Below are types of inexpensive small business growth hacking tools you can use. They are divided into five categories. Check out each section to learn more about the small business tool and how it can make your business more efficient and better positioned to grow.

All businesses must do accounting. It’s how you can compare what your business is earning to what it’s spending. 

You could hire someone to do the accounting for you. But, you might not have the budget to bring someone on full time. Accounting software is a great low-cost alternative, especially if your accounting books aren’t complex. 

Accounting software will create reports for you, saving you time. The reports can help you get a better idea of your cash flow. You can see where your money is coming from and where you are losing it. 

If you know how to choose accounting software that is tailored to your needs, you could save a considerable amount of time and money. You can find simple accounting systems, meaning you don’t need to be an expert to use it. And, if you purchase software with fewer features, it’s cheaper than a bigger software program. 

For your business to grow, people need to know about it. Otherwise, you’ll never have customers. You need to be easily visible online. 

When people search for your business or similar businesses, your business should show up in the search results. You should claim your business in search results to make sure information is accurate and displayed the best way possible. For example, you will use Google My Business to update your business information for Google search results. This is a free service.

You should also list your business on business directories. You can list on online Yellow Pages, local business directories, and review sites. 

Potential customers should be able to see all important information about your business, such as your hours, location, and website. You might also include pictures and reviews to further convince people to choose you. 

Once you establish your business online, more people will find it, you will gain more customers, and your business will grow.

If you have employees, you must run payroll. You have to pay employees and handle payroll taxes correctly. If you don’t, you can face penalties, fines, and even jail time. 

Payroll can take a lot of time and money to run. Fortunately, online payroll software can reduce the amount of each. 

Payroll software will do all payroll calculations for you. You simply enter employee time and let the software do the math. You can even pay employees through the software if you use direct deposit. You don’t have to do anything by hand or hire a specialist. Some payroll software companies will even file and remit payroll taxes for you, saving you even more time. When you use online payroll software, you can finish payroll in minutes. 

Payroll software isn’t free, but you can reduce the amount you spend on it. Look for software that is designed for small businesses. Small business payroll software doesn’t come with big-business bells and whistles, making it cheaper. 

When you start using payroll software, you save both time and money. You can invest those into your business to grow even more. 

You can grow and improve your business through your employees. You can help them develop their skills, which will help them become better at their jobs. 

But, what if you don’t have the time or knowledge to train your employees? You can use online courses and learning resources.

When you use an online learning platform, you have access to hundreds of courses. And, you can add your own material to easily share the same information with several employees. You can assign training to your employees, make assessments, and track results. 

You can incorporate training during onboarding. Or, you can add training at any time based on your business’s needs and your employee’s skills. When you use business tools and resources to better equip your employees, your business is better able to grow. 

If you have employees, you need to set up effective methods of communication. And if some of your team is remote, communication tools are even more important. 

The communication tools you need will depend on your team. You might need a simple email system. You might need a chat messaging, document sharing, and video conferencing. 

Many online communication tools are free. Everyone just needs an internet connection. You can pay to get premium features, but you might be able to make do with the free options. 

When your employees can better communicate, things will get done faster and with fewer mistakes. Workers can stay up to date even if they work remotely. When your team is better connected, your business is more efficient.

Kaylee Riley is a writer for Patriot Software, LLC and Top Echelon, LLC. Kaylee writes about payroll, accounting, recruiting systems, and other small business topics.

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Wouldn’t you love to grow your business fast but without spending a ton of money? Lucky for you, there are thousands of free and low-cost small business tools and resources available online that can help.

5 small business tools and resources to fuel growth

Wouldn’t you love to grow your business fast but without spending a ton of money? Lucky for you, there are thousands of free and low-cost small business tools and resources available online that can help. 

We know that you want to learn more about how to go about structuring a good training program to get the most out of your team, and we’re here to help!

We’re excited to announce the next eLearning Assist will be taking place on September 22nd at 8:30 am Australian Eastern Standard Time (September 21st 3:30pm Pacific Standard Time).

