Learning is a Business Asset: 3 Affordable Learning Solutions for Small to Mid-Sized Businesses
DeAnnah Stinson Reese
Driving strategy for brand expansion, people development, and elevating culture | Reimagining ways employees & customers feel seen, heard, valued | Award Nominated, DEIB Consultant | Certified Coach | Author
The world is ever evolving and no matter how good you are at something, there will eventually be a better way to do it. Businesses and professionals are at the best advantage when they invest in the ongoing learning and development within their respective industries.
Smart businesses find ways to invest in their staff because they understand the importance of remaining competitive and generating profits. Your employees are the ones in the trenches and are a vital lifeline to making sure businesses stay alive. It is also equally important to have a culture that supports new ideas and challenge the staff both individually and collectively.
When you invest in professional development, it helps to spark ideas, drive, growth, goals, and execution in your staff. Learning is a win-win for professionals and businesses but let’s be real, sometimes costs get in the way. For small businesses, it is not feasible to spend hundreds of thousands on learning and training development solutions. So here are some affordable and effective learning solutions if you are a business looking to stay competitive without breaking your budget for around $1000 or less per year. By the way, none of these companies are paying me to endorse or market their products... but they should right?! lol!
1. Go-To-Webinar
2. Webinar Jam
3. Livestorm
So now what?! You have knowledge of user friendly, cost-effective solutions for delivering learning content/trainings but you still may not know where to start with investing in your staff. Here are some great starting points to organizing content:
1. Think about pain points your staff is experiencing, foreseeable challenges to productivity, or skills needed to support business growth.
2. Reach out to experts to collaborate as guests (15-30 min) through webinars, podcasts, or informational interviews to incorporate in part of the trainings.
3. Learn about professional goals for your staff and create quarterly professional development opportunities around their feedback.
For some of us, creating the content and delivery is the easy part, however most of the time the most time consuming part of training and learning solutions is identifying what content is going to add the most value. If you have questions or want to run your ideas by me, do not hesitate to reach out! Best wishes as your businesses continue to grow and scale!!
Entrepreneur | Lifelong Learner
6 年Great post DeAnnah! Thank you for sharing. The ideas are timely for our 10 year old SME, which is on the cusp of scaling, having survived this long. Ideation, implementing, fixing, sharing, learning, growing, blooming, are all possible now, through this fantastic medium of LinkedIn. That you & millions of others are so generous & willing to share your ideas & experiences, is truly inspiring.
Driving strategy for brand expansion, people development, and elevating culture | Reimagining ways employees & customers feel seen, heard, valued | Award Nominated, DEIB Consultant | Certified Coach | Author
6 年Dan every asset costs something so the fact that learning costs whether it be time or money doesn’t negate it as an asset. While learning is action taking place, companies are investing in their staff’s access to learn and ultimately use knowledge. Without learning there’s no knowledge. So your professional opinion may be that learning is not an asset, but my professional opinion and experience with my clients is what leads me to my conclusion. Your perspective adds value though as it pertains to the perception of learning.
Student
6 年Absolutely gorgeous
Simplifying Corporate Catering for Meetings, Events, and Sales Teams | Trusted by Fortune 500 Companies | Productivity Hacks
6 年What an amazing article. Really valuable