Want to make your course stand out in the Go1 Course Marketplace? Try this cool new feature that allows you to set a GIF as your course card image.

Animating your course card means that as learners are browsing through courses in the marketplace your courses will stand out from the pack and generate more interest than a regular image, and below we’ll show you how to create your own GIF files.

Course GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

If you want to use a GIF as a course card image, the first thing you need is a GIF. There are 2 options here, you can either create your own GIF, or use an existing file.

For those using pre made GIF’s the best place to start your search is on Giffy. It’s important to ensure that you have the rights to be able to use the GIF though, so please do your research to avoid trouble later on.

Creating your own GIF’s is a simple process and can be used to highlight some of the information that is included in your course. There are only 2 steps involved that anyone can complete:

Step 1: Use screen recording software to capture a video of the action on your screen. There are a stack of free programs out there to help with this, our favorite is Quicktime. Simply click, File, New Screen Recording, and start creating your GIF. This will generate a video file of your recording.

If you wanted to use a series of images, there are many programs online that allow you to compile images into video or GIF format too.

Step 2: head to EZGIF and upload your video to convert to GIF. You can also edit your file here, and speed up the animation if desired. Click Save, and you have your GIF ready to go.

Following the sequence in the GIF shown earlier in this post, navigate to the My Learning tab in your Go1 Portal, click on courses, and then select the course that you’d like to update.

Once the course is open, click on the Edit Course button to open up all of the editing options. From here we can click on the Manage Images button in the middle of the header image. At this point you will be give the option to update both the header image, and the course image.

You can choose to update one or both options; you can have a GIF as a header image if you like, but in this case we click on the course card image, and then select our GIF file, and then click Update.

Now if we navigate back to our My Learning page and look at our courses, we can see that the GIF has now been added as the course card, and stands out from our other courses.

If you have any trouble setting GIF’s as course cards, please click on our live chat in the bottom right hand corner of your screen, and a member of our customer success team will be able to walk you through the process.

If you want to try out Go1 for free, sign up for a portal today!

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Make your course stand out with a GIF as a course card

Improving learner engagement is the theme of our Go1 update for August. Proving learning or training material is great, but unless your users are engaged and learning from what they are reading or watching, you can find yourself at risk. Tracking in person events, forced video watching and control over content variables headline our August updates, along with a stack of other improvements.

Learn more about all of the updates below.

Force learners to watch a video to the end

You can now select an option that forces your users to watch a full video before being able to mark as completed and move to the next learning item. This is a great tool for boosting your learner engagement and now available on youtube and uploaded videos.

Administrators can change default content variables

Being able to control what your users see after they enter their portal can help to get your learners moving through their content much quicker. Some Go1 content now comes with the ability to customise for your own company by setting variables.

Other updates and improvements include: 

Filter notes by Enrollment status on course Discussion page

Enrollment completion can be download as a PDF

Bulk actions added for Assigning assessors

Sign up for a free trial today and try it out for yourself!

If you have any questions about any of the updates and improvements listed above, please let us know and our Customer Success Team can help you out!

Improve learner engagement with the Go1 August update

We all know how this scenario goes: you’ve just got into the perfect work zone, feeling 100% inspired and focused, when your alarm goes off to advise of a team meeting. By the time you get back to your desk and regain concentration, it’s only to have it broken by yet another meeting. Frustrating, right?

Many office workers know the sense of frustration that can come from too many meetings – especially when those meetings often feel pointless, disorganised or counterproductive. And when your calendar is constantly booked out with back-to-back meetings, whether virtual or in-person, it becomes very hard to find the time to carry out all those tasks discussed at meetings!

That’s why it’s so important to make every single meeting as productive, engaging and efficient as possible. Because unfortunately, while meetings are supposed to help improve your team’s business operations, productivity and collaboration, they can actually do the opposite.

Do you really need to accept every meeting?

The first thing this course highlights is something called ‘Mindless Accept Syndrome.’ Most of us are in the habit of just accepting a meeting invitation the minute it pops up in our inbox or calendar – even when we don’t really know what it’s about or how we can add value.

But do you really need to accept every meeting invite that comes your way? In his well-known TED talk, speaker David Grady discusses the “epidemic of bad, inefficient, overcrowded meetings [that] is plaguing the world’s businesses and making workers miserable.”