In Episode 2 of The eLearning Assist we are going have Eduardo Gomes on hand to take a closer look at how to structure a good training program. This includes everything from setting up a learning portal, how to select content - and which content types are right for your learners, laying out a program form enrollment to completion, and more.

Our live demo for this episode Eduardo will take everything we talked about in the first part of the webinar, and show you how to apply these concepts to structure a good training program within your own Go1 Portal so that you start to improve the way that you deliver training.

To round out the session we will be opening up the floor for Q&A, so if you have any questions about something that you are working on, we will be here to help you out.

The eLearning Assist takes place every month and covers trending industry information, a demonstration of a Go1 Platform feature, and a Q&A session where we will cover any questions you might have around anything to do with online learning, content, training, or the Go1 Platform.

The session is free for anyone to attend, and is a great chance to learn some new skills that you can apply in your organisation.

Haven’t got a Go1 Portal yet? Sign up for free today!

The eLearning Assist Episode 2: structuring a good training program

For companies in high turnover industries, such as retail, hospitality, finance and tech, there’s a risk of becoming a revolving door of employees. When this happens, it means your company is constantly using up resources to hire and train new staff, when these valuable resources could have been directed elsewhere.

What’s more, when people leave, the remaining employees will need to pick up the pieces, while also using their time to interview and train new hires. This isn’t in the best interest of your clients or customers, and can seriously impact your company’s growth and potential. There’s a lot of disruption in high turnover industries, as staff constantly need to adjust and re-adjust to new team dynamics and work processes.

So how can managers and employers approach training in high turnover industries? Is it worthwhile investing in employee training and development in these industries?

The answer is yes. 100% yes! Because with the right training, you can drastically reduce your rate of staff turnover and help your business succeed – even in high turnover industries.

Here are some important things to consider when it comes to employee training in these industries.

Hire the Right People for Your Organisation

First things first – make sure you’re hiring the right people in the first place.

By investing more time in your hiring process to find the right people, you’ll reduce staff turnover and save money on further recruitment, onboarding and training. We’ve talked about this before, in an article on hiring employees that are a good cultural fit – that is, finding a good fit for your own unique corporate culture.

Finding the right fit isn’t so much about impressive CVs and all-star experience. It’s about taking the time to find employees who share the same core values as your workplace culture – staff who are willing and able to support your company’s mission, vision and goals. As we’ve said before, “each new person that you bring on board has the potential to contribute either positively or negatively to your organisational culture.” That should be at the forefront of your mind when interviewing and hiring new staff.

Investing your resources in finding employees who are the right fit is just that – an investment. And it will be worth it in the long run. Hiring the wrong people, who leave within their first few months, will just result in a higher staff turnover rate for your company.

Retaining Employees in High Turnover Industries

It’s now important to hold onto those employees as best you can. Retaining staff is the best way to reduce future hiring and training costs. But how do you make sure you’re retaining good team members in high turnover industries?

Tech companies in particular are known for offering perks like ping pong tables and cool open-plan offices. Why? Because these companies know they’re operating in a super competitive, high turnover industry, where they need to offer candidates a sweet deal to secure the best talent.

But there’s something far more important than any perks or extras, that will help you hold onto your employees. You need to offer staff a strong, positive and supportive work environment and culture. One that fosters leadership and collaboration. Establishing this kind of company culture is your best bet of retaining employees in high turnover industries.

Providing feedback is also very important when it comes to helping to retain employees. Often, feedback is neglected in high turnover industries, but staff need to know where they stand and how they’re tracking if they want to grow and develop in their careers. Feedback, even constructive criticism, helps people to feel more confident (and secure) in their jobs. In a positive and open environment, employees will be more productive, creative and innovative – and far less likely to leave.

Invest in Employee Training and Development

Companies can significantly decrease their rate of staff turnover by investing in the right training for their staff.

People primarily leave their jobs for one reason – because they’ve found a better offer. The best way to prevent this from happening is to show that you are invested in your employee’s professional development. When a company spends time, money and effort on developing a person’s skill set, it is an acknowledgement that the employee is valuable. This feeling of being valued will do far more to instill loyalty in your staff than anything else.

