Managing the costs behind learning and employee development is a complex and difficult process. Training budgets are tight, and even low-cost solutions that meet specific needs can quickly accumulate and become expensive.
Managing multiple solutions can also be overwhelming. It can add to administrative burden and increase the risk of lost data if a platform doesn’t integrate with your other technology.
Organisations need a flexible and scalable solution that covers multiple areas of their L&D budget without breaking the bank.
In this article, we look at:
- Common direct and indirect training costs
- How a scalable digital platform like Cloud Assess can help
- Quotes from real people about the impact Cloud Assess has had on their costs and operational efficiency
What are the Most Common Employee Training Costs?
Training Resources
Courses, print-outs and other training resources take significant time to create. Every time a course needs to be updated or new learners join your organisation, these training materials need to be redeveloped, reprinted and redistributed. Training resources also include facility costs and travel if your teams need to train outside of your office environment.
Lost Productivity During Training Hours
When training employees, any time spent teaching and learning takes workers away from their roles. These indirect employee training costs can affect teachers, learners, and their colleagues who have to pick up the slack. Companies that don’t factor time lost to lengthy training sessions into their strategic workforce planning can quickly see training impacting productivity across their organisations.
Administrative Overheads
There are various administrative tasks behind employee training including enrolments, tracking employee training progress, and identifying areas where learners struggle. Administrative salaries are part of your administrative overhead costs, along with expenses from human errors, audits, and potential compliance penalties if admin isn’t managed effectively.
Certification Fees
Certifications often require employees to complete specific training courses, exams, or training programs, which incur costs for exams, renewals, and certifications. This is especially the case in industries with strict compliance requirements.
Software Subscriptions and Licenses
Subscriptions can add up, especially for large organisations that use multiple or highly specialised online tools. On top of monthly payments, these solutions often require additional fees for upgrades, user licenses, and ongoing technical support.
Evaluation and Assessment
Measuring the effectiveness of employee training is essential, but can often incur significant costs. These could include printed training materials and the time and effort required to mark them. It’s also important to collect and analyse training feedback to determine where improvements can be made, which is another time- and effort-intensive practice.
How Can Cloud Assess Help Reduce Training Costs?
Saves Time and Improves Efficiency
A scalable digital platform like Cloud Assess helps companies to streamline their training processes. Tools like workflow automation save companies time and effort, minimising stress, reducing the cost of training employees, and improving overall efficiency.
Companies like Energy Trust have already seen substantial improvement in their operations from adopting Cloud Assess. “Naturally, as our business expands, we encounter growing pains. Cloud Assess has proven instrumental in addressing this challenge through its built-in automations and workflows… This automation translates to substantial time savings, amounting to thousands of man-hours annually—an essential overhead reduction for us.”
Eliminates Paper-Based Systems
Paper-based training incurs significant costs and can make it challenging to maintain trails for auditing. The more people are trained with paper-based systems, the harder it becomes to manage and glean data from employee training and assessments.
Cloud Assess’ digitisation projects reduce the cost of training, help companies gather actionable insights from employee training sessions, and contribute towards more environmentally friendly operations. One company’s results included saving 750 trees and 2,000 reams of paper and Reducing 30 tonnes of paper usage.
As MacMahon Mining explain, moving away from a paper-based system also ensures consistency and reduces the risk of human error: “With paper, assessments could easily go missing if they were misplaced or accidentally thrown away. But with Cloud Assess, as long as it’s checked in, there’s always a record of it.”
Identifies and Addresses Skill Gaps
Maintaining digital records helps companies analyse the impact that employee training programs have on operations. Using a platform like Cloud Assess helps organisations track, measure and quantify employee skills, developing training programs that will address critical skill gaps.
Maintaining visibility into skill development can also ensure the right people are assigned to roles that leverage their abilities. MacMahon explain that this clear evidence of workplace skills can reassure stakeholders, particularly when incidents arise. “If an incident occurs, the first thing people check is whether the person has completed their training and if there’s evidence of it. Having that training evidence securely stored is crucial.”
Accommodates On-the-Job Training for Frontline and Deskless Workers
It can be difficult for those in frontline or deskless roles to dedicate time to in-person training or accessing eLearning training materials on a computer. For these workers, having a digital learning platform that’s accessible on any device, even in remote locations with minimal internet access, is critical to success.
Cloud Assess is an ideal solution for frontline and deskless workers, providing opportunities for integrating learning into everyday responsibilities. This kind of on-the-job training ensures the skills employees learn directly relate to their roles, improving efficiency and effectiveness while reducing employee training costs.
Optimises Training Spend
When companies invest in solutions that meet individual organisational needs, costs can quickly add up. Finding a flexible, all-in-one solution can minimise software investments and optimise training costs.
Cloud Assess incorporates learning management system (LMS) features alongside assessment tools. It also helps companies manage certifications, compile evidence of learning, gather and analyse training feedback and more. These advanced and comprehensive features mean that a single platform can meet multiple business requirements.
Integrations with over 5000 solutions also help Cloud Assess seamlessly share information to allow you to maintain a consolidated tech stack. This ensures the platform includes essential training and assessment tools while maintaining a low price point compared to many competitors.
Reduces Risk of Compliance Penalties
Many industries have strict regulations for employee training. This protects your business from legal liabilities, reputational damage, and financial penalties that can arise from accidents or non-compliance.
Maintaining a clear audit trail for skills, training, certification and documentation that is easily accessible helps companies reduce the risk of non-compliance. This ensures that employee training meets regulatory requirements while supporting business goals.
Scalable to Meet Growing Business Needs
As more employees are onboarded, paper-based training programs quickly become unsustainable. The bigger your company is, the more urgent the need to adopt a digital platform.
A solution like Cloud Assess provides organisations with the tools they need to reduce training costs, while still delivering effective and targeted employee training programs. Whether you’re a start-up, a small-to-midsize business (SMB) or a large corporation, Cloud Assess’ cost-effective and scalable solutions will meet your unique needs.
See the Difference For Yourself
Cloud Assess provides high-quality, cost-effective learning and assessment solutions to organisations across industries like transport, rail, retail, logistics, mining, hospitality and vocational education and training. However, you don’t need to take our word for the impact our training solutions can have on your training costs and the effectiveness of employee training programs.
See the difference that Cloud Assess can make for your business by starting your Explore Pricing or requesting a demo.
