Enterprise eLearning: what it is and why your business needs it

For every $1 a business spends on e-learning, they see a $30 return on productivity (Steve Olenski. Why C-Levels Need To Think About ELearning And Artificial Intelligence. Forbes. 2017). But this is not the only benefit you can get from enterprise e-learning. It also makes your workforce better positioned to support your business, which ultimately improves your bottom line.

That being said, implementing e-learning is not as easy as it sounds. You have to create programs that feel personal, are effective, and align with your long-term goals, and this blog post will help you with exactly that.

Now, let’s begin by understanding what enterprise e-learning is. 🤩

Summary

1. What is enterprise e-learning?
2. What are the benefits of enterprise e-learning for organizations?
   • Cost savings
   • Scalability
   • Engagement and retention
   • Consistency
   • Reduce turnover
3. What are the key components of an effective enterprise e-learning program?
   • Engaging and interactive content
   • Personalization and adaptive learning
   • Scalable technology infrastructure
   • Analytics and reporting tools
4. How to implement enterprise e-learning in your organization
   • 1. Define clear learning objectives
   • 2. Choose the delivery methods for learning
   • 3. Localize and personalize learning experiences
   • 4. Train managers and encourage leadership involvement
   • 5. Measure success and continuously optimize 
5. The challenges of enterprise e-learning and how to overcome them
   • Resistance to change
   • Budget and resource limitations
   • Keeping content updated
   • Ensuring data security and compliance
6. Examples and use cases of enterprise e-learning
   • Technical training through simulations
   • Compliance and regulatory learning 
   • Leadership and soft skills development
7. How to choose the right enterprise e-learning partner
   • Key evaluation criteria
   • Questions to ask vendors
   • Balancing customization and scalability
8. How can Blue Carrot help?

What is enterprise e-learning?

Organizations use enterprise e-learning to educate their employees. So, it is also sometimes known as corporate or organizational training.

E-learning programs come in different formats. They can be digital courses, interactive modules, videos for corporate trainings, assessments, or a combination of formats.

A few examples of e-learning at work include compliance and regulatory courses, global workforce training, and leadership and soft skills development training.

What are the benefits of enterprise e-learning for organizations?

Enterprise e-learning, on the surface, might look like it’s beneficial just for the employees. However, it offers tons of benefits to businesses in the long run. Here are the top five reasons why businesses rely on it.

📌 Cost savings

One of the first benefits organizations notice is how much money they save by moving training online.

When training employees the traditional way, you might have to print documents, rent venues to host the event, and pay the instructor. If your employees work from different locations, you may also have to cover their travel expenses or plan an entire offline training in their branch.

Online or blended enterprise e-learning eliminates some of the expenses, as once you build an e-learning program, you can use it as many times as you want, update it easily, and plan for localization early on, saving resources for other endeavors.

📌 Scalability

Traditional lecture-based offline learning typically requires all employees to be present in the same location. With enterprise e-learning, you can create a course and distribute it among 10 or 1,000s of your employees.

Based on our experience, this is a great advantage for businesses with a global workforce, as employees in all locations can access learning equally.

📌 Engagement and retention

E-learning programs use elements that keep the learners engaged. Most digital courses use a microlearning design approach, creating shorter modules so learners don’t feel overwhelmed and lose attention. You might have also noticed how video lessons often use animations to explain the content.

When a learner can truly focus on a digital course, they tend to remember the information better. It’s much like reading through a PDF vs. practicing decision making in simulations. You would absorb and recall the information better in the latter situation than in the former.

📌 Consistency

Different trainers may teach the same content differently. So, with traditional training, it’s hard to provide all your employees with the same quality of training.

With enterprise e-learning, you can create a course and send it to your entire workforce. This way, all your employees receive the same information and standard, no matter where they work from.

📌 Reduce turnover

When your employees see that you’re investing in their growth, they tend to stay longer. A recent survey proved this fact, where 82 percent (CareerAddict. 82% of Employees Would Quit Their Jobs Because of No Progression, CareerAddict Study Reveals. CNW Group. 2020) of employees said that they wouldn’t quit their job if they were given opportunities for career growth.

What are the key components of an effective enterprise e-learning program?

If you want your enterprise e-learning program to be successful, it should have the following elements.

👉 Engaging and interactive content

Rather than text-heavy PDFs or traditional slides, you should focus on using interactive elements in your e-learning program. Only then will you be able to keep the audience hooked.

We did something similar for Studio SE, where we created a technical training course for engineers and product architects. To make the highly technical topics less overwhelming, we combined instructional videos with interactive activities and built-in custom simulations. This made the lessons easier to understand and remember. 

Parametric Diagrams

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👉 Personalization and adaptive learning

Every learner is unique. So the e-learning programs you create should be designed to adapt to a specific learner’s preferences. This can be through role-based paths or branched scenarios.

