Thanks to the digital age, the way in which we learn and solve problems has quickly adapted. Online video sites such as YouTube now mean that we can find the answers to our problems in much more visual ways.
This way of learning is particularly intuitive to millennials and post-millennials, who have grown up using the internet as an assistant to their traditional classroom learning environment. In fact, a recent study by Millennial Branding and Internships.com found that half of U.S. college students felt that they didn’t even need a traditional classroom setting to learn.
In a business startup environment, learning becomes part of the fabric of your day-to-day life. Whether it’s Googling questions in relation to your taxes or finding out how to market your business in the most efficient way, the chances are you’ll look online for your answer. Some even take online classes to broaden their knowledge and become a top choice when it comes to promotion.
This method is not only practical but also cost effective, especially compared to taking an evening course at a local college or even going back to university.
To help you to see why you should be pushing towards online learning for yourself and your workforce in a business startup, we’ve compiled a quick list of some of its most obvious benefits, below:
It Could Save You Money
As we touched upon above, the cost of online learning is comparably low in comparison with a classroom learning environment.
Many online learning platforms, such as Udemy, make upgrading the skills of your workforce for relatively little outweigh achievable.
Of course, if you operate in a niche field, you may need to set up your own online learning environment. While the initial cost for such a piece of software may be high, it will quickly pay for itself thanks to the fact it can be continually used to teach new members of staff.
It Makes Learning Flexible
If you’re worried about how much learning a new skill may impact on your staff’s productivity, there’s always the option of offering to pay for an online course or license for them to complete in their own time.
Learning is one of the key ways to keep a workforce engaged, so this approach is likely to boost both your staff retention rates and your businesses’ profits in the long run.
It can be Continually Adapted
Thanks to advances in technology, the world around us is changing on a daily basis. This means that what we learn today could be obsolete by tomorrow. This is particularly true for the technology, sciences, and marketing sectors, where staff continually have to keep their fingers on the pulses of the latest industry developments.
Thankfully, unlike textbooks, online learning sources are relatively easy to update. That means the content that you and your staff learn can always be relevant to the work that they’re being asked to do.
Not only that, this adaptability means that any new equipment, such as the increasing popularity of virtual reality headsets, can be incorporated into an online learning space.