Look at your employee training program – does it offer your staff opportunities for development and growth? Most people want to progress and achieve throughout their career. When they have nowhere to go within your company, or feel like they are not valued, they’re likely to eventually look for other opportunities.

Even if you are in a traditionally high turnover industry, make it clear to staff that you’re invested in their long-term development and committed to ongoing training. Show them that there is the potential for upward mobility within the company. Think about establishing a mentoring program within your organisation.

Investing in training is truly a win-win situation, for both employees and the company. With effective training, your employees will show improved productivity and profits, as well as increased job satisfaction. By providing up-to-date industry training, your employees will also have access to new skills and information, which they can bring back to your company. A company they choose to grow and develop with!

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

After going through the recruitment, hiring and onboarding processes, the last thing you want is for your new employee to leave before their first 12 months. However, for certain industries, this high turnover of staff is a reality.

Tips for training in high turnover industries

Many people find themselves struggling to give honest feedback or constructive criticism to the people around them. After all, everyone wants to be liked; it’s a natural human tendency. When it comes to feedback, it can be quite hard to hear things that we need to change about ourselves. People can feel threatened, angry or upset after receiving feedback that they consider to be negative.

Yet, without feedback, individuals will continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. In the workplace, it’s a manager’s responsibility to guide employees to improved behaviours and results, for both themselves and the business.

Being in a management position doesn’t mean that you’re instantly an expert on knowing how to give feedback to staff. But rather than avoiding this part of your job, it’s important to recognise feedback for what it is – and that is a powerful tool and a positive opportunity to learn.

Improve the way you deliver feedback to staff

Often, we hold back for fear of upsetting the person, or making them angry. Sometimes providing feedback can feel like opening a can of worms that will lead to more trouble than it’s worth. But avoiding conversations about feedback, because you’re worried how people will react, isn’t beneficial for either party. Especially in a work environment.

Check out these five easy steps for delivering feedback to staff:

Ask for permission – a simple “hey, have you got a minute for some quick feedback?” can help the person receiving the feedback be mentally ready for it

Be specific – use specific examples about the person’s behaviour, not statements about their personality or character

Explain the impact – explain the impact that resulted from the behaviour you’re addressing.

Use silence – give the person time to think through what you’ve said

Suggest how to improve – give one or two actionable suggestions that the other person could use to change their behaviour

Avoid feedback fights with your employees

There are generally two ways people respond to feedback they don’t like. They will often simply disregard the feedback – “yeah, whatever, what do you know?” or discount the source of the feedback – “well you’re not perfect, who are you to judge my behaviour?” Or, secondly, they will get angry and argue. Which is why so many people avoid giving feedback in the first place.

All of these scenarios are undesirable. So what can managers do instead?

Managers can learn how to tap into a third kind of response – curiosity. By tapping into an individual’s curiosity and avoid the feedback fight response you can avoid some common mistakes when delivering your feedback. You’ll be making a solid investment into your future relationships and career, becoming a much better manager in the process. Feedback is an important tool for constructive criticism that aids personal and professional development – try to teach and show your employees that!


For managers and team leaders, providing feedback to employees is an important part of the leadership role – but it’s also one of the most difficult.

The importance of providing feedback to employees

As with any industry, it’s important for Learning Managers to stay in the loop with current trends and practices.

The eLearning environment is constantly growing and changing, so it’s vital to keep up-to-date with the learning landscape. Whether you’re an LMS Administrator, or Chief Learning Officer, you’ll want to know the best ways to engage with your learners to meet their training and development needs.

A 2016 report by Degreed surveyed more than five hundred workers, from a range of roles and functions, across multiple industries. This report resulted in plenty of interesting data on how employees are learning – both at work, and in their own spare time – and what steps they’re taking to fuel their careers.

Today, we’ll look at five statistics from the Degreed report that will provide Learning Managers and L&D professionals with an insight into how today's workers really learn:

According to the report, modern workers are spending up to five times more learning on their own each week than from employers. This means many employees are taking the initiative to learn in their own time, away from the office or job site.

With so many industries moving at a rapid pace, particularly IT and the creative industries, employees feel the need to stay up-to-date with industry news and developments. And when faced with such a competitive job market, workers also know how important ongoing professional development is to their career.