According to Grady, Mindless Accept Syndrome occurs when employees automatically accept meeting invitations – without agendas, without clarity of purpose, without knowing why they have been selected to attend and not knowing what they are expected to contribute nor to achieve.

Throughout the course, you’ll learn how to change this behaviour, by proactively questioning and considering each meeting invite that comes your way.

The different types of personalities you meet in meetings

The Making Meetings Matter course also looks at some of the types of workers we can regularly come across in meetings, who may be (consciously or sub-consciously) contributing to counterproductive meetings.

We’ve all dealt with someone who likes to dominate every meeting, even when they’re not chairperson. Or the person who rambles on and on, making each meeting run overtime. Even the workplace joker can derail a productive meeting.

It’s good to be aware that even colleagues who are super nice people can often act out in negative ways during meetings. This is probably because they feel that their time is being wasted, they have deadlines and pressures back at their desk, and it all leaves them in a less than fantastic mood.

Through the course, you’ll learn how to manage these different types of personalities, with helpful advice for bringing meetings back on track.

Practical tips for designing and chairing meetings

Last, but not least, you’ll also learn practical tips for designing and leading workplace meetings. Meetings without structure are in danger of going on forever, and often employees will leave wondering why they were even present.

Setting an agenda – a simple meeting agenda, distributed in advance, is perhaps the most important tool in ensuring a successful productive meeting

Meeting ground rules – stop people displaying disruptive behaviours in meetings, get the group to agree on ground rules about how your meetings will be run

Roles and responsibilities – ensure that everyone involved is crystal clear on their roles and the associated responsibilities of those roles

Action and follow-up – agree on tasks (action items) that should be carried out, with clear deliverables and due dates for individuals

With your new Meeting Tool Kit, you’ll also discover some of the best meeting management tools you can use in the real world.

Soon, by changing the way meetings are designed, lead and experienced, you’ll be enhancing your team’s productivity and engagement, while cutting down on pointless, frustrating meeting time. You might even make workplace meetings fun, and something that staff can look forward to!


An eLearning course can be made of many methods - but which one’s the best for you?

Now wait just one second… An online learning course isn’t a one-size-fits-all kind of deal, you say?

The methods you’d implement in the creation of your very best content will vary depending upon a load of factors:

What are your learning outcome objectives?

When creating eLearning content all of these questions must be answered. There are, however, a few useful suggestions and tips to follow that will lead the eLearning course leader to success in their venture.

In this article, we’ll describe some of these suggestions to help you create the best content available. Good luck!

Take the plunge - decide on your authoring tool

First and foremost, to create any content at all, you’ll need an authoring tool. And to acquire an authoring tool, you’ll need to select one.

An authoring tool is a generic name for software that allows their users to combine and curate a combination of digital and multimedia elements to stitch together great eLearning courses. The authoring tool is what turns the idea of the eLearning course into a reality. It is absolutely essential in the creation of content for any online course.

There is a huge array of authoring tools available, some free and some paid, though a selection of the best known includes: Adobe Captivate, Obsidian Black, iSpring Suite, Articulate Storyline 2.

The difficulty is in deciding on which to use. As with other software types, some authoring tools give the user control over every aspect of their work, but require more technical knowledge to use. Others offer limited customization but are much more straight forward to learn. It’ll depend on you as to which you choose.

Now, this suggestion should be at the forefront of your mind before you dive into the design of your eLearning course. It is simply this: what are you trying to teach, which can be alternatively worded as what are your intended learning outcomes for students, and how do you want to teach them?

This is a fundamental step in creating eLearning content simply because many other decisions will be based on how what you decide here.

Once you’ve decided upon a subject, try and bring in a known expert to offer an added air of expert knowledge.

Find out about the audience you’re addressing. Corporate eLearning courses are well-stocked, so your success will often be dependent upon your ability to focus your learning towards this niche.

And it goes without saying that you should know your subject inside out. If that isn’t true about the subject you’ve chosen then maybe choose a topic that is closer to home.

With so many competitors out there, your content creation needs to shine. Do this by including a selection of media sources to give your course high-quality sheen.

