For those in the business of selling online courses and education, you’ll understand that it can be a lot harder than it seems to be regarded as one of the best.

So, how can you get your name out there and show potential students that you’re offering a quality course in a crowded market? There are a few basic things to check off before you get to the final stage of marketing your course, and they’re a lot simpler than you might have thought.

With these tips under your belt, you can be confident in your ability to sell courses and promote your unique elearning experience:

Before you can even begin to think about the content of your courses, you should first understand who your potential audience is. When you imagine a virtual classroom full of new students, what is it they are there to learn? Why do they want to learn it, and what is their end goal for what they want to achieve?

Think also about the various walks of life they might come from, and ensure that you’re molding the course content to meet the right demographics. One of the best features of elearning is the flexibility it offers students, which means it can be adapted to suit just about any background.

Research published in Forbes found that employees these days are craving a more flexible work-life balance—and this includes their workplace training and education—so you need to make it fit for everyone. By getting a clear picture of the intended audience, you can then work on creating your quality content.

While it’s all well and good to promote yourself as a serious contender in the elearning space, without the quality content in your courses you simply won’t gain much traction. If you promote yourself as the next big thing in online courses and then fail to see through your promises, your business reputation can suffer.

There are a few simple ways to ensure you have quality content and if you can answer yes to each of these questions then you’ll be on the right track:

Are there clear objectives and learning outcomes in your course content?

Can the information be easily absorbed by a student?

Does the course come in a range of interactive materials to keep students engaged?

Do you repeat the key points and objectives throughout the syllabus?

Can this course be accessed by people from all different walks of life, and with the freedom to study where and when they choose? 

These few questions identify the markers of a good online course, and when you know that yours ticks all of the boxes it’ll be even easier to sell it to potential students (and investors too!) Not only will your course content need to be engaging, but it should give the learner something they can’t get anywhere else.

With thousands of online courses popping up every day, imagine how confusing it can be for a potential student to separate the good content from the bad—so to be successful you may need to have a unique edge or offer that can’t be matched by competitors.

Think about your company: do the staff offer something unique with their years of experience? Are you taking a new approach to elearning that hasn’t been done before? Have you found an untapped area of the market that you believe will make you the next big thing?

This is where you need to pool it together and come up with something special that your brand can offer, so understanding the space you are in is extremely important.

While it’s all well and good to have your own course up and ready, you need to understand online courses and how these digital classrooms differ from traditional education means. Whether it’s for workplace training or personal study reasons, you should have hard data to prove why this medium is growing in popularity.

For example, studies have shown that a third of managers believe their current digital learning offerings do not suit what their company believes in and therefore they fail to use it as often as they should.

This is a huge indicator for the need to have more specific course content to suit your intended audience. Once you have your content, and the facts and figures to back it up, you’re able to promote your learning experience much more effectively.

Now that you have your online courses ready to sell, you should address your marketing strategy. Since your students will be learning on a digital platform, this is a great place to engage with them.

Use social media, a dedicated website, a blog, and more to keep your online presence known, even when you aren’t actively promoting your course. Always stay in touch with potential students during and after a sale to let them know you’re truly invested in their success.

A market research report recently announced that the global elearning market is set to grow over 17% over the next 3 years, so it’s a smart area to be on board with.

However, without the right know-how behind your brand and an understanding of exactly what you offer your students, your venture will flounder. Follow the steps we’ve laid out for you here and things will be much smoother sailing in the long run!

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Tips that will help you sell more online courses

On Thursday Match 2nd The Bay Area Learning Design & Technology Meetup group met for the first time in 2017. Rather than just having speakers appear at our meetups, we run a range of events across the year to create an interactive and collaborative environment in which all of our members have a voice. Leaning on one of our most popular themes from the previous year, we kicked things off with a Themes From a Hat event.

Themes From a Hat is an interesting format. We have all attendees vote on which topics that they would like to learn more about prior to the meetup taking place, and then on the night - the top 4 most popular topics will form breakout groups in which discussions are moderated by industry leaders. The night is composed of 4 15 minute sessions, allowing all members to experience each group and contribute to the discussion.

For this meetup the topics were LMS, Measuring Learning, Social Learning and Learning design.

Given my experience in Learning Management System, I was given the task of moderating that particular group and wanted to share some of the findings from the discussion.