75% of workers invested their own money in career development 

Following on from that, we’re also seeing a huge amount of employees using their own money for professional development.

As the report shows, in 2015, three quarters of employees invested their own money in career development. What does this tell us? It tells us that employers aren’t providing sufficient professional development for their staff.

Employees are actively looking for learning and development opportunities to help them on their career path and need to feel that their employer is invested in their career development. There is a clear drive for employers to start investing more resources into employee training, which is important for Learning Managers to know. This will help you talk to senior leaders about the importance of investing in staff L&D.

77% of employees believe their own self-directed learning is more effective than their employer’s training 

Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of quality in the training programs being provided by employers, with a huge percentage of staff rating their own learning methods higher than those provided by their employer.

Take a hard look at your own training and development programs. One of the biggest barriers to employee learning is that it fails to be ongoing.

Professional development training needs to be continual – it’s not just something that you should tick off once a year to satisfy HR. It requires ongoing investment of your time, focus and energy, to get the best results.

 69% of workers ask a boss or mentor for direction to learn something new

This statistic shows us the importance of mentoring within organisations. Do you have an official mentoring program in place? Mentoring isn’t just beneficial for the staff being mentored – it has broader advantages for the whole organisation.

Through mentoring programs, employees have the opportunity to meet or talk regularly with their mentors to exchange ideas, discuss work progress and set goals for professional development, facilitating increased knowledge sharing across the organisation.

Staff involved in mentoring programs offer companies improved skill sets, real world knowledge and experience, and greater confidence and motivation to succeed. Which contributes to greater productivity and profits for the business.

70% of workers learn from sharing blogs and articles with their peers

With the ever-rising presence of technology and social media in our lives, communication and knowledge sharing has never been so easy, accessible and instant. In fact, over 70% of learning on the job occurs informally, so it’s important to make sure you’re using informal learning in conjunction with more formal modes of training.

Employees have more opportunity to learn from one another than ever before, and when harnessed effectively, this can help to build a more collaborative work culture.

If you’re in a management or leadership role, you have the exciting opportunity to drive collaboration in your organisation. Building a culture of collaboration has great benefits for your business, increasing cooperation and promoting teamwork and positive working relationships across the organisation.

The Take Away from these Stats and Figures

So what can Learning Managers take away from the statistics in this report?

While it’s great for employees to be sharing with peers and working on professional development in their own time, it’s imperative that this is in addition to the training programs provided by their employers.

How do you provide learning and development to staff that’s engaging, effective, continual and collaborative? Many organisations have found the answer to this question by turning to eLearning courses and online training. Online learning offers both employers and employees the perfect solution for their training needs, being flexible, engaging and cost-effective, while helping learners achieve their professional development and career goals.

Having up-to-date and relevant learning tools and technology solutions is important to workers. When your organisation shows a willingness to invest in the right learning technology for staff, you’re showing your commitment to their professional development. This will help attract good candidates to your company and encourage high performers to stay with your business, providing a win-win solution for both staff and employers.

Keen to check out eLearning and online training for your staff? Be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

Stats all learning managers need to know

Online assessments are designed to test and evaluate the skills and knowledge of users that have completed e-learning courses.

Using different types of assessments is a great way for employers to increase the performance and productivity of employees.

E-learning has always been viewed as important for employee development, offering independent study and materials on demand.

Yet, every person learns differently and at a different pace; some employees are able to memorize and retain information easily, while others work as a slower and more methodical way.

That’s why it’s essential to find the most effective online learning assessment type that will suit everybody and allow everyone to grow as employees. In addition, this will also achieve an organization’s goals and objectives.

Online learning assessments can be conducted during each course, which is known as formative assessments, or at the end of the course, which is called a summative assessment.

It is important to understand the differences between formative and summative assessments in order to choose the most effective system for your organization’s employee development.

 The intention of formative assessments is to provide employees and trainees with regular feedback during their engagement with e-learning courses.

This system has the overall objective of allowing employees to learn from feedback and implement the advice into making future learning better.

