Most convenience store managers look to online training as a way to help streamline their employee development programs. The benefits of online employee training, however, do not happen automatically. Creating a successful training program for online delivery requires implementing best practices that help ensure benefits are realized.
Benefits and Best Practices of Online Training
Benefit: Training your employees online means everyone receives a consistent message.
Best practice: Keep your training up-to-date at all times. With the right system, updates are easy to make. Most learning management systems also include functionality for you to store company documents, further providing a consistent message to all employees.
Benefit: Training online is cheaper per trainee than live training.
Best practice: Use your online learning program as the foundation of knowledge for your employees, but don’t expect it replace all other forms of training. It’s critical for you to continue on-the-job training and mentoring. A blended training approach works best.
Benefit: When you train your staff through an online learning management system, you can assess comprehension and track completion.
Best practice: Many convenience stores use training online for compliance and human resources topics where tracking is critical. With this type of system, you can automatically schedule refresher training to help ensure your employees keep critical content top-of-mind.
Benefit: With online training, you can create custom training paths for your employees based on their specific needs.
Best practice: Training is never a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Use gap analyses, employee reviews, and one-on-one interaction with employees to find out what they want to learn to advance their careers. When you approach training this way, you’ll find it’s a key component of reducing staff turnover.
Benefit: Online learning administration is streamlined through a learning management system.
Best practice: Be sure to leverage all the functionality that your LMS offers. Store managers, training administrators, and district managers should all be looking at your LMS metrics to gain valuable insight about employee development.
How To Choose Online Training for Your Convenience Store
If you aren’t already using a learning management system to deliver training, you might find that the number of available platforms can be be a bit overwhelming. Some systems may have more features than you need, and others may not offer nearly enough. Follow these steps to choose the right LMS for your convenience store operation:
- Identify the learning objectives you have for your entire employee training curriculum, not just the topics you plan to cover online. Then, determine which objectives can be assessed through an LMS and which require a more blended learning approach. Once you have the big picture figured out, you’ll understand where your LMS will fit into the process.
- Make a list of the LMS features you must have and others that would be nice to have. Compare this list to the features of the systems you’re considering, and evaluate what you find against your budget. Be sure to consider the cost of add-ons you may need later as well as all customer support options.
- Consider the sources for your training content. If you’re licensing off-the-shelf courses from the LMS provider, are they specific to your industry? Can the LMS host and track other courses you’ve created? Are there options to create new custom training content specific to your business?
Online Training with trainingGrid®
trainingGrid® is an LMS developed with you and your employees in mind. Its intuitive design makes learning management simple and allows employees to begin training with just a click. This flexible system comes with a variety of robust features customizable to fit your needs in addition to built-in reporting and certification tools that track your compliance documentation.
Request a guided demonstration of trainingGrid® today!
