How One Company Saved $1.4 Million With Virtual Training

by Tom Masotto November 10, 2015
November 10, 2015

training event


In an increasingly global marketplace, ongoing corporate training is critically important. Companies that succeed long term will be the ones that make the most effective use of available resources, and the best way to do this is to have well-educated employees, partners, and customers. To do so, organizations continually must train their audiences — including the rapidly growing numbers of remote workers — to ensure that they have the most current knowledge, skills, and information. Corporate HR and training departments are looking for new approaches to corporate learning that scale effectively, especially cost-effective options that have global reach, offer social learning, and include collaboration tools.


The Changing Face of Corporate Training
The rise of virtual learning environments reflects the need for companies to deliver training materials that are easier to use, more interactive and engaging, and accessible anytime, anywhere, on any device. Companies must also provide varied levels and types of learning programs and content (e.g., centralized, functional, and geography-specific). Finally, given limited budgets, the new training programs must be more cost-effective than traditional learning methods.


The rise in popularity of virtual learning environments is a clear response to these business needs. By combining engaging virtual locations, breakout rooms, live webcasts, social networking, and other collaboration tools, virtual learning environments create a highly adaptable and engaging learning experience for wide-ranging training needs. Moreover, it does so while allowing employees, partners, and clients access to training courses anytime, anywhere. This provides an enormous competitive advantage, to companies looking to train and scale up employees spread across global locations.


Virtual learning environment benefits include the ability to:



  • Provide a more intuitive, engaging learning experience
  • Reduce training costs by up to 90%
  • Add social learning and mobile learning to established training programs
  • Establish a single access point for courses and ongoing training
  • Offer more effective coaching and mentoring to new employees

A Virtual Training Case Study: Sodexo
Take a page from Sodexo, who transitioned from in-person training sessions to a virtual learning environment for its sales leadership training. Sodexo’s virtual environment, delivered via the ON24 platform, provides an entertaining and engaging training experience that combines live virtual classrooms with self-paced training, performance tools, and job aids. Social networking, expert chats, gamification, and prizes are also included to boost user engagement, with prizes awarded for “sharing your inspiration” and others for participating in contests.


By avoiding the high cost of in-person training for its 4,500 sales leaders, Sodexo generates more than $ 1.4 million in cost savings annually. Its sales training is also now more impactful, valuable, and accessible, as self-paced training is available on-demand and year-round. Attendance in the live training sessions has increased from 50% to over 90%! In addition, 70% of employees say that they have learned new skills from the materials in the virtual environment.


The Sodexo example illustrates how virtual learning environments allow HR and training managers to provide highly-relevant learning content and an engaging experience to employees, partners, and customers anytime, anywhere, and on any device — resulting in notable decreased costs and training outcomes that far surpass conventional in-person training programs.

Business & Finance Articles on Business 2 Community

(104)

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.