The Job Role Explorer project we did for Gen Z students used role-based paths. We designed the program in a way that allowed the learners to pick the role in solar energy they wanted to explore. They were then presented with an interactive “day-in-the-life” experience, which helped them figure out whether or not a profession aligned with their skills and interests.

Gen-Z E-learning course

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Similarly, in the Healthy Relationship course we built for the UNFPA, we used branched scenarios — what the learners see next depends on their previous choices. The course starts with a pre-test, and based on that, sends them down different learning paths. This ensures the content is much more relevant to the learner.

Healthy relations

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👉 Scalable technology infrastructure

If your employees can’t access the enterprise e-learning program you created, then all your efforts will be in vain. To make sure this doesn’t happen, you need the course to be compatible with your learning management system (LMS) and your HR systems.

An LMS helps host content, enroll users, track progress, and manage completion, while the HR systems help with role assignment and onboarding.

👉 Analytics and reporting tools

After launching an e-learning program, you should measure metrics like completion rates, learner progress, dropout rates, etc., to see what’s working and what’s not. You can also use feedback forms to get your employees’ thoughts on the course. These insights will help you double down on strong areas and correct weak spots in the course.

How to implement enterprise e-learning in your organization

If you plan on rolling out an enterprise e-learning course, here are five practical steps to help.

1. Define clear learning objectives

Before getting into tools or formats, start by thinking about the reason behind the online course creation. Is it to onboard your employees? Is it to keep them updated on compliance standards? Or, do you want to teach your workforce a new skill?

If it’s skill training, you should think about the competencies your employees and organization would benefit from. At this point, also consider who’ll be using the program and the languages you’d like to create the program in — the sooner you plan all the aspects at the beginning, the more cost effective the production will be in the end.

2. Choose the delivery methods for learning

Based on our observation, a lot of businesses are unaware that the completion rate of an e-learning program will depend on the way it’s delivered. Typically, businesses have three formats to choose from:

• Synchronous learning – Your employees have to attend the training in real time, but virtually.
• Asynchronous learning – You create a course, and your employees complete it at their own pace.
• Blended learning – A combination of both. You can have your employees complete a self-paced module first and then attend a live Q&A session to get answers to any questions they might have.

You should also think about device compatibility, especially with asynchronous learning. Some of your employees may want to watch the video lessons while commuting on their smartphones, while others might prefer their iPads. So, you should design the e-learning courses to deliver the same user experience no matter what the device.

3. Localize and personalize learning experiences

If a company has employees who aren’t native English speakers, there might be a need to launch the e-learning program in more than one language. The same applies to skill and experience levels. An entry-level employee won’t benefit from a course made for senior-level personnel.

So, personalize and localize the learning experience wherever possible. This, however, means that rather than just translating the text, you should be adjusting the examples, terminology, visuals, and even scenarios to fit employee backgrounds.

4. Train managers and encourage leadership involvement

This is often one step that a lot of enterprises skip. If you don’t show your employees why an e-learning program matters in the first place, chances are that they won’t consider the course important.

One way to do this is by having managers and employees in leadership roles promote the program internally. They can hold team discussions or offer incentives for completing a course. Train-the-trainer is a different approach altogether. In many cases, it becomes a separate course built specifically to prepare internal instructors, which is especially useful if you’re planning a blended or synchronous learning program.

5. Measure success and continuously optimize 

After you create and launch an enterprise e-learning program, frequently track completion rates, assessment scores, and get learner feedback to measure its success. These insights will tell you if your course is working the way it should, and if it’s not, you can make the necessary changes to make it better.

The challenges of enterprise e-learning and how to overcome them

Based on our experience, one fact we know is that most organizations struggle with at least one of the following challenges when trying to create and launch an enterprise e-learning program.

📌 Resistance to change

Humans naturally resist change. So, you shouldn’t be surprised when your employees hesitate to switch from traditional to digital learning. They might be worried about how the new platform works or if it will add to their job responsibilities.

Don’t get frustrated, and instead motivate them to embrace the change.

Pro tips:

• Talk to your employees about the importance of the new system.
• Help them get familiar with the system through an onboarding session.
• Continuously offer support by using elements like FAQ hubs.

📌 Budget and resource limitations

Many companies lack an L&D budget and a dedicated internal team, two factors that are necessary for building enterprise e-learning programs.

Pro tips:

• Don’t build everything at once. Start with what’s most important and then roll out other programs in phases.
• Use reusable components like templates to save costs.
• Have your internal subject matter experts (SMEs) be instructors or help in writing the program.

📌 Keeping content updated

Content becomes outdated faster than people realize. It’s easier to ask organizations to pay close attention to changes in policies, product lines, etc., in order to keep the program updated. However, putting this into action is tough.

Pro tips:

• Run quarterly or biannual content reviews.
• Break the e-learning program down into smaller modules. So if only a part needs to be updated, you can do so without deconstructing the entire course. 
• Use a centralized system so SMEs can coordinate and update the materials easily. 

