, good training can be very profitable.

A company that trains its employees is better equipped to deal with its changing needs. Trained employees are also generally more motivated and have a better opinion of their company. 

Here are some key elements to measure to estimate the benefits of training: 

• More conversions by the sales team
• Reduced customer churn
• Improved customer satisfaction score
• Decreased support call numbers
• Faster and easier implementation of new systems or processes
• Increased average bills, as a result of good customer service
• Faster pace of daily production
• Decreased numbers of injuries and therefore absences
• Improved employee relationships

Therefore, training is an investment that has many potential benefits! When done right, it leads to increased profits, greater employee satisfaction and better customer relations, to list just a few!

The many benefits of continuous learning

Continuous training is an excellent way to develop and deepen employee skills and keep the company up to date with the latest technology. 

Beyond the technical aspects, training on behavioral skills is also important.

Employees who receive behavioral skills training are more aware of their own behaviors and those of others. They can better communicate and collaborate, which leads to overall improved productivity. 

Training allows employees to feel valued and motivated, which is crucial to a company’s success.

Where does an LMS come in?

A learning management system (LMS) is a powerful tool that helps companies reduce their training costs.

Workleap LMS can help you optimize your ROI by allowing you to track the effectiveness of your training programs. You will be able to target your spending more efficiently and get a better return on investment. Ultimately, you can manage training processes more efficiently, thus making the most of your resources.

How is that possible?

• Centralizing training allows the sharing of best practices, which leads to an increase in productivity.
• Digitizing data yields time savings in management by human resources and managers. In addition, by digitizing the data, you no longer have to worry about losing important information (yay!).
• One way to reduce the cost of training is to use asynchronous training. This type of training helps employees become more autonomous in their learning, as they can learn at their own pace. They can spend less time on training, which in turn reduces the overall cost of training.
• Creating online content is a great way to reduce training costs. By creating the content only once, you can reuse it for different trainings. This not only saves you time, but also reduces the overall training costs. 

Online content creation also provides more flexibility and creativity in the way the information is presented. 

Therefore, an LMS clearly plays an important role in reducing training costs and increasing efficiency.

And if you're wondering how to build a customized employee journey, just request a demo a we'll show you!

Recruiting the right people can be expensive.

But the even more expensive part is seeing the new hires leave after only a few months… and having to start all over again.

A recent Aberdeen Group study found that almost two-thirds of companies are not entirely satisfied with their current recruitment campaigns.

Fortunately, there are several strategies to maximize the return on investment of your hiring process!

This article shows you how to calculate the ROI of your recruitment efforts and features 7 ways to optimize it.

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What is a recruitment campaign?

A recruitment campaign includes all the activities and processes that are carried out to find new employees and promote your employer brand. The hiring process often takes place in several stages, starting with the job opening posting and ending with the new employee’s trial period.

In general, a recruitment campaign includes the following steps:

1. Job posting
2. Advertising or broadcasting campaigns
3. Receipt and analysis of applications
4. Pre-interview calls
5. Interviews
6. Legal checks and other required procedures
7. Employment contract signing
8. Employment start date (trial period)
9. Employment confirmation (end of trial period)

Now, how do you calculate the real cost and return on investment of this entire process?

How to calculate new employee ROI?

Here is the formula to calculate the return on investment (ROI) of a recruitment campaign: 

(Benefits of hiring - Cost of recruitment) / Cost of recruitment

For example :

• If your hire profits are 50 000$ 
• And the recruitment costs are 10 000$ 

(50 000 - 10 000) / 10 000 = ROI of 4 

When calculating the ROI, the higher the figure, the better the return on investment. A negative ROI means that the costs are higher than the benefits.

But for a proper new employee ROI calculation, we must first have the right numbers!

Calculating the profits of hiring

The benefits of hiring are equivalent to the total financial value of each result the recruitment campaign will yield.

This data is often the hardest part to estimate, but it is essential to understand how each new hire affects the results. 

Here are some examples you should consider :

Calculating the cost of recruitment

The cost of recruitment can also be difficult to estimate, especially when there are several positions that need to be filled at the same time. In this case, some expenses can affect more than one campaign and therefore must be divided when calculating the ROI. 

The cost of recruitment can also be divided into two main categories: work to be done before hiring (steps 1 to 7) and work to be done during the first days of work (steps 8 and 9).

Here is a table that includes examples of things to consider:

How to optimize new employee ROI?

Now that you know how to calculate the ROI of your new hire, you must be wondering how to optimize it. 

Remember that the goal is to have a high ROI!

There are two ways to do this:

1. Reduce the cost of your recruitment, so reduce your expenses;
2. Increase the benefits of your hires, so maximize the positive impact of each new employee.

Here’s how to go about it.

4 strategies to reduce new hire costs

Recruitment costs have increased dramatically recently, due to labor shortages and high turnover rates in several fields.

