10 Ways to Drastically Reduce the Cost of Training

When corporate training paths are bloated and inefficient, it’s easy to see how they can affect the ROI of training initiatives.

In fact, according to Training Magazine’s 2021 Training Industry Report, the average training cost per employee is $1,071. That is a lot of money being spent on your organization’s training budget to develop employees.

This becomes more prevalent when your training courses aren’t as efficient or effective as they could be, thus driving up the cost of training your employees.

Here are some ways to drastically reduce the cost of employee training:

1. Take advantage of eLearning

Before the pandemic, when employees were typically working at the office, training sessions were hosted in person in a conference room or shared space. This involved segmenting large groups of employees to train at the same time, in the same way, with the same material.

Obviously, this wasn’t the most cost-effective way to train multiple employees. Individuals have different learning styles, which won’t be very accommodating to each employee.

For example, some employees prefer instructional videos, while others might retain information better through a social learning environment.

Now that the majority of the United State’s workforce has gone remote, online learning has become the most effective method of training employees.

Through eLearning, employees can access online training programs or learning resources on their own time, choosing the preferred method of training. Now your employees can still perform their job duties and then access training when available.

2. Choose a modern LMS

When it comes to shopping for learning management systems, you want to make sure that you pick the right one for your organization’s learning and development needs.

Legacy learning systems are simply a way to hold training resources without being able to improve learner engagement, increase retention, or measure training progress. They were simply a corporate intranet or knowledge base.

However, a modern LMS is much more than a way to hold your internal resources. In fact, they’ll be able to:

• Create entire eLearning courses within the application
• Deliver training modules directly to employees
• Develop an engaging learning environment
• Gamify your training to provide rewards, badges, and leaderboards
• Segment learners into smaller groups with similar learning preferences
• Assess employees before and after training sessions
• Track and measure employee training progress

Plus, much more…

Using a learning management system is a much better way to reduce employee training costs.

3. Focus on the outcomes of employee training

Inexpensive training isn’t cost-saving if your team members don’t learn the skills they need to actually do their jobs more effectively. 

A good training program will include assessments to ensure that participants have obtained mastery. 

However, that’s not quite enough. You’ll also want to establish specific objectives for training, then collect feedback that allows you to measure success.

Using the outcomes from training your employees, you’ll be able to modify and improve that training session to be as effective as possible. 

That way employees learn the knowledge, skills, and intended information for the first time. This means less overall training and a less employee training cost.

4. Leverage free learning resources

As long as you get good results, you won’t find anything more cost-effective than free training. There’s more of this available than you might think. 

Here are just a few sources of free or extremely low-cost training or other learning materials:

• Government organizations
• MOOC (Massive Online Open Source Content) such as Udemy or EdX
• Software Vendors
• Podcasts or YouTube Videos
• Professional associations

Sometimes the difference between a free training course and one that you pay for is quite small. 

For example, a paid course might come with printed materials or expedited customer support while the free version does not. 

But, that doesn’t mean the content within a free training course isn’t effective in teaching new skills or information. In fact, if you come across free training resources, give them a try and see if it’s effective in teaching new skills or information, while also removing the need to dip into your organization’s training budget.

5. Start a mentoring program

Use the knowledge that exists within your organization to build a stronger workforce. By identifying your sharpest, most successful team members, you can create a mentoring program.

These mentors can help new hires learn policies and best practices to perform their jobs better, while also improving your organization's learning process.

Since these mentors have already been trained on the subject matter and displayed expertise in the area, allowing them to train their peers is a great way to reduce employee training costs.

6. Embrace microlearning

Not every training effort has to be lengthy or require lots of resources. If you feel overwhelmed at the expense of formal training, consider using microlearning. 

This approach to training allows you to offer training in smaller chunks that is much easier to consume and is also less expensive.

Providing microlearning courses is an efficient way to deliver training that doesn’t interfere with an employee’s responsibilities. That way, they can do their job, take 30 minutes to complete a training session, then jump back into work.

Not only did they complete a part of their training, but they also were able to continue their normal job duties. This saves time by not having lengthy training sessions but can also help reduce training costs.

7. Share training materials within the organization (or outside)

Your training team may be losing money by missing out on opportunities to share training resources. 

Have different departments created training videos, guidebooks, or other materials that other departments could use? Get rid of those knowledge silos and use whatever’s already been created.

Next, look outside of your company, there are other ways companies can share resources or split the cost of expensive training.

For example, if you use a popular software package to run your business or use a particular technology, consider joining a user group. This will enable you to team up with other companies for reduced-cost reference materials and training.

Now, both companies can participate while splitting the cost of training.