To kick things off and get the conversation flowing I posed a few questions to the group to learn more about their experience with learning management systems:

What experiences users having with their current platforms

Before we even get started, leading a discussion around LMS can be tough as for a lot of members in the group – they are frustrated with their current platform. The positive side of this is that this group can share ways in which to improve the way that they use their system.

While there were a number of members that we’re not having a good experience with their current LMS, we did find out a few features that people we’re excited about. The first of these was being able to sync up their LMS with their HR management system to ensure that user data is automatically transferred between to the two platforms.

The second item was around gamifying the experience and offering rewards. The ability to distribute badges to user upon reaching a goal (completing a course or a series of courses) was one of the most popular aspects for some people in the group.

From here the conversation shifted from what people like about their LMS, to what new or existing features should be developed to improve the learning experience.

One of the key elements that arose from this part of the discussion was the lack of customization in reporting. While reporting is available in all systems, the options available do not provide the range of data in which L&D managers need to adequately track and asses the success of both the content and program they run.

After the introduction of online courses, classroom learning initially took a downturn, however blended learning is now starting to make it’s way into most companies, but tracking a learners progress across both the classroom and online components of their training is still tough in a number of systems. Being able to do this all in the one platform would be a great addition for managers.

A lot of our members are generating their own content as it has been too difficult to purchase and import outside content into their platform, but with the increased amount of content now available through subject matter experts – being able to import these courses into their platform would be a huge advantage and something that administrator are looking forward to being a standard feature in the future.

In the 4 groups that had discussions throughout the evening there was at least one person in each group who was a complete newcomer to learning management systems. To help these people understand more about the uses of LMS’s we opened up the floor for discussion around what are the key factors that should be considered when selecting a new LMS provider.

Easy to create custom content and import purchased content

If you can ensure that these features are included in your selection process you are going to have a much smooth learning process from implementation all the way through to managing and tracking learners.

As you can see, we have some great insights form the conversations that took place at the meetup and we can see some clear patterns around what people want to see happening in the LMS space. Hopefully as organizations continue to develop we will see more learning management systems taking these items on board and providing a great learning experience for everyone involved.

If you would like to join or learn more about the Bay Area Learning Design & Technology Meetup click here

What do people want from their Learning Management System?

Gone are the days when classrooms and studying were reserved for children and young adults, with a wave of older learners increasing and changing the landscape of the education system forever. More and more adults these days are enrolling in studies, whether it be for personal gain, a career move, or to learn more about their current role.

So, what constitutes an adult learner? Generally speaking, we class anyone over the age of 24 as an adult learner, and there’s really no limit to when you can stop. As older students can gain a whole range of benefits from studying when compared to their younger counterparts, we’ve compiled some fascinating facts about adult learning. It just might be the news you’ve been looking for to motivate you toward your next exciting chapter.

Studies have found that learning when you’re over 60 can have amazing effects on the brain. For older students, engaging in study is not only great for their minds but can help them socialize too. With many older people feeling isolated, particularly as they leave the workforce, enrolling back into study can be a great way to connect with like-minded people.

With a great deal of learning nowadays done online, these virtual classrooms offer a unique blend of students so that you can meet people from all walks of life. Older students, international learners, stay at home mothers, and more now make up what a regular classroom looks like. So, just how many students these days fall into the adult learner category?

According to the US Department of Education study conducted in 2012, the statistics for what a normal student looks like these days has changed quite significantly, with adult learners making up 40% of undergraduate students. That number is expected to have grown significantly since then, with a previous 4% increase since 2008 indicating a huge shift in student’s ages.

These numbers show that although younger people still make up the majority of students, more and more students over 24 are interested in improving themselves. Whether it’s for a job promotion, career change, or personal interest, these statistics show that the thirst for knowledge doesn’t just disappear when you turn 24.

A Large Majority of Adults Are Personal Learners

When you hear the word student you automatically assume someone who is pursuing an education to better themselves academically or for a career move. However, it’s been shown that up to 74% of adult learners are studying for personal reasons.

The world of education has changed significantly over the last 20 years, with a greater shift towards online and digital learning. This has given people greater freedom to study than ever before and allowed for a much more personalized approach to education. In a digital classroom, nobody knows your age regardless, so there’s no need feel left out of the pack.