But that does not mean that it is impossible to cut back on expenses!

You just need to be strategic and anticipate the new hire mobility to prevent future hires and implement more affordable solutions.

1. Develop your employer branding strategy

Just as a company’s brand image is important for its success, developing your employer brand will greatly facilitate your recruitment process.

By positioning yourself as an employer of choice, potential candidates will want to join your team, even when you are not actively recruiting!

Showcase your mission and values throughout your content, show the work environment and your employees at work. There’s no need to wait until you have a position to fill: you should create this kind of content constantly to prepare ahead of time.

Above all, stay true and consistent in your message. 

The content you show must be reflected by the internal reality because there is nothing worse than being sold a first impression that is not real.

2. Recruit several employees at the same time

Advertising, job fairs and corporate video expenses can quickly add up.

If you know that some of your employees will be leaving, taking extended time off, or if one of your teams needs to expand, you would be wise to group these in your HR marketing initiatives. Whether you are recruiting for 1 or 5 positions, the advertising costs will not be higher, so take the opportunity to group your hiring!

As an employer, you must make all the content pertaining to your offers consistent, so you may as well spread the cost over several positions rather than just one.

3. Automate your recruitment process

Companies that automate their recruitment process using tools available online, at low cost or free, will save a lot of time and money.

This does not mean that you have to eliminate human contact during the hiring process! 

The biggest gain from automation is mostly felt in the time-consuming HR marketing and the application analysis steps. For example, you could sort through your applications via Facebook Messenger advertising campaigns and write automated answers to questions candidates might have, before the first contact.

Imagine all the time you will be saving by not having to make calls to prequalify your candidates.

You can also use a chatbox on your career page and include answers to questions candidates might have about the position. You can also use a software to read through resumes and extract relevant information, or use Eversign for signing electronic documents. 

In short, several tools can help you optimize your hiring process and save you both time and money.

4. Outsource your recruitment campaigns

If your HR team is small or already overstretched, adding recruitment tasks can increase the total bill. For example:

• When recruitment is not your responsibility, you have a lot to learn, so it will take time to complete each one of the steps.
• If you do not specialize in marketing, it will be difficult for you to create job postings and advertising campaigns that will yield results.
• If you have too many files to manage, you may end up forgetting to follow up on certain tasks, which can greatly affect the candidate experience of your potential employees.

In short, all this negatively impacts your new employee ROI.

To avoid hassle and potential mistakes, you could outsource your recruitment campaigns to specialized agencies!

Recruto is a division of recruitment firm Ancia, which takes care of all aspects of your recruitment process: attracting candidates, talent acquisition and new hire onboarding.

Their marketing team takes care of everything.

So free yourself from recruitment tasks, so your HR team can focus on the well-being of your employees!

3 strategies to increase the benefits of your new hires 

To increase the yield of your recruitment efforts, you need to think about ideas that promote employee retention and productivity. Essentially, the longer your employee stays and brings value to the company, the more costs are absorbed and spread over time.

Here are some best practices that can help you improve your new hire retention. 

1. Integrate your employees into your corporate culture

The experience you have ‘sold’ through your recruitment campaign must be validated as soon as your new employees arrive.

Make sure you have an onboarding program that is well-structured, so that the new employee feels well supervised and not left to fend for themselves. If possible, organize social activities to give your recruit the chance to interact with employees from other departments!

Many companies adopt the concept of mentoring ‘buddies’ where the new employee is paired with an experienced employee who can coach them, give them feedback and answer their questions. 

This concept is also useful for improving new hire retention because the mentor benefits from having their expertise be valued. This new responsibility provides a sense of pride and being helpful.

Finally, communicate your company culture and values before and during your new employee’s onboarding to make sure they fully embrace it.

2. Invest in the development of your recruits

In a competitive job market, every argument that can enhance your job offer can make a big difference.

For many, having development and continuing education opportunities is criteria in selecting their employer.

And we’re not just talking about the onboarding or short training programs!

Offer your candidates and new employees a tailor-made career management plan, including skill development activities. The more they can grow within your company, the longer they will stay.

In addition, continuous training is a way to increase the productivity of your employees and ensure a better quality of products and services. It’s a win-win!

3. Digitize your onboarding process

We have talked earlier about automating some of your recruitment tasks. What if you also used technology to speed up the onboarding of new employees?

You could reduce your onboarding expenses by 50% by digitizing your onboarding with Workleap LMS!

Think about it :

• By documenting best practices and typical customer cases, you can ensure consistency in the services offered by your employees. Therefore, you can reduce the risk of customer dissatisfaction and increase the chance of making sales.
• Since they have all the information and procedures at their fingertips, it will be easier for your new employees to perform their tasks independently. Your senior team can intervene only when needed, to manage more complex cases and ensure a good understanding of the working methods!
• Automating what you often repeat also saves you time and reduces the risk of oversights or errors. By spending less time onboarding new employees, your projects move faster.