📌 Ensuring data security and compliance

When you’re educating your employees at scale, especially across regions, privacy and data protection are two things you should be worrying about. Since your workforce uses the e-learning platform to access programs, a lot of their information, plus your business information, might be stored there.

If you don’t remain compliant with relevant global or local regulations, like GDPR, SOC 2, or ISO 27001, even the slightest cybersecurity threats can lead to huge penalties and reputational damage.

Pro tips:

• Make sure the LMS you use has features like encryption and access controls.
• Educate your employees about security best practices like password management, recognizing phishing attacks, etc.

Examples and use cases of enterprise e-learning

Now, let’s take a look at some examples and use cases of enterprise e-learning so you can better understand the concept.

👉 Technical training through simulations

The best way to help your employees grasp technical topics is through simulations. The Studio SE project we mentioned earlier, for example, posed a similar challenge.

Their original program was a six-day instructor-led course on systems engineering and SysML. They wanted to turn this program into a self-paced online course and an advanced module delivered by the expert to meet the increasing demand. This was challenging because we had to design the online course without losing two vital elements: real-time interaction and hands-on practice.

So, we came up with a custom, browser-based simulator that allowed learners to practice modeling, and paired that with real-world scenarios, which gave them the chance to apply the theories to problems they’d face in their roles. We even created an AI avatar of the original instructor to keep the course more human.

👉 Compliance and regulatory learning 

Regulatory rules undergo updates every now and then. So, using traditional methods to train employees on compliance best practices wouldn’t be a good idea due to their limitations.

When digitally training employees, you’ll be creating a course that’s standard and relevant. These courses give organizations a reliable way to deliver mandatory training to large teams, track who’s completed what, and update content quickly when regulations change. For such courses, you can use animations, case studies, or scenario-based training methods to make the concept easier for your employees to understand and apply in practice.

👉 Leadership and soft skills development

These e-learning programs focus on everyday skills: communicating in teams, giving feedback to managers and employees, managing conflict in the workplace, motivating others, etc. This helps your entire workforce collaborate more efficiently, which leads to better collective performance.

You might also want to create a library with multiple courses. This way, your employees can choose to do a course whenever they feel like. Occasionally, try to host live virtual sessions to further strengthen the experience.

How to choose the right enterprise e-learning partner

📌 Key evaluation criteria

You should be extremely careful when choosing an enterprise e-learning partner because they’ll be the ones shaping how your people learn. Here’s a checklist to help you find the right fit.

1. They should have handled programs similar to the courses you plan to create.
2. They should be able to create e-learning programs in different formats.
3. When asked, they should be comfortable walking you through their production process.
4. You should be able to integrate the course they create with your LMS, and it should be multi-device compatible.
5. They should be experienced in creating multilingual programs and in creating role-based learning paths.
6. They should prioritize proper communication and stick to timelines.
7. They should be honest about what can be done within your budget and should help prioritize what to build first and how to scale.

📌 Questions to ask vendors

Ask these questions to the vendors you have in mind to get a better understanding of how they work.

• Can you tell me about a similar project you have worked on? What were the client’s requirements, and what did you create?
• Which industries have you worked in previously?
• Do you have experience creating e-learning projects in multiple formats? If yes, in which formats?
• Will I be able to integrate the course you create into our LMS and HR systems?
• Can you optimize the content for various devices?
• How involved can we be in the production process, and what does it look like?
• Will you be able to help us brainstorm corporate video ideas? 
• How do you handle the communication/ how will you keep us updated about the progress?
• Can you do revisions?
• Will you be able to localize the content for multiple regions?
• Will you help us update the content once a course is created and launched?
• What’s your pricing?

📌 Balancing customization and scalability

Balancing scalability and customization is one of the trickiest situations businesses face when creating e-learning programs. Based on our practical knowledge, three ways that help overcome this challenge are:

• Creating reusable modules that can be mixed and matched;
• Designing courses with personalized learning paths so each employee gets to see content relevant to their role, experience, and skill level; and
• Using analytics to see what’s working and what’s not to make necessary changes.

How can Blue Carrot help?

Blue Carrot is a full-cycle e-learning company that specializes in creating custom experiences that make knowledge actionable. Here are three reasons why enterprises choose us for their e–learning projects.

1. – We support organizations through every stage of the process. We work with them throughout the entire creation process, from defining the learning objectives to suggesting an outline and creating the course. In addition, if they need to make changes to the course in the future, we’ll be just a call or email away.
2. – We design learning that creates real behavior change. Our approach is grounded in years of instructional design experience, where we begin each project with clear objectives and practical workflows in mind. When possible, we run soft launches to gather early data and make focused improvements.
3. – We deliver high-quality content at scale with speed and flexibility. We aren’t scared of AI. Instead, we embrace it to streamline production and maximize our efficiency. Through our global team of experts based across the US, EU, and Eastern Europe, we ensure smooth communication across time zones and dependable delivery for enterprise-level needs.

Learn more about our e-learning content development solutions or reach out to us with your