The feedback provided from the formative assessment can highlight any weaknesses in particular topics and areas of learning, such as the Bribery Act and Data Protection.

It can also pinpoint a user’s strengths, helping to build confidence. Knowing what topics need further work before the end of a course allows employees to address problems during study and enhance their future skills and knowledge.

Indeed, an academic study found that for online assessments to be effective for its learners, they should incorporate a variety of assignments with feedback available on a regular basis.

Thus, formative assessments allow employees to learn and improve as they go. Without the focus on an overall grade, they can work on problems before it’s too late and ensure they are confident when the end of the course is reached.

In addition, formative assessment results mean that an employer can modify e-learning to meet the needs of the individual employee immediately, in order to allow them develop in a way that if better for them.

This customization of activities and assessments allows employers and their employees to progress together, instead of there being a distance between learning development and management.

Frequent quizzes during e-learning courses and study materials are an effective assessment type, which provides a way of reinforcing the topics being examined.

In particular, short answers or multiple choice can help employees test their skills and knowledge.

Quizzes during learning will allow an employer to track each employee’s individual progress and provide feedback on any shortcomings that require more work to better future learning.

Personal learning logs are also a credible way to assess online study.

By providing employees with an outlet for their thoughts, feelings and ideas about an e-learning course, they can reflect on what they have learned and highlight their own strengths and weaknesses.

As an employer you can analyze the self-assessment information from the personal learning logs and use it to track progress and provide helpful feedback for future improvement.

In contrast to formative assessments, summative assessments aim to evaluate an employee’s learning at the end of the course.

This will allow an employer to examine whether the employee or trainee has achieved the desired learning objectives after study.

This normally includes a final grade and can even allow progress onto the next stage of an e-learning course.

Summative assessments allow an employee to monitor their achievements and it can be a big confidence boost to see you have passed your e-learning course and mastered the content.

As an employer, you can analyze the results of their individual assessment and see their strengths and areas for improvement.

In addition, employers can examine trends from the results of all employees to improve future training programs and increase employee development on important topics, such as Worksite Safety and Pricing Strategy.

Scenario or multiple-choice exams are an effective online summative assessment that will challenge a user’s skills and knowledge acquired from e-learning courses.

This will test whether their own learning has been effective and if there are any topics that could benefit from further training.

Another successful way to test employee learning is by using online presentations as a summative assessment.

Having them create content on a topic they have studied and share their findings with their colleagues, makes them put information into their own words and communicate it effectively to others.

Employers will be able to evaluate whether the employee has understood the content and if they have achieved the main learning objectives by the results of their presentation.

 It is important to remember that every employee learns differently and responds differently to various assessment types. What will benefit one employee’s skills may not help another.

That is why the most effective online learning system can be a mixture of formative assessments throughout e-learning with helping feedback, as well as summative assessments to cement knowledge at the end of a course.

This way an employee can learn progressively and hopefully retain more information from e-learning. In the long run, this will also help the employer and organization in terms of performance, productivity and training effectiveness.


Online assessments are designed to evaluate users that have completed e-learning courses. Yet, every person learns differently; some are able to memorize and retain information easily, while others work in a slower and more methodical way.

The most effective online learning assessment types

How much attention are you paying to leadership training within your organisation? In many companies, managers learn a lot of what they need to know while on the job. But if you want to encourage great leadership, you need to provide effective leadership training. In this way, you can help empower managers with the tools they need to succeed in today’s complex business environments.

Ray Carvey, Executive VP of Corporate Learning at Harvard Business Publishing, says that the focus of leadership training now must be on “preparing leaders to anticipate what’s coming next so they are ready to act. They must be plugged into their customers, competitors and markets, and be comfortable making decisions, even in the face of ambiguity.”

Here are five things you need to include in your leadership training, to encourage strong and positive leadership in your organisation.

Kathy Caprino, writing for Forbes, believes that developing a leadership mindset must be the first step in any leadership training.

Caprino says that “to evolve as leaders, managers have to internalize the idea that leadership is fundamentally different from managing tasks.” While being an effective manager certainly involves managing tasks and duties well, being a great leader requires an understanding of how to behave and “show up.”

