by Todd Beck
This question assumes that the organization's goal is to retain an employee through training - perhaps to signal that the organization is investing in the employee's future, or that the organization itself is dynamic and can learn, so that jobs are safe with no threat of layoffs.
Put yourself in that employee's shoes. Which option suggests that my personal value to the company is higher - sending me to a 3-day classroom program or emailing me a link to a library of 3,000 elearning courses and saying, "OK, have at it." Or to be more fair, a 3-day classroom program vs. a 3-hour elearning program.
All else being equal, in this simple example, in your gut - which one sends the better message that the organization values that employee?
Granted, it's not fair to blame the medium of elearning for all the faults in training implementation and plain old bad management of change. But it's been my experience - and I'll bet it's been yours - that organizations that use a lot of elearning do not choose elearning for its intrinsic instructional effectiveness. They choose elearning because it's cheap.
So, when you want to retain your BEST employees, be honest - will you choose elearning or classroom? Choose wisely, because your BEST employees will figure out why you chose classroom or elearning, and will use that perception to guide their own decisions to stay or to leave.
NOTE: You wouldn't want to be in Jack's shoes in this video where I debate him on AchieveGlobal Island in Second Life.