Whether you’re looking to get ahead at work, try an entirely new field altogether, or just want to learn more about a topic that interests you, you’re never too old to learn something new. As an added bonus, you’ll also be schooled on new technologies so that you can stay in the loop with trends in the digital age, and be introduced to a range of like-minded and diverse students.

Top facts about adult learning: it’s never too late to start

We recently took a look at the under-representation of women in leadership and the lack of equality this brings to the global workforce.

As we celebrated and acknowledged International Women’s Day, it was also important to draw attention to the under-representation of women in the areas of science, technology, engineering and maths – known as STEM. Unfortunately, in 2017 women are still significantly outnumbered when it comes to working in STEM-related studies and careers, making up only one in four IT graduates and fewer than one in 10 engineering graduates.

Many organisations are doing their best to address this gender imbalance, yet more work is needed to dismantle the unconscious bias that often exists towards women in these industries. How then, can we accelerate gender parity and move towards a more equal and diverse workforce?

Supporting the Education of Women in STEM 

Championing women’s education is a large part of addressing gender disparity. In support of this, the Australian Government recently announced $3.9 million in funding to 24 organisations to rollout projects that will encourage girls and women to study and pursue careers in STEM.

One of these organisations is Melbourne-based Girl Geek Academy, an Australian startup actively working to inspire and engage more young girls in technology and coding. Through its one-day events, online training and ongoing support, Girl Geek Academy aims to increase early awareness and participation of girls and women in STEM.

We talked to co-founder Tammy Butow about her motivation for creating Girl Geek Academy and her own experience working in the tech industry as an engineer and Site Reliability Engineering Manager at Dropbox.

The Under-Representation of Women at Tech Events

Tammy attended her first hackathon in 2009, flying up to Sydney from Melbourne for the OpenAustralia Hack Weekend at Google. At the event, she noticed there were hardly any women at all.

“I wondered why there were not many women at the event while I was there. I thought it was tons of fun and I was able to learn so much in a compressed weekend. It was awesome having engineers from Google and other companies offer to teach and share their knowledge,” Tammy says.

On returning to Melbourne, she decided to create her own events and workshops for women to learn.

“I went back to Melbourne and in 2011 I started running programming workshops. Over the years, I got more and more practice and met other women who were passionate about improving the world too. I decided to ask them to create a new company with me called Girl Geek Academy, asking Sarah, April, Lisy and Amanda to be my co-founders.”

As Tammy explains, each founder brings their own awesome and unique skills to the company.

Inspiring Girls and Women Across Australia to Learn Coding

Miss Makes Code – the world’s first hackathon for 5-8 year old girls

SheHacksVic – a hackathon for women who are hackers, hustlers and hipsters to get together and launch their own business or build something really innovative

Promoting Gender Equality in the Tech Industry

“Yes certainly. I have also experienced it myself and there is a ton of research to support this. It's important to call things out when they happen. I practice calling out horrible things that happen to me or other women each day. With practice, you will get more comfortable calling things out,” she says.

“If you do not feel safe calling out the person directly then try to tell somebody you trust. Find out if your company has a HRBP (HR Business Partner) or EAP (Employee Assistance Program). Take time to get to know your HR team so you can understand how they can support you. Many companies have a confidential EAP you can use.”

Tammy also believes men must play a role in addressing gender bias in the workplace and becoming better champions for equality. She recommends following the Twitter account Better Male Allies (@betterallies) for great advice on how to support your female colleagues, and taking a few moments to watch the videos on malechampionsofchange.com.

With one last question, we asked Tammy for her top tip for young girls and women who are keen to pursue a career in the tech industry.

“Don't settle for a bad workplace or bad mentors,” she says. “Find amazing people that will support you and help you learn and grow. They are out there.

“Come along to our Girl Geek Academy events to meet amazing people that will help you grow. We are a friendly and welcoming community. We have connections to companies where they do not tolerate harassment or workplace bullying. We can help you be a great engineer.”

Girl Geek Academy: supporting women in technology

Many people use the words education and training somewhat interchangeably when referring to the process of knowledge sharing. Because the terms have become so closely linked, it’s easy to assume that there aren’t any differences between the two. But there are some very real differences between education and training that you should know, especially if you’re new to the eLearning industry.

How do you think of education and training? And how do these learning experiences differ?

One of the best explanations of the differences between the two comes from Jay Cross:

“If your sixteen-year-old daughter told you that she was going to take a sex education course at high school, you might be pleased. What if she announced she was going to take part in some sex training at school?”