It’s your turn!

Now that you know how to calculate the return on investment of your new hire, all you have to do is implement the 7 strategies mentioned above.

Of course, ROI is a financial unit of measure, but its benefits go beyond financial return. In itself, increasing the quality of the candidate and employee experience pays back very well. 

Remember that in a context of labor-shortage, it is preferable to focus your efforts on increasing employee retention than to have to recruit new ones.

And that starts with pleasant working conditions, growth opportunities and a healthy relationship with your entire team!

Good candidates or employees don’t only need technical skills. 

Of course, they are essential in order to follow industry standards, improve themselves and become more efficient. But being ‘good at doing a job’ is not enough!

Think about it… You could have the best programmer in the world, but: 

• He’s unable to organize his tasks and wastes time getting his head together;
• He can’t communicate with his project manager, which makes it difficult to follow up on projects;
• He doesn’t document or share his knowledge with the rest of the team;
• He refuses to collaborate with other departments.

Would you really hire someone like that?

No! 

You wouldn’t, because your team must have an optimal mix of technical skills (hard skills) and soft skills. So, when you interview potential candidates, you always look for a balance between the two.

That is the key to building a more complete team that is able to meet all challenges that come their way, in addition to improving your employees’ performance.

Does this sound interesting? You’re at the right place, we’re about to demystify it all!

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What's in this article

• What is the difference between hard skills and soft skills?
• Hard skills: a considerable technical asset
• Soft skills: a small nuance that makes a big difference
• Why is it important to develop the two types of skills in your employees?
• How to develop hard skills vs soft skills within your company?

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What is the difference between hard skills and soft skills?

When it comes to work skills, both types of skills are essential to achieving success: hard skills vs soft skills.

What are the fundamental differences between the two types of skills?

Hard skills are job and task-specific abilities or knowledge that a person has acquired through training or experience. They can be quantified and measured and are directly related to an employee’s role. They are often referred to as ‘know-how, because they are related to task execution.

On the other hand, soft skills are the interpersonal and behavioral skills that allow a person to interact with others in an efficient manner. They are more difficult to quantify and more complex to develop in your employees, but they have a positive impact on the entire team. They are often referred to as ‘knowing how to be’, or the ability to collaborate and coexist.

Hard skills vs soft skills examples

As you see, hard skills relate to real tasks that a person has to perform. On the other hand, soft skills relate to the way a person interacts with others.

Hard skills: a considerable technical asset

Hard skills refer to all the technical or academic, specialized skills that are acquired through training or professional experience. 

Unlike soft skills, hard skills can be learned relatively easily. For example, anyone (or almost) can learn to use a specific software.

Here are some concrete hard skills examples in business:

• A developer who uses his programming know-how to create new software;
• A secretary who uses her typing speed to perform work requested by her employer;
• An accountant who uses her accounting skills for her company’s bookkeeping;
• A marketing strategist who uses his SEO skills to attract new customers to a website. 

While both types of skills are important, technical skills tend to weigh more at the beginning of one’s career. This is because they are usually necessary for job execution. 

Hard skills are essential and generally have a high added value in the labor market. They represent limited know-how because they do not take into account the way people interact with each other. 

Soft skills: a small nuance that makes a big difference

Soft skills, behavioral skills...

Whatever the name, these skills are human-centric. They include aspects like communication, collaboration and problem-solving.  

They are not only useful in specific positions, they rather apply to all positions and even to other aspects of life.

And that is why they are so crucial!

In order to be successful in their career, employees need to have not only technical skills, but also, and above all, the ability to interact with others, adapt and solve problems… 

In short, one needs all these small things that we often forget when talking about professional skills. 

However, even if they are essential, soft skills should not be mistaken for social skills. The latter is more related to how we interact with others in a personal or social context.

Here are some concrete soft skills examples in business:

• A sales representative who uses his capability to communicate to convince a client to sign a contract;
• A manager who uses her interpersonal skills to motivate her team and improve collaboration within the group;
• A developer who uses his flexibility to adapt to a new programming language;
• An assistant who uses her sense of organization to effectively manage her schedule and that of her boss.

Why is it important to develop the two types of skills in your employees?

We all agree that it is important to develop these two types of skills in your employees, in order to  increase productivity. After all, technical skills are not very useful if one does not have the interpersonal skills to apply them. 

For example, a person can be very gifted with technical work. However, if they are not able to communicate well with the other team members, they will not be very efficient. 

Similarly, a person with good interpersonal skills can not be very comfortable with tools and software. They are useful but do not help to be more creative or work better with others.

This is where behavioral skills come in. 

They are essential for good communication, collaboration and innovation. In other words, they help your employees work better together and be more creative in their problem-solving.

It is therefore important to develop these two types of skills in your employees.

How can you do it?

