When launching online training, establish specific objectives first

The broad objective of training employees is always pretty clear: help them develop new skills and improve existing knowledge. However, it's crucial that businesses dig deeper than these surface-level objectives when developing and implementing online training initiatives. By having specific goals, companies will be better able to tailor informative and valuable sessions and programs.

For example, take Dealer.com. The $50 million company produces and maintains websites for car dealers. However, at the height of its expansion efforts, the company discovered it was adding employees so quickly that its existing training programs weren't matching the pace of its growth. As a result, the talent pipeline got clogged up.

“We realized we had a lot of information employees needed to learn and we just weren't going to be able to deliver it in a timely manner with day-to-day classroom training,” director of digital marketing at Dealer.com Matt Murray told Inc. magazine. “We had to have an agile enough system to support employee growth.”

Dealer.com knew the problem: its current training programs weren't able to bring new hires up to speed in a timely fashion. This led the business to implement an online training course that could deliver information to new recruits at a faster pace. Through this online training program, the company was able to offer more than 100 different sessions that taught new employees everything from basic use of Microsoft Office to industry-specific business skills.

By understanding precisely what it needed from its training program, Dealer.com was able to create the perfect curriculum that helped to maximize the value derived from its new online courses.

Identifying your company needs

The takeaway from the Dealer.com scenario is clear: Your business needs to know what it wants to get out of its training program before you can create or implement one that best suits your needs.

Are you trying to reduce the travel expenses of shipping new recruits to a regional training facility? Are you aiming to avoid having to rent off-site locations because your business is too small to have a dedicated training room? Do you want to expedite the length of time it takes to bring new employees up to speed? Are you trying to automate training so your key executives and leaders don't have to devote as much time to it?

Seriously sit down and contemplate what you hope to accomplish with your training scenarios, and let these objectives guide you through creation and implementation.