With this example, we can see that these terms are not at all interchangeable – they can create very different versions of the event indeed! Let’s look closer at the meaning of both education and training, to help you get a clear idea of the exact nature of these terms.

Chris Barnes, Business Development Manager at Can Studios, provides some helpful insight into the real meaning of education.

“Education is all about learning the theory. Traditionally, an education may reinforce knowledge in which that you already have a foundation,” he says, using the example of learning English at school. Even though students already know how to speak English, they must still take the subject at school to understand the theory behind it and reinforce their grammar and spelling skills.

When talking about education, it’s common to refer to qualification and institutions, that deal with systematic processes and passing of specific levels. The word often applies to learning that occurs in the classroom, rather than the workplace – although education is certainly not confined to the physical classroom these days, with many institutions successfully using tools such as eLearning.

In contrast, training is more skills-based – it’s about learning by doing. In this way, training helps you to acquire the skills you need to perform certain tasks or work duties, rather than simply knowing in theory how to do them. Whether it’s developing new skills, or building upon existing skills, the objective of training is to allow you to apply your knowledge practically.

Barnes illustrates this point with another helpful example: in physics class, you learn about splitting the atom – but you don’t do it. This is education. Training to split the atom would be a very different thing. While obviously, no training can occur without education, the word does have its own different connotation. Starting to get a clearer idea of the two now?

Training is also usually used in a workplace context, as opposed to classroom, and can generally be tested or assessed. This is to see how effective the learning experience has been and to make sure employees will be able to perform their tasks correctly and efficiently.

Education and training produce different results

Daniel Burrus, renowned business guru and speaker, considers the difference between education and training in his article Teach a Man to Fish: Training vs. Education. For Burrus, the key difference between the two is that “they both produce different results.”

As Burrus explains, “it is possible to be educated but poorly trained, just as it is possible to be well trained and poorly educated.” He uses a fishing analogy to further illustrate this point.

“An ancient truism says that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, and if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for life. I’d go a step further: Don’t just teach him how to catch a fish. Educate him about the art and science of fishing. Go beyond the mechanics of catching a fish and enlighten the man by explaining the biological forces underlying the key elements of fishing. Give him the big picture.”

With this, we can see the importance of combining education with training, for the best results. When training new hires or current employees, are you providing them with a big picture understanding, as well as the skills they need to do the job?

It’s important for employers and managers to provide both. With the combination of proper training and education you can expect to see improved skills, increased performance and higher productivity from your staff, leading to better business results for your organization.

Do you know the difference between education and training?

Storytelling has always been a very powerful tool for classrooms and training environments, helping students to build an emotional connection to content and aiding in memory retention. Using digital storytelling in modern training sessions is just as important, being a very effective combination of technology and learning and building engagement between teachers and students.

As digital media technology becomes more affordable and available to consumers, learners have increasingly more access to tools for digital storytelling. With a noticeable rise in digital storytelling across the learning industry, individuals are creating and sharing more digital content than ever.

Want to know how you can incorporate this modern form of storytelling into your training sessions? Read on to learn more about digital storytelling, how it helps with learning and what websites and apps you can use to get started in this area.

Bernard R. Robin, from University of Houston’s College of Education, describes digital storytelling as “the practice of combining narrative with digital content, including images, sound, and video, to create a short movie, typically with a strong emotional component.”

“People tell stories to teach beliefs and values to others. The oral tradition of knowledge transfer and exchange has served as the basis for education since humans began teaching one another, and digital stories build on this model by incorporating rich, dynamic media,” Robin says.

These days, through digital media and a little creativity, anyone can become a storyteller, by using the traditional processes of choosing a topic, carrying out research and developing an engaging story.

How digital storytelling helps with learning

Storytelling can be applied to almost any subject, making it a very useful tool for teachers and trainers. Whether you’re teaching students or running training sessions for company employees, you can use digital stories to introduce new topics and get participants interested in and involved with new content.

Technology allows trainers to play around with different ways of presenting content, making it more fun and engaging to consume. Always consider the relevance of the story to your audience, when creating any narrative for training purposes.

5 digital storytelling tools for trainers

There are many digital storytelling tools that can offer creative, engaging ways to help your learners. Here are some websites and apps to get you started, as recommended by Christopher Pappas in his round up of 18 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers And Students.