In order to develop your employees’ behavioral skills, you could:

• Encourage them to take risks;
• Motivate them to learn from their mistakes;
• Help them develop a common vision;
• Stimulate creativity and innovation

In order to improve your employees’ technical skills, you could:

• Provide them with a stimulating work environment;
• Encourage them to learn new things;
• Motivate them to be curious;
• Help them develop professionally

How to develop hard skills vs soft skills within your company?

Employee training is one way to provide them with the tools they need to accomplish their daily tasks. 

This includes anything related to learning, such as awareness of company rules and procedures or courses on how to use specific tools. That is exactly what you need to develop hard skills!

On the other hand, soft skill development aims to improve your employees’ performance by providing them with the tools and opportunities they need. 

It can be done through training, but also through mentoring or professional development programs. 

It is important to understand that skills development is a continuous learning process. It never ends.

In other words, investing in your employees is a long-term investment.

As a manager, it is important to give your team members the opportunity to combine training and development.

So, are you ready to get started?

Workleap LMS offers many features to help you develop your employees’ skills.

Our team can even help set up a custom action plan for your business! Contact us for a free demo.

At work, we all try to give the best of ourselves. We continually strive to improve and use our full potential in the execution of our tasks. Being efficient is part of us, of our society and of our need to always be on top. Many of us are perfectionists who don't want to deliver anything until it's "how we envisioned it". 

The idea of perfection is beautiful. Until the day it starts to play against us. Our standards of excellence become so high that we find ourselves facing a wall that is almost impossible to overcome. We are anxious, we push back the deadlines and we end up shifting towards inaction. Time flies and opportunities disappear. Because we wanted to choose the perfect travel suit, we missed the train to get there.

What makes perfectionism lead to procrastination? Above all, how do we avoid this trap and manage to deliver our projects within a reasonable time? Below are 5 easy solutions to stop procrastinating at work while maintaining a high level of quality.

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What's in this article

• Am I a perfectionist?
• Perfection versus procrastination
• How to counter procrastination?

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Am I a perfectionist?

Louise Careau, a collaborating psychologist for the Help Center for students from Laval University, sees a distinction between quality and perfection. According to her, setting high-quality standards does not always mean being a perfectionist. It is important to understand that work can be done conscientiously without intending to be perfect. It is when expectations of yourself become unattainable that you should start to worry.

By ceasing to try making everything perfect, we are already relieving ourselves of an important source of stress. Accepting that you are no longer a perfectionist is the first step in releasing yourself from a burden that has been placed on you. Louise Careau presents the characteristics of a conscientious person who ensures a high degree of excellence without excess:

• Know how to balance your efforts and establish your priorities without neglecting the importance of details.
• Remain flexible and know how to adjust your own requirements according to the importance of the activity.
• Be self-critical, accept your own mistakes and try to correct them.
• Experience pleasure and satisfaction in carrying out your projects and in achieving your personal goals.
• Glimpse the future realistically and seek to prevent difficulties. If some arise, seek and implement solutions.

Imperfection and online training

At Workleap LMS, we hear a lot from our customers that they would like to do online training. However, very few of them do it, the others being held back by their desire for everything to be perfect. It is mistakenly thought that the container greatly affects the success of training, whereas it is rather the content.

The idea of online training being impeccable seems optimal, but it is not realistic. As a content creator, we sometimes get lost in wanting to show everything to our future students. Finally, the training is so complex that the students get confused and it misses the point. Simplicity is often the key to this problem.

Perfection versus procrastination

If perfectionism arises from a noble intention, it sometimes turns into an obstacle to effective work. Sometimes too absorbed in the quest for perfection, one becomes emotional and anxious, which leads to exhaustion. This fatigue can make us more disorganized, less reliable and less disciplined. If you want to do it too well, you end up doing nothing.

How does good intention cause procrastination?

According to behavioral psychology, temporal inconsistency is the phenomenon that makes us postpone our tasks until the next day. This concept explains that the human brain prefers immediate benefits over future benefits, even if there are fewer. 

We also know that the hardest part is getting started. Generally, motivation is minimal when starting the task, but is easily maintained during execution. Knowing this, it is better to find strategies to make the benefits of beginning the task more attractive.

What seems most insurmountable in creating your online training is often to start. Here are 5 tips to help you avoid the procrastination trap and make your project a reality.

How to counter procrastination?

1. Change your way of thinking

When you are a perfectionist, you tend to be very self-critical and put a lot of pressure on yourself. Take the time to write down the negative thoughts that are holding you back and analyze them. Try to transform them so that they are more nuanced and objective. 

The idea is to come to accept that your work can be conscientious without being 100% perfect. Either way, what's perfect for you may not be perfect for everyone. You might as well learn to put the situation into perspective by yourself.

2. Bring future benefits closer to the present moment

By finding a way to make the benefits more meaningful in the present, it's easier to avoid procrastination. A popular technique for making a situation pleasant is to combine it with something that makes us feel good. The format is as follows:

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Only [action that we like] when [action that we often postpone].