A truly great leader is someone who is “capable of articulating a powerful, positive and compelling vision for organizational and individual growth, and who can generate the trust and support needed to execute on this vision,” she says.

Make sure your leadership training program focuses on helping managers to achieve that shift in mindset, allowing them to bring those elements to their role.

Leadership training within the context of your organisation

To be effective, leadership training needs to focus on real business outcomes, within the context of your organisation.

Leadership training shouldn’t look the same in every organisation. When it comes to learning, “getting it right in the context of your organization’s needs is what makes it relevant, meaningful and sticky,” Caprino says.

For example, the way in which managers make decisions at a startup in a high-growth industry is going to be quite different from decision-making at a 100-year-old organisation in an established market.

Look at your own leadership training program. Is it relevant to the context of your own business needs and outcomes?

It’s also essential for today’s leaders to promote a culture of learning, with senior leaders proactively involved in encouraging learning and development.

Anyone who is in a management role is in an exciting position to lead the way in improving professional development in their workplace. Good leaders know that professional development is integral to the success of any company, creating a more positive work culture and better business results overall.

One of the best ways to promote a positive learning culture is by incorporating mentoring into your leadership training program. Mentoring presents many benefits for organisations, including increased knowledge sharing, improved skill sets and the opportunity for constructive feedback and support.

As we said above, anticipating change and being ready to act is crucial when it comes to being a successful leader. And knowing how to delegate is a large component of this.

Leaders need to act as change agents, driving transformation within their organisation. Strong leaders know that they can't realistically be involved in every single day-to-day task while still maintaining focus on building and leading the business.

Delegation is an essential skill that must be included in any leadership training program. It requires trusting employees, knowledge sharing, and effective communication, which also help to reinforce a culture of learning across organisations.

Emotional intelligence is also critical to leadership success. Often overlooked when compared to more technical skills, your level of emotional intelligence (or EQ) has a huge impact on your leadership abilities.

Emotional intelligence is defined as the ability to monitor your own and others’ feelings and emotions, and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions. It helps you to be more comfortable and competent in handling conflict, performing well under pressure, making difficult decisions, and communicating well with others – all very important skills when it comes to leading and managing teams!

Fionnuala Courtney, Director at PulseLearning, says that “at its primal level, leadership is about understanding your people emotionally.”

So it's well worth making sure that emotional intelligence is included in today's leadership training programs. Unlike intellect, emotional intelligence can be developed and expanded, meaning managers can learn to improve their EQ levels and successfully apply it to their leadership role.

How much attention are you paying to leadership training within your organisation? In many companies, managers learn a lot of what they need to know while on the job. But if you want to encourage great leadership, you need to provide effective leadership training

The 5 things you need in your leadership training

The term 'Tin Can file' may seem like a completely foreign language to those unfamiliar with programming applications. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with canned baked beans. Rather, Tin Can is proving to be a game-changer that supports employee development in businesses of all sizes and allows L&D teams far more flexibility, accessibility, and tracking potential. 

As the next evolution of SCORM, the Tin Can API is threatening to revolutionise L&D as we know it. So, we'll take you through everything you need to know about Tin Can files to keep your business one step ahead. 

Tin Can is an open-source Application Programming Interface (API). It is sometimes referred to as Experience API and xAPI. Currently, Software Advice finds that 15% of businesses use Tin Can for training courses in their LMS. 

If you need a quick refresher xAPIs, check out our blog on What is xAPI and how do we use them?

Otherwise, to help get you up to speed,xAPI is a revolutionary open-source application programming interface (API), which records employee activities from a variety of programs and software.

Unlike SCORM, this software specification tracks all kinds of activities from inside and outside the LMS. It adds a beneficial communicative layer to your system, connecting the employee and the organisation.

This means trackable learning is no longer confined to what happens on the LMS. xAPI lets you track employee development online and offline, as well as from other mobile devices.

As Uncanny Owl explains, Tin Can is a "specification in learning technology that makes it possible to collect data about a wide range of learning activities. Similar to SCORM and AICC, the Tin Can API describes learning data in a consistent format so it is cross-platform compatible."

