We have to provide courses in an alternative way where it's convenient for the learner. Peg Maddocks, manufacturing training manager for Cisco Systems Inc. of San Jose, recently put together her first fully Web-based training program. She says that with a large group of employees needing to pick up new skills quickly, online was the only way to go. There's no way we could do classes for that many people efficiently. Web-based training not only provides the needed information quickly, it serves as an ongoing reference tool.
Convenience benefits more than just the learner.
As much as 40 cents of every dollar spent on in-person corporate training is eaten up by travel costs. You can measure the cost of a plane ticket, the cost of downtime, and those really add up. It's something that's very hard to measure, but it adds up. I can manage to get a lot of course work done at lunch time. I eat at my desk and work on the next lesson.