ACMI Generator, from the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, is a great creative studio space where you can create and share moving images with the Generator community. You can use the Storyboard Generator to either build your own storyboard, or simply choose one of the available scripts, and you’ll be an expert digital storyteller in no time!

The ACMI website also has plenty of useful information on digital storytelling, that will help trainers gain a more comprehensive understanding of this practice.

This second website, Slidestory, is a practical tool that allows users to add voice narration to image slideshows – which can be extremely handing for training sessions. You’ll learn how to work with voice narrated mp3 audio files and text caption, helping you expand your skill set and make effective, engaging presentations.

Moving into apps, Adobe Slate is top of the list for digital storytelling, being named as App Store Editors’ Choice #1 Best New App. Adobe Slate helps you turn your existing training materials into captivating visual stories for learners.

You can access the app from any device to create your story and simply paste the link anywhere you need to share with your audience. As Pappas observes, with Slate you “simply tap to select a unique look; beautiful fonts, color, and magazine-style design are automatically incorporated. Fluid movement and elegant motion are applied instantly.”

Another app, ShowMe Interactive Whiteboard does exactly what it says – allowing you to show and share work on your device as though it’s an interactive whiteboard.

You can also add your own voice recordings to the whiteboard, to create handy tutorials you can share online with students or staff. This app is easy and intuitive to use and can help you easily bring digital media into your training room.

WeVideo is an online video editing software that allows you to create and share videos. It’s a cloud-based tool, meaning it’s great for collaboration and easy to save across your various devices.

With advanced video editing features, this app is powerful, yet surprisingly easy to use! Whether you’re a complete beginner, or video editing professional, you’ll have everything you need to create great video content for your learners.

Hopefully this has given you some good places to start out on your digital storytelling journey. Creating fun and engaging content for your audience, while also building your skills in this area, will make any learning experience far more rewarding and effective for both parties.

How you can use digital storytelling for better training

When building an eLearning course, it’s important to make sure it’s as effective and engaging as possible for your learners. This will help your students or employees get the best learning experience from their online course materials, while in turn making your eLearning course more successful.

If you’re new to this, you may think designing an online course looks quite simple. But as with anything, there are certain principles you can follow for best practice in eLearning.

To help you out, we’ve put together 5 tips for building a better eLearning course, so you get the best training results from your staff or students.

Establish the kind of training course you need

It sounds simple, but this is an important step to take before you even start to build your online course.

The truth is, there’s no point designing a super complex course if your employees only need a quick and straightforward update on a company policy, for example. Making staff or students spend a lot of time on courses that are overly complicated or time consuming is never a good idea – they’ll resent learning and be wary of future training materials.

Think about the kind of format that’s best to address the needs of your audience. Then get to work on designing and developing your course in line with those needs.

Split your eLearning course into smaller modules

Next, decide if you can break down your course materials into smaller sized pieces. This has a number of benefits – for both you, and your learners.

Designing your eLearning course so that it is can be built and delivered over a series of modules means it will be easier to modify further down the track. It will also make your course more appealing and easier for employees or students to digest. Most people find it easier to read and absorb learning materials in smaller chunks, and can even be turned off by online courses that are too long and time consuming.

Short, succinct modules also allow users greater flexibility, as they can log in and complete each module at a time that’s convenient to them.

Incorporate tasks and activities into eLearning courses

Have you ever sat through a training session, listening to a presenter talk through endless slides of text? This can get very boring and frustrating for learners, while also failing to engage them in the content. Online courses that are nothing more than slabs of information on-screen are just as ineffective.

In contrast, by having students or employees complete tasks and activities throughout the course, you can make it a far more engaging experience. When incorporating activities into your materials, think about the actions your employees will need to take in the workplace. For example, tasks that explore decision making, problem solving and other ‘real world’ scenarios.

Be clear about the outcomes of the course

Be clear about exactly what it is that learners will achieve from completing your online course. Will they receive accreditation in a new skill, for example? Your eLearning course will be more successful if you can state clearly what outcome will be achieved by learners.

Karla Gutierrez, writing for Shift eLearning, believes that “the best eLearning courses … give learners clear and compelling reasons why the content is so important for them to learn. If the course doesn't answer the “what’s in it for me?” from the beginning, learners will not be interested or motivated to continue, no matter how great it looks.”