But where to find all this delicious multimedia? One option is to create your own. While this offers supreme attention to detail and value for money for learners, it also requires a large budget and takes up a lot of time. Alternatively, you can use resources already available online. Here are a few select options for you to peruse.

Videos – Videos are easy enough to find across the web. The obvious resources here are YouTube and Vimeo, with the latter tending to have fewer videos but being of higher quality formatting. These two sites can easily be embedded into your course using your authoring tool.

Images – Public domain images are often a treasure trove for you to rummage among. The obvious websites here are Pexels, Shutterstock, Flickr, and Pixabay. Just make sure that the images you select are in the public domain, not private. The websites have filters to easily allow you to check this.

Graphics – For the easy use of figures and stats, try Canva or Piktochart. Graphics and infographics are an ideal way to easily visualize key figures in a lesson.

An amateur mistake to make in eLearning content creation is thinking that quality is all about quantity. In truth, less is almost always more.

Those taking online courses don’t want to fritter away time completing a mountain of ineffective videos, pop quizzes, or pointless tasks. Content shouldn’t be created merely for the sake of it. Instead, keep them focused as tools to achieve learning outcome objectives.

Multimedia should be used sporadically and only to emphasize or offer an alternative perspective.

The design of your content is more effectively streamlined when you cut away extra weight. Intended learning outcomes are clearer and there’s little fatigue for learners.

There’s a reason we use children’s stories and morality tales to illustrate rules and rights of our societies. The story is a brilliant medium through which to explain important messages. It’s malleable and movable and has infinite possibilities.

This is why we’re recommending them to you.

There’s the classic story arc offers a multitude of possibilities for use in your content creation. It usually goes something like this:

This is a fantastic way to play out a learning objective in a “real life” setting and offers learners an alternative means for understanding.

Use realistic stories with life-like problems that learners may frequently run into. The moral of the story always stands out.


Start creating elearning content with a free Go1 Portal

As we move further into the second half of the year, it’s a good time to check in with yourself to make sure you’re not at risk of burning out. With the Easter break well behind us, and a few months to go between now and the annual holiday season, it’s important to make sure you’re taking good care of your mental and physical health.

Earlier this month, we saw the importance of this highlighted by a story that went viral across the world. Madalyn Parker, a web developer at Olark Live Chat, “emailed her colleagues at the end of June to let them know she’d be taking two days off to focus on her mental wellbeing.”

When her boss, CEO Ben Congleton, replied to the email, Parker was so surprised she decided to share his email on social media. Was her CEO berating her for taking time off? Criticising her decision to use sick days for her mental wellbeing? Quite the opposite! In his email, Congleton thanked Parker for the “reminder of the importance of using sick days for mental health" and for helping to “cut through the stigma so we can all bring our whole selves to work.”

This positive support from a CEO should serve as a benchmark for other leaders, encouraging them to support open, honest conversations about mental health in the workplace. Because when employees neglect the signs of physical and mental burnout, it has negative impacts on both their own lives and the people around them – including the workplace.

Think you might be at risk of burning out?

While the term ‘burnout’ tends to get splashed around a bit, it’s more than just feeling a bit tired in the mornings, or having a tough week at work after partying all weekend. When someone is seriously burnt out, they are no longer able to function – at work, at home, or on a social level.

Burnout is a state of complete physical, emotional and mental exhaustion, all of which interfere with a person’s overall quality of life. It’s described here as a “total system breakdown, after prolonged, unmanageable stress, and emotional fatigue.” And this form of breakdown often leads to very serious health issues, that can take a long time to recover from.

Mental health issues, including anxiety, insomnia, hyper vigilance and depression are commonly linked to burnout. As are physical health problems such as high blood pressure, heart disease, gastrointestinal issues, adrenal exhaustion and chronic fatigue. If you’re constantly feeling run down, plagued by headaches and sore throats, and like you’re always running on empty, it could be time to start listening to your body.

Along with these physical ailments and overwhelming loss of energy, there can also be increased feelings of cynicism about the workplace – including negativity towards your colleagues, clients and daily tasks. Feeling irritable in general, withdrawing from friends and family, and no longer enjoying the things you once did are all signs that can point to burnout.