8. Use feedback and assessments to measure success

How will you know if your training is effective unless you ask your employees for feedback or provide a training analysis? Both of these are great ways to reduce the cost of employee training.

By gathering feedback and assessment data from trainees, before and after training, you’ll be in a better position to see what did or didn’t work.

Let your employees tell you first-hand what they got out of training and if they actually retained the information taught. If your feedback or assessment data was subpar, it gives you better insight into ways of improving your training content.

Now the next group of employees will cost far less as they are receiving a more effective training session.

9. Generate reports on learner data and behavior

After collecting feedback or assessing learners, your LMS will compile all of your learning data into a dashboard. Through this dashboard, you can see how your employee development opportunities measure up to key performance indicators for training.

A modern LMS will be able to collect all of this data and display it in a way that allows instructors to determine if the training was a success and answer common questions like:

• How many employees attended the training?
• How many trainees completed the training?
• On average how long did it take them to complete?
• What were the assessment scores of each employee?
• How satisfied were employees with the training?
• Did the training impact their job performance?
• What was the ROI of this training?

Using this training data, you'd better be able to answer the questions above and justify employee training costs.

10. Constantly improve your training programs

Now that you have feedback, assessment or quiz scores, and insightful data about your training efforts, you can use them to tweak your training into an efficient and effective program.

Find ways to improve your instructional design, whether it’s cutting out all the “fat”, adopting methods from other instructors, or incorporating multiple training styles.

Recycling the same boring, ineffective, and unsuccessful learning content is a terrible way to lessen employee training costs.

So, use everything at your disposal to develop training materials that are aimed to develop skills, instill knowledge, and boost productivity. This will dramatically reduce the cost of employee training in the future.

Using Continu to significantly reduce employee training costs

Almost every cost-saving measure you take related to employee training is much easier to achieve with a reputable learning management system like Continu. 

Continu is a modern learning system built for enterprise organizations to efficiently, effectively, and affordably train employees.

In fact, Continu helps instructors, L&D professionals, and administrators solve their training problems with solutions such as:

Automating time-consuming training processes

Your HR department can use the resources offered in Continu to create a customized and automated employee onboarding process. Our employee onboarding software ensures new employees have the information and resources they need to become productive quickly. 

Further, they can use the platform to develop learning pathways that start from the moment of onboarding and provide an ongoing learning experience.

Automating the onboarding process and delivering a ready-made learning path cuts down on repetitive tasks and lets your team members complete more meaningful tasks.

Centralizing training resources into a single platform

Continu is a learning platform that is easy to install, customize for your needs, and administer. There is no significant learning involved to become proficient at making this LMS work for your organization. 

Because of this, you will never need to hire external consultants to manage this platform for you. Additionally, the platform integrates with popular software and apps like Slack, Zoom, and Google Workspace.

Now all of your training materials, data, and courses are hosted in a centralized learning platform. This saves time and effort looking for training programs or materials that are otherwise hosted on different platforms.

Providing 24/7 access to training materials

Continu is an exceptional platform for distributed teams, traveling sales staff, and organizations with many locations. Continu can be accessed by all team members 24/7 without any extra cost.

Train your remote staff, external users, and customers from a single platform while providing access to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Now your team can train when they need it most, without having to sacrifice time and money on expensive in-person training sessions.

Delivering and assigning training to employees

Our Slack integration makes it easy for administrators, L&D professionals, and instructors to deliver training materials to anyone across the globe. Your team will be able to search the entire Continu library for courses and content directly within Slack, which they’re already using.

Managers can assign training to employees within Continu and send notifications through Slack, prompting them to check out the new training course. Then receive tailored notifications for every part of the learner’s journey.

Tracking and measuring employee training progress

Continu makes tracking and measuring employee training progress a breeze. Admins can view who’s started training, where they’re at, and if they’ve completed the required training.

Save time and reduce training costs when you have a complete 360-degree view of your organization’s training progress.

Check employee assessment scores, badges, completed courses, and much more all from a single screen.

All of that valuable information is displayed within their admin dashboard which provides an overview of your entire company’s training efforts.

Enjoy a Cost-Effective Training System with Continu

Businesses that adopt Continu as their learning management system experience the benefits of a centralized training platform. They’re also able to reduce employee training costs while increasing engagement in training initiatives.

That’s why some of the biggest companies choose Continu to train their employees and cut down on training costs compared to legacy systems.

Continu is a modern LMS with powerful features and solutions for enterprise learning and development. Automate the entire onboarding process with workflows, create new employee training programs, assess competencies, and track progress through custom-designed training plans all within one single platform.