Here are some examples: 

• Only [eat sushi for dinner] when [I add a new module to my online course].
• Only [go get me a coffee] when [I filmed a video for my course].
• Only [listen to my favorite podcast] when [I publish my course].

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3. Set realistic, flexible and actionable goals in the short term

Make sure your goals are accessible and achievable. You can divide a goal into small blocks to more quickly feel the satisfaction of the work accomplished. More success comes with more self-confidence, and therefore more motivation. Small progress measures help maintain your performance over the long term, and therefore encourage productivity and efficiency.

Examples of simple objectives to create your online training :

1. Create my Workleap LMS platform and adjust all the parameters
2. Gather all the existing documentation and scan it, if necessary
3. Create a training structure and attach my existing documentation to it
4. Improve the format of the content in module 1
5. …

4. Prioritize the most important actions

It is one thing to know what to do, it is another to know where to start. If you decide the same day, chances are that you will do the tasks that tempt you the most first. How to avoid this?

Make your to-do list the day before for the next day, limiting yourself to 3 or 5 actions. Put them in order in advance, that way you will know exactly where to start at the beginning of the day. Go through your list step by step, avoiding doing more than one task at a time to keep the focus.

You can also consider creating content in Agile mode.

5. Ask for feedback as you go

Rather than waiting for complete and perfect online training to make it available, create a test group. Unblock access to your content for certain users during its creation process. Even if it is not finished, they will be able to give you valuable feedback. This will help you determine what are the real priorities and thus move faster and more efficiently. You can use Workleap LMS' questionnaire tool to assess your training directly on the platform!

Will these tips help you stop procrastinating? If so, it's time to take action! Create an online training platform now.

Is your business growing well and you would like to delegate more tasks to your teams?

Would you like to make sure that your employees’ skills are aligned with your company’s future needs and your long-term vision?

Would you like to develop the skills of your most promising and ambitious employees?

Did you answer ‘yes’ to at least one of these questions? If so, you are at the right place!

We have just identified an essential element in business: developing employee skills. 

It is a proactive learning strategy that builds on employees’ professional development ambitions to improve performance, in every sense of the term. In other words, you want to give your employees the best tools so they can thrive at work and grow in their careers.

As a manager, the main goal of skill development is to bring more value to your business and bring its growth to the next level.

How can you do that? By using your most precious resource: your employees, their workforce and their willingness to acquire new skills.

Would you like to find out more ? 

Check out this guide on business skill development, which explains in detail what employee development consists of, how to set up such a strategy and what to avoid when doing so.

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What exactly is skills development? 

Skills development: Definition

Skills development is a learning process by which a company allows its employees to deepen their knowledge and improve their practice.

This approach addresses long-term needs and ambitions and is aligned with the employees’ careers.

What is the difference between employee training and skills development ?

The concepts of employee training and skills development are so intertwined that they are sometimes taken for one another. So let’s be specific!

The goal of employee training is to meet a specific need for a new skill or knowledge, in the short term, related to the position currently occupied by the employee.

On the other hand, skills development is a long-term process which aims to develop more general skills. Of course, these new skills can be put into practice quickly but the process pertains more to the long-term development of the employee’s professional career.

It can refer both to the know-how in an employee’s current field of expertise and the know-how needed for future positions that require more responsibility.

A human approach to reaching your goals

Skills development is human-oriented.

At Workleap LMS, we notice the same thing day after day: a company that achieved its organizational goals is a company that focuses on the human, because it represents its main strength.

Successful companies manage to make the most of their available skills. Above all, they involve their employees in the process, in order to truly understand their needs and support them effectively.

Why invest in skill development ?

When well executed, improving employees’ skills benefits everyone: the employees first of all, then the company. It is a lever that managers have every interest in using to improve performance both at team level and at company level.

When we talk about ‘performance’, we are not necessarily talking about dramatically increasing the number of contracts or company turnover. Rather, we focus on improving ourselves to become more efficient and productive, through better trained employees who are more fulfilled in their work.

The budget a company allocates to skills development is not just a ‘burden’ or an ‘expense’, it is a real long-term investment. Employees are the greatest wealth of a company. It is therefore natural to take care of it and maintain its value, and better yet, to improve it.

Skills development is therefore not a burden, but an investment that brings value to the company in the long run!

Who is responsible for skills development in business ?

This is a big question that we have tried to answer, and we advise you entrust the strategic vision of skills development to the operations managers, and its coordination and support to your human resources department.

Could we be forgetting a part of the equation? The most important part of it all are the employees themselves.

Remember: the career and professional development of your employees are at the heart of skills development.

And while operations management and human resources are responsible for this approach, the core rests with the employees, because they are its focus. It is up to the most motivated among them to make the best out of what the company is ready to offer them, in terms of skills and career path.