Gutierrez highlights the importance of gaining the learners’ attention from the start and remembering to apply the “WIIFM – what’s in it for me” rule. Tell users what they’ll be getting out of the course, if you want them to enroll.

Last, but not least – make sure your online course looks good. While this may seem superficial, the reality is that when it comes to eLearning, first impressions matter.

In fact, it only takes about 0.05 seconds for users to form an opinion about your website and decide whether they want to continue or leave. And eLearning courses are no different. After all, eLearning is a visual medium, so you’ll need to spend time getting this right if you want to stand out from the competition.

It’s best to keep things simple when it comes to building an online course. Cluttered, text-heavy screens can distract or confuse users, so stick to clean white space and simple relevant images.

By following these 5 steps, you’ll be making sure your online materials are easy to use, engaging for learners and aesthetically pleasing – the corner stones of a successful eLearning course!

With virtual reality becoming more prevalent in our everyday lives, many questions are being raised about the effects this form of technology will have on society. One of the most exciting aspects of VR is its potential to bring changes to the workplace, as work environments become more online.

Many industries are now beginning to consider the possibilities of using virtual reality for their employees. By using VR glasses and connected software, workers can be safely immersed in generated situations – situations that feel a whole lot more ‘real’ to the user than simply watching them on a screen. These generated situations, or scenarios, have the potential to bring positive benefits to both employers and workers, increasing employee performance and improving business processes.

When implemented across an organization, virtual reality has the potential to create better training and development, easier onboarding processes, and greater collaboration for teams and remote workers.

Let’s take a closer look at how VR could change your workplace.

Virtual reality offers new possibilities for improved training, regardless of industry. From corporate offices to construction job sites, the technology has the potential to be used to create controlled scenarios to assist with learning and development.

Through experiencing these generated scenarios, workers can receive effective real-time training in areas of safety procedures, efficiency and disaster management.

Thies Pfeiffer, technical director of the virtual reality lab at the Cognitive Interaction Technology Center of Excellence, explains how “in many professions, certain tasks are performed over and over again to ensure that everything runs smoothly in emergencies or stressful situations. Training in ‘reality’ would require considerable resources, and students need a lot of space. In virtual reality, however, students and trainees can practice at their own pace until the processes become second nature.” 

Training through VR could also have financial benefits for companies, with virtual training reducing many costs associated with traditional training methods. For example, by introducing VR, “an industrial company could digitally transport new employees to their future work environment without the added expense of relocation or fear of failure.”

Overcoming fears for professional development 

Speaking of fear of failure, VR could also assist employees experiencing phobias or fears, increasing their confidence in certain situations through sensitivity and exposure training. The potential for this form of cognitive behavioural therapy is very exciting, allowing individuals to safely experience situations they may not otherwise be exposed to. 

With the opportunity to gain further confidence and skills in their field, doctors could practice performing difficult surgeries; factory workers could carry out vital safety drills; corporate employees could overcome their fear of public speaking – with virtual reality, the possibilities are endless. 

With VR simulations being used for onboarding, companies could bring new hires up to speed faster than with traditional processes. Imagine, for example, the benefit of experiencing customer service scenarios in virtual reality, compared to reading text or watching on-screen tutorials.

“With virtual reality, we can generate spaces and situations that help people learn to perform occupational duties,” says Dr Pfeiffer. For people working in customer service or sales, this immersive experience would be far more practical, useful and engaging.

Increased collaboration through virtual reality

In a corporate environment, with its focus on team work and collaboration, VR will have a huge impact on how employees interact. Meetings could be held in virtual reality, in real time. For teams who are situated in different offices or regions, this could save a lot of time, money and stress – which also has benefits for a company’s productivity, profits and bottom line. 

VR holds even greater potential for remote workers, or staff who regularly telecommute, as a new way of maintaining connection across geographical barriers. While today’s collaboration tools such as Skype and Google Hangouts are certainly useful for remote workers, virtual reality will take online group interaction even further.

“In virtual reality, you can see everyone, or at least an avatar image of them and it’s much closer to being there with them,” Dr Pfeiffer explains.

However you choose to implement VR technology across your business, the future workplace is sure to be an exciting place for both employers and employees.

What changes could virtual reality bring to your workplace?

For retail managers everywhere, the phrase “The customer’s always right,” is a common theme throughout the workday.

