The Benefits of Distance Learning for Employees

Upskilling staff is one of the best ways to improve the variety of skill sets available to your company, but can be expensive to enrol employees in college campus courses. That is why the much less costly online distance learning is growing in popularity as a way to equip your team with new skills and abilities that can increase the success of your business.

Financial benefits of online distance learning

There are financial benefits for employees taking distance learning courses for both the employer and the employee. Most employers will be able to cover the costs of a distance learning course far more easily than one at a local college or university. There are even many free distance learning courses that can be of great benefit to a business.

Learning online also means employees don’t have to fork out for extra travel and other expenses required to attend a campus for the lessons and lectures. They can study for their business diplomas via distance learning while continuing to perform their jobs. 

Save time with distance learning courses

Most employee will be studying at home if they enrol for distance learning, so there is minimal loss of time to the employer. Some companies may arrange with an employee to allocate them a specific half-day a week or a number of hours over the course of a month that they can dedicate to their distance learning studies.

There are a number of ways you can make time for a distance-learning employee to free up work time. First, identify tasks that can be completed more efficiently or with automation. Necessity can often make tasks that previously took a half-day to complete suddenly only take a couple of hours.

Freeing up a morning or afternoon here and there for a distance-learning employee also creates opportunities to train other employees to cover for different roles. 

Business benefits of distance learning

The main benefit is of course that your employees increase their abilities, knowledge and skill sets. They can then help grow your business in ways they were not previously capable. They can inject new ideas and a proactive attitude into the personality of the company, which can prove invaluable in the long run.

The employee could gain expertise in how to approach social media from a business perspective, or how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your daily operations. In this way they can continue to save the business both time and money for years after they have completed their distance learning course.

One more major benefit that distance learning opportunities provide your business is high morale among the staff. It is human nature that when employees know they have opportunities to learn and keep improving their status over time, they gain a sense of ownership of their roles and duties and perform far more productively. Employees who see no way forward for themselves may become lacklustre in their performances, only doing the bare minimum to maintain their employment. 

Business these days is dynamic, and the most successful companies are filled with happy and ambitious team members working together to achieve the company’s goals. By providing exciting opportunities via distance learning courses, you can ensure your company has an ambitious staff with the same goals as you do.

We can help

If you’d like to learn more about how offering distance learning to your staff can benefit your company, why not contact our financial experts. Find out how GoCardless can help you with ad hoc payments or recurring payments to save time on chasing up payments so you and your employees can learn and develop the new skills needed to drive your company forward.