The 5 biggest benefits to developing your employees’ skills

Here are the main benefits a company can reap when implementing actions that aim to develop its employees’ skills.

1. Achieve long-term growth objectives

You probably have big dreams for your company: new products, new markets, new growth prospects… and that is normal, the human mind is always looking for more!

Improving your employees’ skills has a strategic dimension, but it also pertains to human resource management. They both go hand in hand.

In a company, learning and growth are intimately linked. And the challenge of skills development is to match the employees’ professional ambitions with the company’s organisational goals. It is a loop that benefits everyone, the employees and the company at large.

Some employees may be looking for new responsibilities, new professional challenges. Skills development makes it possible to meet their ambitions. 

Among the many impacts you can expect for your business are :

• An improved customer service quality through soft skills development
• Organizational efficiency through your managers’ leadership development
• Innovation and new ideas through intrapreneurship development

2. Delegate more responsibilities

Why should you continue to entrust everything to team leaders when some employees are motivated to take on more responsibility?

This is where skills development comes into play: it helps you delegate responsibilities to employees who have all the motivation and potential needed.

By gradually delegating higher-level tasks, managers enable employees to develop new skills and prepare for further, higher responsibilities that the company needs to address in order to achieve its growth goals. 

But remember that when it comes to skills development, there is a valuable human aspect to address: by delegating responsibilities you also improve trust between managers and employees, which is in itself a precious asset.

3. Improve performance

At Workleap LMS, we believe that ‘performance’ is not a ‘dirty word’.

When a company strives to achieve goals, they are referred to as ‘organizational goals’. Without properly trained employees, it is impossible to achieve them. Employees who are better supported and better equipped to manage projects will be more efficient, more comfortable in their role and their daily life.

For example, a company could have as an organizational goal to increase the average bill of their customers. By offering to develop the communication and persuasion skills of its sales team, the company will help them perform better and therefore increase their chances of success.

These skills can also be applied in other contexts, or even in a growth perspective (for example, becoming a department manager).

4. Increase motivation and commitment

Skills development is a corporate culture marker.

No employee likes the feeling of ‘stagnating’ in their position and not learning anything. Inversely, in a company that promotes continuous learning and advancement, employees evolve in a constructive working atmosphere. 

All this contributes to the creation of the employer brand.

Employees’ motivation is higher when they feel they are progressing. Giving employees the opportunity to develop new skills or to improve their skills opens up the possibility to entrust them with new responsibilities.

According to TeamStage, motivated employees can contribute to:

• 21% increase in profitability
• 41% reduction in absence rates
• 87% less employees leaving the company

5. Improve employee retention and save money on hiring

This brings us to a very sensitive topic : employee retention.

Thanks to their new skills, employees can apply to other positions by benefiting from internal mobility. It becomes interesting to bet on employees who have potential and need a chance to prove it.

By implementing a skills development policy, you can improve your talent management and reduce talent drain, as well as save money on the hiring process.

We all know that it is easier and less costly to retain talent rather than look for new one! In the current context of labor shortage, all companies should consider this! 

The good news is that all these benefits can accumulate their effects, provided you set up a good skills development strategy and aim for long-term results. 

The best ways to develop your employees’ skills

How to develop employees ? 

This is a question many business leaders ask. There are many different ways to develop your employees’ skills. You can even use several different methods together!

Identify relevant skills

‘Skills development’ is a hot topic, but which skills are we talking about exactly? 

It is a fact that skills are different from one company to another, and from one employee to another. Any manager who engages in an effort to improve their employee skills must first complete a skills gap analysis.

The goal: identify the critical skills that need to be developed, and which your company needs in the short, medium and long term to achieve its objectives; next, compare them with the actual skills of your teams.

This is the first step, but there is still work to be done to compare the skills the company needs to the career ambitions of your employees.

Rely on your employees’ career goals and wishes

How can you know what your employees wish for in their careers, if you don’t ask them about it?

It is impossible. That is why managers and employees must set up meetings and exchange periods to help employees identify their professional goals and create individual development plans that will define:

• The challenges that employees face in their missions and the challenges they want to take up in their career
• The means for employees to achieve their goals and meet their challenges
• The time required to achieve the goals you have identified

Take time during one-on-one meetings or annual assessments to ask these questions! 

It is one way to motivate employees and make sure the company’s goals are in line with those of its employees.

Implement individual skill development plans

After completing the skills gap analysis and collecting your employees’ expectations, you now know:

• Which skills need to be developed
• Which ones are a priority
• How many employees are concerned by your findings
• Who your most ambitious employees are, in terms of career
• etc. 

You can then develop individual skills development plans.

But concretely, how do you set this up?

There are many different ways to develop your employees’ skills, formally or informally. Both types of learning have their advantages but the big advantage of formal learning via a training platform is that you get to create a structured framework that allows each employee to achieve the set goals.

