5 reasons to build and maintain an online academy

Until a year ago, it was so normal: learning with a group of fellow students in a room. A teacher in front of the class, occasionally breaking up into small subgroups to discuss a pressing issue at the same table.

Then came corona. Suddenly, it was no longer self-evident to attend training with everyone in the same room.

Online academy for talent development

At organizations that had already found the digital highway, talent development continued steadily, corona or no corona. Others were caught unprepared. They were not equipped to bridge the distance. After a brief panic moment, more and more employers turned to companies that build online knowledge platforms, such as Pluvo.

The digital academies are now popping up like mushrooms. Is this a hype? Will all these knowledge platforms disappear along with the corona?

We don't think so! Here are a few good reasons to build and maintain an online academy:

1. Always up-to-date

A digital knowledge platform is easy to update. Are there new scientific insights that conflict with the course material, or have certain employees left the company? Just click the button and you're up-to-date again.

The flexibility of the content has another important advantage. How nice is it to be able to immediately take your employees with you in a change of production method, or the exploration of a new type of service provision?

2. Time and cost savings

Especially in a time when important ecological choices need to be made, reducing travel miles is an important consideration. That's already one plus of online training.

But being able to log in to a training course conveniently from home or the workplace also saves a lot of travel time.

You can better use those scarce, precious hours to deliver even more production. Or, of course, use them for quality time to recharge yourself. Because that's important too!

Create an online academy with Pluvo!

3. Ultimate customization

An online academy is super flexible. You can literally determine which learning path each employee follows, or what the onboarding program looks like. If it's a quick learner, the curriculum skips a few unnecessary chapters, or extra in-depth course material is added.

And why would you make the onboarding program for an HR manager the same as for the new production employee? Make it tailor-made.

That's no problem with an online knowledge platform: you can easily mix and match the different modules.

Is someone having difficulty absorbing the information, or is there some delay due to personal or work-related circumstances? That's no problem online. You can easily review one or more lessons, watch a recorded lesson as many times as you want, or share handy tips with your colleagues.

4. All-you-can-learn-menu

Think of an online academy as a digital menu in a restaurant full of knowledge and news. Every customer can choose from a broad, varied range according to their own taste and needs. If you make that menu as attractive as possible, those customers will keep coming back time and time again. Not because you have to, but because you can!

An online academy offers endless possibilities. You don't have to limit yourself to dry theory; a funny video about a certain topic, a pub quiz or a game in which you can put the just learned material into practice: it's all possible. And it makes learning or training much more enjoyable.

5. Talentmanagement

Last but not least, we also want to touch upon the more business side of an online academy. It is very useful to have an overview of the knowledge level of all your employees. Then you know exactly where there is still a need for knowledge, or which talent with which motivations you have in-house at which location in case of a vacancy.

In short: talent management becomes much easier with a digital knowledge platform!

An online academy is here to stay

So, a knowledge platform provides additional steering information. It makes your employees future-proof and responds to individual information needs. Without wanting to preach to the choir, we are convinced that digital learning is here to stay.

Are there any disadvantages to setting up an online academy? Of course, it requires some initial investment. You need to build a foundation. However, this doesn't have to be very complicated, as there are all kinds of ready-made formats available on the market. Information needs to be collected and written for online publication. Yet, this is often not very difficult, as almost every company has already digitized a lot of information over time.

So, in many cases, it is a matter of harvesting and maintaining that low-hanging fruit.

Another "downside" can be the lack of live, personal contact. Solve this with blended learning: alternate online and live sessions. Organize occasional old-school live lessons on location as soon as that is possible and allowed again.

And if we may give one more tip as a conclusion: record such a live training. Then you immediately have a new asset for your knowledge platform!

And these were just a few advantages.

‍Pluvo is is an expert in building online knowledge platforms. Of course, we are happy to share our knowledge (that's what we do)! Create a free account to get started with your own online academy.