In other words, Tin Can offers an advanced way for programs and software to speak to each other and track all learning experiences, thereby providing L&D leaders with more tracking capabilities and learners with more flexibility and accessibility. 

Tin Can uses statements to track user learning. These statements are then stored in the Learning Record Store (LRS) and are completed in the form of a noun, verb and object. As the name suggests, an LRS is where all learning records are stored. As SCORM.com puts it, "the LRS is the heart of any Experience API (xAPI) ecosystem; receiving, storing and returning data about learning experiences, achievements and job performance. You’ll need an LRS in order to do anything with xAPI. Every other tool which sends or retrieves learning activity data will interact with the LRS as the central store." 

For example, ‘Sarah completed Complaint Handling’. This statement and learning experience is delivered and stored within the LRS, which allows her employer to see that she has completed her training.

This is a welcomed feature that allows organisations to enjoy advanced capabilities when it comes to tracking all online and offline eLearning, which is not supported by SCORM.

From tracking simulations to attending a seminar, xAPI allows employers to track all employee learning from any device.

In addition, this tracking capability allows organisations to improve training and arrange future goals in all aspects of learning, not just online content available in the Learning Management System (LMS).

These tracking capabilities make Tin Can highly beneficial for organisations and businesses of all sizes that support employee development.

It is important to remember that Tin Can can't change how course content is designed; it is an API that revolutionises the way learning experience data is tracked and stored.

However, Tin Can has changed the face of eLearning for many employers and offers numerous advantages over its predecessor, SCORM.

Tin Can as we know it today evolved as an API to succeed SCORM. 

As a quick refresher, SCORM stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model, which is a programming interface that follows a linear construction, where learners work from one assessment to another in a particular sequence.

SCORM had existed since 1999. Since its creation, it had enjoyed being the dominant API used for LMS, especially by large organisations; even the US Department of Defense. For further insights, see our article on What you need to know about SCORM for eLearning. 

The accessibility and reusability of SCORM meant that its advantages outweighed its limitations, to begin with. Yet, as technology progressed, there were several limitations that restricted modern training content and eLearning.

In particular, SCORM’s ability to only track online interactions with the LMS, such as quizzes and assessments, proved unrepresentative of an employee’s complete learning experience in real life.

Any activities outside of the LMS, such as attending a webinar, reading an eBook, or watching a YouTube video would not be captured and tracked, despite their potential impact on employee development.

Aiming to be a successor to SCORM, ‘Project Tin Can’ began with the belief that ‘learning happens everywhere’. The name Tin Can was coined in reference to Tin Can telephones, as the founders wanted to create a two-way conversation with the eLearning industry. 

This project focussed on how SCORM could be modified and advanced for the next generation of online content. Soon enough, Experience API was born, boasting many advantages over SCORM. 

For example, eLearning Industry explains that "Tin Can is a better option if you want to future proof your eLearning content.  While Tin Can will continue to grow and change, SCORM is stagnant in comparison. Choosing Tin Can will allow you to benefit from the ongoing  development of a new technology that will continue to improve as it's  embraced by the industry" 

Additionally, they outline four areas in which Tin Can outperforms SCORM: reliability, better tracking, richer data, and faster growth potential. In other words, think of Tin Can as the modern, cutting-edge evolution of SCORM, maintaining all of the advantages of SCORM with fewer limitations. 

Experience API transforms employee learning, capturing all study materials and activities and tracking them into one place; the LRS.

xAPI can recognise all the materials that make up the learning process, including those activities completed outside of an LMS. 

Whether an employee has attended a webinar or read online content from their browser, xAPI will track and record all of their experiences. 

Accordingly, Software Advice finds that 32% of businesses use Tin Can because it offers better tracking and reporting. Other common reasons for switching to xAPI include course flexibility (27%) and technical stability (18%). 

As an employer, the ability to track all kinds of learning experiences will give you a better and more accurate picture of your learners' progress.

You will be able to analyse their completed activities and see how this connects with their results and performance.

The term 'Tin Can file' may seem like a completely foreign language to those unfamiliar with programming applications. However, it's proving to be a game-changer that supports employee development in businesses of all sizes.