Everyone understands the value of training, but obtaining funding for it is a difficulty in and of itself. Yes, low-cost employee training is an issue. “Employee upskilling and training is a luxury, and we need to decrease training costs,” you may have heard during difficult budget discussions. While it is true that staff training can consume a good slice of a company’s overall budget, the cost of not providing staff training can be prohibitively expensive.

Thinking of equipment or machinery training is a straightforward approach to grasp its value even in lean times. You wouldn’t let your machines rust or neglect to maintain them, would you? However, when it comes to humans, care must also form a part of your training program.

Read on if you’re having problems persuading your CEO or CFO not to cut your training budgets. In this post, we’ll go over all the ways that decreasing employee training costs might hurt your bottom line – and how you can keep your personnel trained on a limited budget.

Why isn’t it more expensive to train employees?

Of course, you already know how vital employee training is. Have you considered the expense of not offering that training in the first place while investigating training platforms and deciding whether investing in one is worthwhile?

In the long term, not training personnel can result in substantially more significant expenditures. Here are some examples of unintentional spending caused by a lack of employee training:

Employee turnover is higher.

According to a recent poll of remote workers, 72 percent would stick with the organization in the long run provided they get access to training possibilities. 7 out of 10 companies (69 percent) said that upskilling and reskilling training helped them retain employees.

What does the significance of these numbers imply? Employees cherish learning chances, and if they do not have access to those, they are more likely to depart. And the expenditures of recruiting and onboarding to replacing them are not insignificant.

Costs of compliance and safety

Let’s start with the obvious: compliance training is required. It’s how you get workplace accidents, cyber-attacks, and data breaches if you don’t train for compliance. Non-compliant businesses lose an average of $14.82 million in legal settlements, business disruption fees, and other expenses.

If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a correlation between inadequate compliance training and low staff engagement, which leads to errors and a drop in overall quality.

You’re losing your competitive advantage.

As this Forbes article points out, when circumstances are challenging, you need to make sure your employees are at their best. But how can you keep them current and assist them in developing new skills and knowledge if you don’t provide training?

Nothing is stopping your competitors from rushing in and stealing your consumers if your personnel aren’t well-equipped. Sales will eventually drop because of this.

When you put it that way, the expense of training isn’t nearly as high as it once was.

How to develop a strategy for low-cost employee training?

What if your training budget is still limited despite all the above?

The solution is to be more strategic about low-cost employee training rather than abandoning it entirely. For instance, you can determine who requires the most training and prioritize them by doing performance reviews.

But, in addition to being more aware of the “who,” you can also consider the “how.” Here are a few low-cost online training options that will help you get through the tough times without losing quality:

1. Repurpose and reuse existing online training materials

We all understand the need for recycling; you may use the same approach for staff training. This approach is when online training comes in handy. You can develop material once and reuse it repeatedly. You can even make many versions out of the same piece of content. For instance, you may have a video presentation of your company regulations for new hires, as well as a PDF version of the same presentation that staff can refer to as needed.

You may need to fine-tune your training from time to time to cover new goods or tools that you’re implementing. Or perhaps there are new compliance standards that you need to be aware of.

Even with that in mind, online content training will significantly reduce your overall expenditure.

That’s because you won’t have to pay teachers for physical appearances or book hotels, flights, conference rooms, or snacks – just for that one time or occasion. Online training is far more long-term. Instead of retaking the entire training session, you could simply construct a mini-course with what is new and ask employees to complete it.

2. Select microlearning as a method of instruction.

Focusing on microlearning is another smart strategy to ensure low-cost employee training.

Microlearning, or short sessions (3-6 minutes maximum) that are instructive without overwhelming your learners with too much stuff, provides several benefits, ranging from increased engagement to improved information retention. However, it also aids in the management of your entire training program.

You can create different modules by combining microlearning videos in different sequences. This strategy will make it much easier to adjust in the future because you won’t have to edit the entire course. You might even change tiny elements of your training to create alternative learning paths for different jobs and teams.

3. Provide pre-made courses

Having to design learning programs from scratch is one of the elements that drive up the training budget. Because you may need to employ specialists to generate the content and designers to make it appear attractive in that instance, alternatively, you may need to devote a significant amount of time to it on your own.

You can provide your staff access to a library of ready-made online courses if you want to ensure low-cost employee training. PlayAblo offers a wide range of soft skills that your employees will need to succeed in the workplace. You will not need to sweat over the quality of your material because specialists will have already prepared it. There is also no need to be worried about running out of content as well.

4. Produce easy-to-understand eLearning videos

Short, animated videos can be a cost-effective and rapid solution when you need to develop your content. They’re simple to build and require nothing in equipment and post-production (which generally takes a lot of time and money).

Choose a pleasant area in your office with decent lighting and make a free movie with your laptop camera. You can include some additional references or notes if you have some basic video editing abilities and access to suitable software. Otherwise, you can save them as a separate file and share them with your employees later.

5. Make instructor-led training sessions more social

You don’t have to forego instructor-led training entirely if you want to ensure low-cost employee training. If you can’t afford as many sessions as you wish to, you’ll have to make the most of each one.

Consider the concept of repurposing materials once more. Assume you’re running a webinar. This webinar is an excellent opportunity for your employees to receive training. But why should we stop there? You can use this time to establish mini-training opportunities instead of having one speaker share their experience and knowledge.

Include surveys, breakout rooms, Q&A sessions, and people taking the microphone during the webinar. A fresh training opportunity is anything that encourages learners to interact with each other and the teacher. Employee training can be fun and inexpensive with social learning. And, happily, video conferencing tools have advanced to the point that participants may be more active learners.

6. Promote peer learning.

Instead of hiring foreign teachers, ascertain low-cost employee training by relying on internal specialists. What are the names of such inside experts? Employees you currently have. People with extensive experience in their sector or people with unique talents already exist in your teams.

For example, seek a worker who is very good at time management or is a spreadsheet wizard. Those individuals can give presentations to the rest of the team and share their knowledge. It will just cost you some time away from their usual duties.

You’ll motivate your more experienced employees to share their knowledge with others if you keep your instructor-led sessions convivial and open to criticism and active participation. This approach is the first step toward conducting peer learning sessions, in which these seasoned workers will assume the position of the trainer.

Peer learning is also a great approach to demonstrating your appreciation for your staff while improving team collaboration.

7. Provide on-the-job instruction

On-the-job training is another low-cost employee training option. This approach essentially implies that instead of providing a lengthy onboarding training session that could become pricey, you’re letting new workers learn as they go.

There are various advantages to on-the-job training and coaching. It is individualized, flexible, and allows new employees to learn by making errors in a secure atmosphere, and it can be equally beneficial to different learning styles. Employees who are promoted or moved to a new role might also benefit from on-the-job training.

8. Invest in a low-cost learning management system (LMS).

Purchasing new software while trying to save money may seem counterintuitive. However, when you consider the big picture, it makes sense. An open source learning management system will save you money in the long run. Because you’ll be able to produce and replicate content at no additional expense and without using different technologies, save courses for later use, and collect statistics to learn what works and what doesn’t.

When researching training systems, look for companies that provide a free trial. In this manner, you can see if that platform meets your training requirements before making a purchase. You can also see if there is a low-cost employee training option, even if it means you won’t have access to all the features.

Conclusion

It is not necessary to spend a lot of money on employee development. Even if your training budget is limited, there are strategies to maximize it.

All you must do is be strategic with your expenditure, concentrate on the items that will move the needle ahead, and analyze your results regularly. Using some of the above cost-effective training options, as well as choosing the suitable LMS to house your training, will go a long way.