Create an enabling environment: break down barriers and keep employees motivated 

If you have read this far, it's because you have a great motivation to succeed in your skills development process. The last point we would like to emphasize is creating a favorable environment for the success of your project.

Your plan will not work in a company whose departments and teams work in silos, within a rigid structure. You must first ensure that cross-functional collaboration is possible, that exchanges are fluid and that the corporate culture is conducive to sharing and employee development, at all levels.

By eliminating work silos you can enable employees to explore new, more challenging areas and strengthen their skills.

Finally, you must communicate with your employees throughout the process, in order to give them feedback, identify elements that need improvement, and recognize success. Motivating your teams is a daily challenge!

You are wondering why we are talking about breaking down the barriers that may be in your way? To prevent you from running into traps or pitfalls.

What pitfalls to avoid ?

As previously seen, skills development is a strategic move for your company and for your employees’ well-being. How do you make this strategy pay off?

Other managers have done it before you, and we have compiled all the mistakes and behaviors to avoid.

Lack of exchange with employees

Learning new information, regardless of your position and age is a very profitable step, but it requires putting yourself in an open, welcoming position. Not all employees are ready to take this step.

So how do you go about it? By listening to what employees have to say about their careers and professional development. After all, they are in the best position to talk about their ambitions.

In other words, setting up a top-down approach is far from being the best idea.

Setting up a skills development strategy must start from the people who are the most concerned by it: your employees. You must therefore take the time to exchange with each member of the team regularly.

Lack of communication about the company’s long-term vision

We cannot repeat it enough: communication within a company is essential. It allows everyone to know what they have to do, and how to improve, if needed.

For your skills development strategy to work, you must give employees all the information they will need to achieve your organizational goals.

It is the responsibility of the team leaders to think about explaining the ‘why’ behind your actions and the potential long-term challenges. 

Fortunately, technology makes it possible to get everyone on the same page and offer them the same level of information. For example, a knowledge management system can store all the information in one place and make it accessible to all members of a company.

Lack of involvement on behalf of the managers

Within this challenge, the role of managers and team leaders is crucial. Everyone has a role to play and employees cannot handle everything, no matter how motivated they are. We should remember to maintain motivation and stimulate a culture of learning.

On the other hand, the role of managers is to encourage the development of their teams by driving the process themselves. How can an employee develop if their manager does not encourage them to do so and does not seek to continuously learn themselves? It is crucial to show employees that a skills development approach is an integral part of your corporate culture, and that it applies to all levels of your organization. 

It is time for managers to put their leadership into practice, because leadership is an essential business skill!

Lack of time

In order for it to be a profitable and pleasant experience, the skills development approach should not be seen as an additional burden or extra work that you add to your already busy schedule.

At Workleap LMS, we often say that ‘Developing new skills takes time’.

Managers must therefore give employees the time they need to learn and practice their new skills.  Practically speaking, this means that each employee must be able to reserve time for training within their schedule, even if it means encroaching a little on the time normally dedicated to productivity.

Lack of evaluation of the approach

Skills development is a long-term approach, but how can you evaluate its results?

No one likes to work in vain, of course.

You must define measurable performance indicators from the start. They will allow you to see if a strategy is effective or not, and to identify the elements that need improvement. There is also a need for regular re-analysis of the skills gap.

How can an LMS help track skills development?

‘What tools could help us develop our employees’ skills?’ Thi is a question we get asked a lot, at Workleap LMS, and our answer is a three-letter one: LMS.

What is an LMS?

You may not be familiar with the term ‘LMS’, so let’s start from the beginning. An LMS is a Learning management system. It is simply a private training platform that is specific to a company.

At the company level, using an LMS optimizes time use. Once the training is created, there is no need to start all over again. You can access it infinitely, reuse it, enhance it, and more.

On the employee level, the use of such a tool promotes autonomy, because an LMS allows them to learn at their own pace, in time slots of their choosing.

Beyond these advantages, there is an essential point that interests us: the follow-up process of your employees’ skill development. In our opinion, there are several great advantages to using an LMS to do this follow-up.

Create customized courses and training adapted to each professional path

By using an online training platform like Workleap LMS, a company can create different content depending on the skill needs and areas of expertise, the type of position or department of the employees being trained. Each employee can follow all or part of the modules, according to what has been defined with their team leader, based on their professional ambitions.

Yes, skills development places people and employees at the heart of the equation.

Employees displaying the most potential and ability to develop new skills can therefore progress more quickly, while those who need more time can do so at their own pace.

An LMS allows you to track employee progression in real time, in an individualized and personalized manner.

Track and measure employee progress

Everyone needs reliable data.

An LMS centralizes data and information. It is a tool that allows you to track the progress of each employee and generate reports. On the other hand, managers can have access to the individual progress of each employee, see the modules they are following and the scores they get. This provides indicators.

