Summary: How do you make training more effective and consistent? Facilitate online training with your intranet. We cover how to get started, plus tips and examples from real organizations.
No matter what organization you are apart of, there is always a strong need for training employees or volunteer staff. Effective training is imperative, however, training takes up time and resources. The solution? Putting them through training courses using your intranet.
How to get started with online training?
There are several useful online training features built in to the Intranet Connections platform. However for the purpose of this blog, I will be referring to the below 4 online training applications that are most heavily utilized by our employees:
- Online Forms: Testing knowledge and providing results
- Online Training Calendar: Scheduling courses for new/existing employees
- Document Management: Storing key resources for employees to easily find that references the courses they are taking
- Online Tutorials: Showing employees how to step through key tasks on the intranet
Below is a quick overview of how you can incorporate Online Forms, Online Training Calendar and Document Management into your online training process.
Many of our customers find that it is effective to set up a sub-site within their intranet that is dedicated to online training. This helps serve as a resource for employees that are signing up for training so that they know where to sign up for training sessions, access resources and where to go for any other key training tasks, such as links to tests.
As an example, I created a training site that houses each of these features that you can view here:
Setting up Training Courses to Facilitate Online Training
Now that you have your training site built out, you can begin to add content to it relevant to the training you are offering. Some ideas would be to include an Online Training Calendar showing when you are offering training. I have built an example calendar showing what it may look like for employees when they click to register for training:
This shows employees what courses are available to them and allows them to register by clicking a selected course date/time. In clicking on the session, they can choose which class, or series of classes they wish to register for. Below is an example I’ve built out displaying 2 options for employees to choose from:
This shows that the employee can choose between mornings or afternoon classes depending on their schedule. As you may have seen in my first image, I included a screenshot of the Home Page which included a calendar with upcoming sessions, these are the same sessions to help give an overall view for the employees when they access your training site.
Providing Resources & Testing Options for Online Training
Within the training site, I have linked to a documents resource, allowing users to quickly access documents related to online training. The Document Management application enables you to upload a number of resources at a time for employees to review and learn from. Utilizing Online Forms, you can then create tests based on the documents. On my example training site, I’ve added links to various Online Tests employees can take to test their knowledge and get scored immediately after taking the test to gauge their level of understanding.
In this example, I’ve made a simple Online Form that employees can use to submit their answers. Course instructors can be provided with access to the forms for reviewing answers. Likewise, they can be notified when an employee has filled out a test form so that they can review and follow-up with the employee if necessary.
Online Training Put into Practice
In our case study with Gold Coast Hospital, they were able to build out their own credentialing forms for employees within the Online Form Builder application. This reduced the amount of paper that was previously being used for credentialing employees on procedures within the hospital. Seeing the creativity of Gold Coast Hospital in how they approached their own company struggles for credentialing structure, and use of the intranet as a tool to help facilitate online training, certainly shows the difference it can make.
We have additional ideas of available intranet tools that can be used to help go along with your online training. Each of these tools are available and can be built out with the latest version of your Intranet Software.