The Impacts of Burnout – for Employees and Organisations

It’s not just important for employees to pay attention to their mental and physical health; it’s also in the best interests of any business. Because when it comes to burnout, no one wins.

We’ve talked before about the impacts of employee burnout for organizations. When staff burn out, the business can also expect to suffer, from reduced productivity, higher employee turnover, financial burdens from absenteeism and the possibility of medical, legal, and insurance expenses.

And the impact it can have on an individual's career? Sadly, when people are no longer able to perform at the level they once did, particularly 'Type-A' people who are used to functioning at a high level, it can soon lead to doubts about their competence and skills. This is one of the most devastating effects of burnout, as it can seriously affect a person’s sense of self-worth and value, leading them deeper into stress and anxiety.

It’s often those high-performing, Type-A employees who become burnt out, continuing to push themselves to exhaustion, even when they know something’s wrong. However, rather than recognise that they need to stop and rest, they tend to question their own abilities and work even harder – further intensifying the problem.

Women are also at higher risk of burnout, as they often continue to shoulder a great deal of the responsibilities and care-giving at home, while working the same hours as their male colleagues. The reality is that there is still a clear difference between the way women and men are treated in the workplace and the way in which they are valued. This gender disparity can even be seen in the way men and women are expected to dress for work, in corporate environments.

Traditional expectations of ‘professional’ attire see men able to wear the same outfits, day in and day out, while female workers are often criticised for doing the same. In response to this, we’re now seeing more women embracing the concept of a work ‘uniform’ to reduce the amount of time spent getting “ready” for work.

As Arianna Huffington, founder of Thrive Global, says, “it might seem trivial, but it’s not ... there are real [productivity] issues at play. Women already bear the biggest cost of our culture of sleep-deprivation and burnout. And outdated notions of professional dress only add to that. Being able to spend only a few minutes getting ready versus an hour or two [gives men] a serious competitive advantage.”

Fortunately, if you identify signs of burnout early enough, you can start taking steps towards better health and wellbeing.

Running on coffee or energy drinks to get through the day isn’t the solution; in fact, it will generally make adrenal fatigue even worse. So step away from the espresso machine.

If you’re already experiencing burnout, the thing you really need is rest. As this article in the Guardian says, “you need to stop, sleep and recover. Doing this takes time. It takes accepting that you have burnout, and that fighting it won’t help. It takes surrender, and readiness to rest.”

The best thing you can do is avoid burning out in the first place. That’s why it’s so important to take stock throughout the year, particularly when it’s been some time since your last break or day off. Employees need to be aware and conscious of the potential signs of burnout and take action before it starts impacting their physical and/or mental health. And managers need to lead by example, as we saw CEO Ben Congleton do, and encourage staff to take proactive steps towards their wellbeing.

The more open we are about discussing mental health in the workplace, the more we can help to reduce the stigma surrounding it. There shouldn't be any shame or guilt attached to taking time off –  taking care of yourself, in both your personal and professional life, is an incredibly strong and empowering thing to do.

Stripe is a payment processing gateway. Yes, we’re aware it’s also the name of the pattern found on tigers. And yes, we know you find stripes painted on the road at a crosswalk. But we’re not talking about those stripes…

We’re talking about Stripe. And for businesses, that’s a much more exciting topic, because it’s all about getting paid!

As mentioned, Stripe is a payment processing gateway. You might be asking: what is a payment processing gateway? Well, if you’ve ever made a purchase online, then you have probably used one to process that purchase. 

As Investopedia explains, “A payment gateway is a technology used by merchants to accept debit or credit card purchases from customers. The term includes not only the physical card-reading devices found in brick-and-mortar retail stores but also the payment processing portals found in online stores.” 

Put simply, payment processing gateways are used to transfer money, with perhaps the best-known example being PayPal. Stripe, however, is a new flavour of payment processing gateway, with some of their notable clients including Unicef, Kickstart, Facebook, Lyft, and Deliveroo, to name a few.

With this in mind, we’ll break down how things work with this fantastic payment processor. We’ll start by looking at the currencies Stripe offers and the fees they charge. Following this, we’ll examine how stripe reports on transactions and their refund policy. Finally, we’ll outline how transfers work with Stripe. 