In summary, using an LMS helps to ensure that skills development fulfills its functions: to match the company’s goals with the professional ambitions of its employees, based on objective indicators.

Adjust your skills development strategy

By analyzing this information, it is possible that the company decides to modify certain elements and adjust its strategy and actions: it could choose to develop new modules, prioritize certain specific skills, etc.

For example, an LMS allows you to organize training according to different groups, to define its order and number of steps. Everything is modular and customizable, nothing is fixed!

Build a common knowledge and skills base across the company

Is your goal to get the most employees on board and involved in the growth of your business?

If it is, you will find using an LMS very helpful. It will become a reference tool for monitoring the skills development and will serve as a centralized knowledge database from which your employees can draw at any time.

You can use it to document internal expertise and work on continuous skills development!

It’s your turn!

As we have seen, skills development can be one of the biggest challenges for companies, but it is also an excellent lever that can propel your business and employees.

Do you need help structuring your skills development strategy? Contact the Workleap LMS team.

You are an expert in your field and you are ready to share your knowledge with the whole world. Creating your own online training, therefore, become a priority in your business model. 

To promote your expertise, you would like to add a quality image as a support to your training content. 

It is an excellent idea. 

The creation of visual content is intimately linked to the quality of the images we present and use. These images illustrate your point and attract the attention of your visitors. This is why it is important to choose the right visuals to use during your online training.

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What's in this article

• Choosing images for your training content
• What is a royalty-free image?
• Reuse of royalty-free images
• Free stock image banks

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Choosing images for your training content

To select your images, think about your brand and how the photos you choose are complementing it. It is recommended to keep a certain constancy in your choice of visuals to facilitate brand recognition. So take the time to establish your strategy before starting the research.

In an ideal world, you should use your own pictures or illustrations. However, we understand that not everyone has the time or the means to do so. Fortunately, there is another solution: images released by their photographers. 

In addition to being available online, there are several platforms that offer you completely free stock images. We suggest some of them at the end of this article.

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You don't like things to be complicated? Neither do we!

Workleap LMS offers an Unsplash integration which gives you quick access to their directory. You can thus insert free images for your training header image and for your training overview. No need to download the photos to publish them later!

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What is a royalty-free image?

An image is called "royalty-free" when it can be used commercially without paying a royalty to the photographer. However, one must respect the original intention of the author and respect the context of the photograph. For example, a photo of a child playing should be used to support play, family or learning content.

This is precisely what it takes you to illustrate the training you are selling and which has a commercial intention.

Searching a stock image bank

The advantage of royalty-free image banks is that they offer a wide variety of content well organized by keyword. It is therefore easy to search there and filter the results according to their relevance.

Although several stock image bank platforms are translated into French, it is faster to search in English. Feel free to make a list of keywords and translate them into English for better results.

Searching on Google

The worst thing you could do is to publish an image found on Google without verifying the source. Quebec companies have received a formal notice from Getty Images for using their images. This can be quite costly in terms of time and money, it is very unpleasant. 

Directly in the "Images" tab of the Google search engine, it is possible to add a filter. By clicking on the "Tools" button, you can select the usage rights. Thus, you can filter to see only the images that are labeled for commercial reuse.

Reuse of royalty-free images

When downloading the selected images, carefully read the related obligations. It may happen that some photos require to mention the author or to display the source. 

Sometimes it is not allowed to modify the original image, therefore adding a logo or altering the colors. If you are considering changing the look of your visuals, this is an important detail.

"Mockups" are used to change the displayed visual on a computer, tablet or smartphone. By searching for mockup images, you can enhance professional photos with your own content. 

You can also find Photoshop documents on Google that will automatically adapt your image to place it on a screen. The advantage is that your own image will integrate directly with the right size and the right angle. 

To avoid having a royalty towards the author, limit your research to images that have the CC0 license.

Free stock image banks

Here you will find our site recommendations for searching for free and royalty-free images. The images on these sites are licensed CC0 and can be used free of charge for your training without mentioning the author.

Unsplash

This is an excellent free image site. The quality level of the images is extremely high. You can subscribe to the site to receive 10 great images by email three times a month. 

There is also an Unsplash integration directly into your Workleap LMS online training platform.

Pixabay

This is certainly the site with the largest number of stock images. After Unsplash, it's our second choice.

Pexels

A very high level of quality here too. In reality, Pexels manually selects royalty-free images from a handful of sites, including Unsplash. More than 50 new images are published per week.

Gratisography

Ryan McGuire photographer routinely releases the rights to his new photos. His high-resolution images have many colors.

SplitShire

Same thing here, but this time by an Italian photographer, Daniel Nanescu. The quality level is very high and there is a lot of variety.

Jay Mantri

Jay Mantri offers very beautiful images, with a marked preference for landscapes and buildings.

Pikwizard

This site is distinguished from the others by the presence of several images of people and faces. This is something very rare in public image banks.