Using the Internet to train and retain employees is becoming more critical with the slowdown in the economy, and companies need this edge to thrive, says an e-learning expert with telecommunications and networking giant Cisco Systems.
Diane Bauer, who spoke in Calgary recently at a seminar on the economic benefits of e-learning, believes there’s a new urgency for companies to adopt Internet-enabled learning for their employees.
“Think about the impact that the downturn has had on companies . . . if you downsize your employee base, the other side of the coin is that you’re not doing any more hiring,” says Bauer, senior marketing manager for e-learning for California-based Cisco Systems Inc.
“In effect, you have the employees that are going to help you succeed in a very tough time. The employees left inside your company are going to have to work harder, better and smarter at either maintaining your market share, growing it, and certainly not losing it.”
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| David Lazarowych, Business Edge |
| Cisco's Diane Bauer says online learning can help bottom line. |
Cash-strapped businesses are also cutting back on travel expenses — and that means fewer employees able to attend out-of-city seminars to update work skills and knowledge and less money for “experts” to be flown in for in-house training.
Bauer notes that the senior executive team at Cisco, which is undergoing its own downsizing in a difficult market, quickly embraced the importance of communicating company strategies, decisions and goals to its employees.
E-learning is different from its predecessors of corporate training and education — whose measurements were often limited to whether an employee had taken a particular course — because it ties the learning back into the bottom line of the company, she says.
“If we can demonstrate that the more competent, capable, and confident an employee is in a specific job role, we can begin to tie that back into productivity, higher customer satisfaction and greater revenue gains,” says Bauer.
There’s been a sea-change from the old attitude that investing in employee skills or certification would increase the risk of the newly-educated employee finding a better-paid job elsewhere, she adds.