Stripe can handle 135 different currencies. As such, in most of the world, users can view prices in their home currency. This is ideal for online shopping, where customers can sometimes be put off by perceived differences in price when changing currencies.

However, if the currency a customer uses to pay differs from their home currency, the payment total will be converted to their home currency before the sale is complete.

One of the main complaints that users sometimes have with PayPal is that their fees are difficult to understand, perhaps a little murky. To remedy this, Stripe’s fees are simple and straightforward.

Stripe charges a flat rate of 2.9% and $0.30 for every individual charge, as long as you’re paying less than $1 million a year.

It’s free to charge cards from your website, and refunds are free too, unlike PayPal.

Finally, recurring billings are free, as is fraud protection, which PayPal charges $10 per month for.

For more information on fees, check this out.

Everyone should stay on top of their online transactions. This way, you’ll be aware of your spending and can quickly detect any strange goings-on should you be the victim of fraud.

With online fraud on the rise, Stripe offers an advanced fraud detection service called Stripe Radar. This service uses machine learning to predict the likelihood that a transaction is fraudulent. To achieve this, the AI factors in data from your business as well as any information Stripe has about the card you are using, such as purchasing habits and frequency.  

Stripe uses a dashboard interface where you can check on your account status and ensure any transfers have gone through smoothly. Here, you’ll be able to download .CSV files of your account activity to be used in spreadsheet apps you may have so you can track your ins and outs more closely.

Like a bank, there’s a monthly summary report that’s broken down into various aspects of your activity, including net activity and more.

Stripe charges a standard fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 for issuing refunds. Once the refund has been issued, Stripe’s charge for the original payment (the one that is being refunded) will be returned in full.

Refunds can be offered in whole or partial amounts depending on need, and users should receive their refunds between 5–10 days after they’ve been accepted. Easy! 

Additionally, Stripe will automatically notify you via email once a refund has been put through.

As with PayPal, refunds can only be sent back to the original payment source. This is a standard procedure and helps to prevent fraud. Safety first!

Anything else you might want to know about Stripe’s refund process can be found right here.

Now for the paper trail. Receipts are the first port of call when a user needs to assess a transaction. Stripe makes things simple.

One of Stripe’s key features is an automatic email receipt that is sent out to users when they make a transaction. This is helpful for businesses and reduces the administrative work required. Tick!

Receipts can also be customised to show your logo. What’s more, you can select what language a customer will receive their receipt in. The receipt’s header will be coloured with your company logo (great brand reinforcement there) and filled with all the vital information that a customer would expect.

Stripe uses their “Checkout” payment form — an embedded tool in their platform — as the main process for transfers. It’s easy and safe to use, so there’s no need to worry for the business or the client. The Stripe mobile app also includes this feature.

To complete a transfer with Stripe, users will have to input certain information, just like any other platform. Required information includes:

The expiration date of the card being used to pay

One of Stripe’s random test card numbers

As a business, you can expect a delay of 7-10 days after receiving your first payment to see the transfer payout in your account.

Your account, like all others, will have a payout schedule depending on where you live: a 2-day rolling schedule for the United States and Australia, and a 7-day rolling schedule for everywhere else in the world excluding Japan, which has its own slightly more flexible schedule. You can also choose when and how often to receive payouts. 

For more information on what to expect from your Stripe transfers, see here.

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

As one of the leading payment processing gateways, we take a closer look at Stripe, including questions such as 'what is Stripe?' and 'how does Stripe work?'

How does Stripe work?

When it comes to the top features that users want in their Learning Management System, there is one thing that is at the top of the list every single time. That’s right, we are talking about reporting, because what good is having an awesome learning platform if you can’t track how your learners are progressing, or how they interact with your learning content.

With the introduction of Go1 2017 we wanted to make it quick and easy for users to be able to display information about their learners and content, in the format that works best for them. As a result, the advanced reporting capabilities for Administrators in Go1 have been simplified, and anyone can create a custom report in a matter of seconds.

Here’s a quick guide on how to use our new reporting tools

Within the Administrator section of your portal, you can jump between different types of information using the tabs at the top of the reporting field. The main area of interest when it comes to reporting lies within Users, Courses, and Enrollments tabs.

