The ROI of Online Training for Small-to-Medium Sized Businessess

These days, nearly all businesses need some sort of means of training their current employees. Firing and hiring new staff members is too inefficient a method of infusing new knowledge into a company; the high turnover rates simply cost too much. Staying in-house, history has shown in-person training to be a very proficient learning method for employees, albeit not the most cost efficient. After all, a business and the bottom line is always king. Finding a method that yields the greatest ROI should be the goal of any successful business model.

At the end of the day, when a business is determining whether they should implement an employee training program, they need to analyze all the factors involved and decide whether the benefits of the training program will exceed its costs. For most businesses, these are the major factors that need to be taken into account:

Costs vs. Benefits of Employee Training Programs 

Costs

• Development of the training program
• Materials for students
• Administration (which include student registration fees)
• Faculty salary
• Promotion of the training program

Benefits 

• Increase in productivity
• Labor savings
• Training that leads to better, more innovative ideas

Countless studies have shown that a well integrated training program leads to both tangible and intangible perks for a business. The key then is finding the type of training that will lead to the greatest profit relative to its investment.

Online Training as a Solution 

Enter online training, the relatively new practice that has seen countless businesses see a significant spike in productivity after implementing a robust online training software. Small-to-medium sized businesses specifically have seen an improved ROI when training staff using an online LMS as opposed to setting up in-person training seminars. It also reduces or entirely removes some of the aforementioned costs, while retaining its benefits, making it a very favorable training method when carrying out a cost-benefit analysis.

When observing companies with fewer than 1000 employees, our research has shown that:

• In-person training seminars cost nearly 10x more per trainee than training employees online.
• Web-based training reaches a significantly greater number of users.
• Online training takes up 50% less time to complete than in-person training.
• Travel costs are reduced by approximately 40% with online training.
• Different trainees were able to learn the content at different times when using an online course software as opposed to trainees who missed an in-person training seminar thereby, being unable to learn the material at a later time.

Keep in mind that the effort taken to promote either method is nearly the same, yielding a far superior bang-for-buck when training employees online,

Taking a look at these statistics, it’s hard not to introduce an online training software to the employees of your small or medium sized business. Their training will cost less, reach more of them and take less time to learn. Don’t underestimate how beneficial this time compression is to your profit margins as it improves your company’s ROI via savings from reduced salary paid to trainers, as well as savings in opportunity cost.

Check out how SkyPrep can boost your company’s ROI using our online course software.