After all, without happy customers, how much of a market do you really have?

So when a store is trying to convince the shoppers of America to spend their well-earned dollars, they need be thinking about what it takes to make their customers happy.

For starters, and most importantly, customers expect to be greeted by a staff of employees that’s capable of treating them fairly and meeting their needs.

Unfortunately, however, retail customer service is rarely as flawless and helpful as shoppers think it should be. Instead, managers find their days riddled with questions and complaints, such as:

Do you know how long I’ve been waiting?

I talked to your employee and they had no idea how to help me with my problem!

Does your customer service department even know how to do their job?

These scenarios are some of the most common customer service issues that arise on a day-to-day basis…but what’s the common thread between them?

They all tend to stem from high turnover rates and poorly trained staff.

Many retail managers do not understand the ways that comprehensive training can benefit their business. Thankfully, a variety of learning management systems are available to help streamline the training process and ensure your staff is receiving the best instruction possible.

Learning management systems provide a fast-paced learning protocol that still promotes successful training and education in the workplace. The benefits from these systems have made them a preferred choice for retail locations all over the country.

To truly comprehend the advantages of these systems, however, it’s vital that you understand the negative effects of high turnover rates and how digital training can solve them.

How Does High Turnover Affect the Retail Industry?

Retail locations are fast-moving machines. Owners and managers have a multitude of behind-the-scenes components to think about on a daily basis. For everything else, they rely on their customer service department to get the job done.

An employer’s customer service staff will become the face of his/her store. This means an establishment’s success and reputation lie in the hands of this group of people and they’re expected to handle shopper interactions with ease and confidence.

In an article written by journalist Erica Nicole, she claims that companies which prioritize the customer experience generate 60% higher profits than their competitors.

When a retail location starts to be affected by high employee turnover, its chances of providing the type of service necessary for success begins to diminish.

When managers begin to lose employees, they’re left frantically searching for replacements to fill the holes in the staff schedule. Every retail location requires a certain number of people to handle their particular business, and when that number begins to fall there’s no way to efficiently meet a customer’s needs.

To get themselves out of the bind, many managers are forced to spend large amounts of money and end up hiring under-qualified, or incapable, applicants. These new hires are then rushed out onto the floor before they’ve had enough, or any, proper training.

With conditions like these, it’s almost guaranteed that customers still won’t be receiving the top-notch service they expect and deserve.

Cost and Time: Two Common Side Effects of High Turnover 

A constant cycle of employees coming and going can really leave retail owners in a lurch. Not only are customers themselves affected by the lack in high-quality employees, but also the business will begin to face the challenges of time and money needed to keep the business afloat.

Without the proper resources, high turnover can really damage a company’s success.

Did you know that retailers sometimes spend an average of $3,400 each time they have to find a new employee?

When you consider the steps involved in the process, it’s easy to see why:

While there are certainly extraneous costs such as help wanted ads, travel costs for interviewees, and training salaries, management should also consider the fact that time is money during the hiring process.

Every moment spent on the steps to find a replacement employee is time that should be going into the business itself. After all, company time is a precious commodity that should be reserved for tasks to generate profits and expand the company’s vision and reach.

The employment process affects company time in much the same ways as the cost.

Each minute in the workday should be geared towards growth, but setting aside the time for these hiring tasks consistently pulls owners and managers away from their actual work. This can eventually lead to damaging gaps in the business’ chance for success.

Other customer service employees are also affected since they are forced to pick up the slack caused from being understaffed. Rather than focus on their job alone, they end up doing the work of multiple people and being stretched much too thin.

How Can a Learning Management System Help?

Implementing a learning management system is any easy way of fine-tuning the employee training process.

Not only does it provide a selection of flexible and comprehensive course selections, but it also provides retail managers and business owners a laissez-faire way of handling new hire training.

Management will have the chance to spend more time on tasks that will benefit the business as a whole, rather than just the customer service department.

With learning management systems, however, it’s not just about new hire; you’ll be receiving a program that provides so many things, such as:

Distribution of new policies and procedures

Ability to check-in and see employee training progress whenever you’d like

Learning Management Systems Can Help Eliminate High Turnover

When your staff of employees is well trained and confident about the work they’re doing, they will be more likely to achieve longevity within the company.  Many times employees decide or are asked to leave because they’re frustrated by their own inability or management’s disappointment in their work.