Under each tab there are a unique set of options that you can adjust to generate reports showing the data in your portal based on the information held within that tab. This data can also be displayed in a range of formats including a table, histogram, bar chart, pie chart and more.

We’ll now take a deeper look at some of the more common reports you may use:

Display users who have completed or passed courses

One of the most common reports run is to view students who have, or have not complete their assigned courses. In this example we will show you how to display all of your students that have completed courses.

Head across to the Enrollments tab in your Administrator dashboard. Click the Filters button, and then click on the Status option, followed by Completed. This will now display all of the students that have completed courses.

Another option to try out here is to search by users that have passed a course. This can be done by selecting Pass, and then Passed in the filter settings. You can also run this for Not Passed if you want to see who is yet to complete their assigned courses.

To refine this even further you can also add an additional filter to this process to display results by course too.

If you’ve like to try out a more visual representation of how many of your users have passed their assigned courses, you can also display the information as a pie chart.

Simply click on the Table button next to the Filter button, and select Pie Chart, here you can choose the information to display, and we want to show Pass, then click Apply.

Reporting GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

This report allows the Administrator to filter out their users by their role. This could highlight all learners, Administrators, Managers, or in this case we are wanting to see which of our users are course Assessors in the system.

Start by clicking the Users tab, then selecting the Filters button, from here we can select the types of filters to apply, in this case, Role, and then we select the type of role to display.

Our final example will allow you to see how many users you have currently enrolled in each course that you have in the system.

While still on the Enrollments tab, once again click the Table button next to the Filters button. This time we will display course enrollments using the Histogram option. After selecting Histogram, we can then choose how we would like to display the information on the chart. We will select an interval of Year to show our all time results in this example, but this can be broken down to show enrollments over a set time period.

Secondly, we want to select how to group the results and in this case we want to use the Title option to display by course title. We can now see the number of enrollments per course in the last year.

As you can see in the examples above, creating your own custom reports is a very simple process and there is a very wide range of options available to ensure that you can view the data that is important to you.

These are just a few examples of how to create reports, but if you are trying to create something and get stuck, our Customer Success Team is always on hand via the live chat in the bottom right corner of your screen to walk you through the process.


Learner reporting simplified: try the latest Go1 reporting tools

When it comes to employee training, startups tend to do things a bit differently from large-scale corporations. Working with smaller teams, lower budgets and limited time can bring unique challenges to small businesses. And while a lot of time and money goes into finding the right hires, unfortunately the investment in people can often stop there.

For some startups, employee training can quickly take a backseat, as funds are invested in other directions. Falon Fatemi, CEO and founder of Node, says that her time advising and running startups has led her to believe that “most startups don’t do enough learning.”

“It’s not that their employees don’t want to learn, though; it’s that learning often takes a backseat to productivity in the early days,” she says.

In startup land, it can often be all hands on deck, with everyone pitching in to get things done. Employees can find themselves wearing multiple hats and juggling different responsibilities, making the work environment exciting, challenging and great for expanding your skill set.

But it’s important for startups and small business owners to see the value in providing proper training programs for staff. The ongoing development of your people should be an essential part of any startup – for the growth of your business, as well as your employees.

These days, the cost of employee training doesn’t need to be a barrier to professional development, with so many ways to deliver valuable training that’s relevant to all roles and industries.

Let’s look at the reasons why employee training and development is so important for startups. And how you can use eLearning to deliver an effective and well-structured training program for your team.

To Attract and Retain High-Performing Employees

As we said, significant effort goes into securing the right people for your company – regardless of size. The costs of hiring, onboarding and training up a new team member will quickly add up. So you want to make sure you’re not having to do this all the time!

Avoid these costs from blowing out by reducing your staff turnover rate. A formal training program will work as a great retention tool, with well-trained employees being far more likely to stick around.

So while you may think that committing to a training program is more expensive, it will actually save you in the long run.

Training programs also build loyalty within your employees, as you’ll be showing staff that you’re committed to their career development. Having loyal team members is just as important as having loyal customers!

almost a quarter of Millennials find a lack of company support for development as the most surprising part of real-world employment

 31% said they’d sought their own on-the-job training.

 88% expressed a willingness to invest in their own training and development

Employees, particularly younger workers, want to be trained and developed. And they want to feel a bond and connection with the company they work for. These are the best people to promote your products and services, so it’s worthwhile investing in building that loyalty.

To Share Knowledge and Create a Culture of Learning


Another reason why training is so important is to facilitate knowledge sharing within your startup.

Like any business, you don’t want key knowledge to leave when certain staff members do. Without knowledge sharing, there’s a serious risk of that happening, as employees move on from the organisation, taking their knowledge with them. You want to promote a culture of learning and knowledge sharing, to make sure you’re tapping into those precious resources of varied skills and experience.

Encouraging team members to share information and knowledge freely helps to foster a sense of community and a collaborative work culture – which are important for the culture of any startup. It also means that when it comes time to hire new leaders, there’s a good chance you’ve already invested time and money into training one up – from within your own company!

So let’s look at how you can start formalising a proper training program for your staff. One of the most popular and cost-effective ways to deliver effective employee training is through online learning.

It’s easy to see why more organisations, from SMBs to large multinationals, are making the switch to eLearning for staff training needs. With so many training options available online, you can choose from online courses, MOOCs, podcasts and webinars, all developed by experts and professionals in their fields.

This presents endless exciting ways to train staff, giving “startups an opportunity to offer training in fresh, innovative ways that leverage the technology we’ve all come to rely on for efficiency and convenience.”

Even if you lack the physical space or funds to host live training, you can have employees complete their training from home or at their desk – which is usually more convenient for them anyway. And with eLearning, you won’t need to take staff members away from their roles to deliver training. When you have less employees on deck, the less interruptions to business operations the better!

With online training, you can also use the material over-and-over again, delivering training to individual team members or small groups of employees as many times as they need. Updating online course materials is quick and easy, without the costs associated with print materials.

Are you seeing the value in providing proper training and development for your staff? Get started on a new online training program for your team.

Why employee training is important for startups

Sitting down to take a few minutes rest is always a welcome break. When you’re on your feet all day, it’s nice to take the weight off. But of course, most of us no longer work in physically demanding jobs. We’re not working in the fields or walking through the streets.

And the effects of sitting for so long are fairly obvious most of the time. There are the slouching shoulders, there’s pain in the lower back… but what about the effects that aren’t quite so easy to see?

This course addresses those effects. They’re the ones that can take 7 years off our lives if we’re unlucky. The good part is that these nasty biological consequences are very easy to reverse. Move a bit. Stand up. Do what your body is intended to do!

This course gives a clear structure for office workers – or anyone who spends too much time sitting at work – to change their habits for the long-term benefits of their health.

Through informative yet fun video lessons, the course explains the hows and whys of sitting less for a better life.

The Dangers of Sitting – The course kicks off by offering an in-depth argument for why sitting for long periods of time isn’t a good idea.

As a species, we’re made to move. That’s what our bodies are designed to do and it’s what they do best. If we know that the average person now sits for 8.9 hours each day, we can start to understand that our sedentary lifestyle could have some unwelcome consequences.

The science behind the concern about sitting for long periods is well documented. Put very simply, when we sit down for stretches of time, the enzymes in the walls of our blood capillaries – whose job it is to break down harmful blood fats – simply shut down. Our inactivity means we end up burning only a single calorie per minute. Blood sugar and blood pressure levels or much more difficult to regulate when we’re inactive and the scary part is that this process isn’t affected by how active we are outside of our sitting hours! So, regardless of how often you go to the gym, if you’re sitting for 9 hours a day then you’ll still be victim to these harmful processes. Uh oh.

How Long Do You Sit? – This section asks learners to truly consider how long they sit for. 

When we’re aware of frightening outcomes of the actions we take, we often deny that we’ll be victim to them. “It’ll never happen to me” is the usual idea. And we usually say this because deep down, we don’t want to accept that one day it might be ourselves receiving bad news.

But let’s be sensible. Why not consider our future health? So let’s look at how long we sit each day. Add the numbers together. If you sit for more than 4 hours – and we’re sure it will be - then there could be detrimental effects upon your health.

Move More, Sit Less – This section of the course offers ten quick tips on how best to change your sitting habits.

Sitting down is really comfortable; that’s why we do it. And though we’re not suggesting you never sit down, perhaps you should break up long periods of sitting more than you do.