Virtual teams are the talk of the town right now - and with good reason! This very modern mode or working takes collaboration and turbocharges it – giving you the opportunity to spread your team across continents, time zones, and cultures.

Virtual teams are changing the game as we speak. These people don’t work in the office, they work wherever they want. From mountain tops in Colorado to beachfront properties in San Diego, as long as there’s internet then the team is good to go.

This is all made possible to the internet - the lifeline of the modern virtual team. It’s their route to communication which they can do through email, collaboration platforms like Slack, WhatsApp and others.

And while this utopian vision sounds all well and good, the reality is a little more complex. That’s where good management steps in. To make sure people are working, hitting deadlines, and communicating well with others, a virtual team manager is essential.

So how can good management benefit a virtual team?

Team Focus – When the virtual team is distributed across a country or the globe, making sure everyone is on track is a tricky task. Good virtual managers can keep a tab on each individual to make sure they’re working towards the same end.

Improved Communication – As virtual teams aren’t in the same room there can be communication problems, leading to ineffective working and frustration. Management can remedy this.

Lack of Commitment – One problem with virtual working is that sometimes individuals don’t feel fully engaged and therefore fully committed to the team and its goals. A good team manager knows how to make everyone feel valued.

The course delves into the workings of a virtual team from every angle and is arranged by sections.

Find Out More – The first section primarily discusses the pros and cons of virtual teams and explains why it is that more and more companies are using this versatile style of team working.

The major benefit of the virtual team is the great savings that can be had if there isn’t an office building to pay for. The physical workplace is a huge overhead that most companies are glad to get rid of.

Another factor is that virtual teams make hiring better staff easier because a company is no longer constricted to only one city.

Virtual team members are also often happier than their office-based contemporaries.

But it isn’t all rainbows. Virtual teams often fall short of their goals – 82% in a recent survey – and over one third said they were “largely ineffective”.

The remedy to these problems are the five key stages that will be discussed in the rest of the course. Let’s get cracking!

Preparations – As always, the key to success is in the preparation.

No two teams are the same nor are the conditions they’re working under. They must be run to different costs and they’ll have different flexibility requirements too. As well as this, the individuals making up the team will be different and so the dynamic is bound to change.

What size team should you have? How should you structure the team for this particular goal? Which types of technology should they use?

The checklist that this section suggests will make sure you’re fully prepared with a system that offers the best care to the team and chance of success. Go get ‘em, tiger!

Launch – This is the moment you’ve been working towards. It’s the big day; you’re about the launch the virtual team!

But take a few breathes; there are some things to consider.

If individuals live within distance, you could have a meeting so everybody knows one another. Or a video conference if that isn’t possible. This way people feel a connection and are more likely to feel part of it all.

Run over the team goals and ways of working. Make sure everyone knows their roles and answer any questions. All this will save a lot of time later.

Performance – Once everything is swimming along nicely, there will be adaptions to be made.

Could you offer some self-management to team individuals? Are individuals doing what they should be? Are they communicating?

In this section you’ll learn to look out for performance problems and learn how to solve them.

Team Development – Just because virtual team members aren’t sat in the same office space as you doesn’t mean they don’t need training and development.

Not everyone will know their way around new technologies and perhaps some people need to work on their communication.

Team Disbanding – Saying goodbye isn’t easy, so why do it? When a project is over, make sure you manage the team breakup to keep everyone motived and happy, and willing to work for the next project you have.

And after all that, there’s a quiz to do!

If a virtual team isn’t managed well, then all the benefits it can offer – lower costs, a larger pool of talent, increased flexibility - can be lost.

This teaches what you need to know to take advantage of these incredible benefits and make sure your experience, and that of the team, is a more fruitful, enjoyable, and ultimately productive venture.

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Failing to plan is planning to fail. We’re all aware of that, right? Why then do companies frequently founder when reducing their compliance risk despite it being an issue of such pivotal importance?

Any organization that operates in today’s corporate world needs to be compliant with the regulations of their industry. Financial, construction, human resource industries, and all others have their own set of rules structuring the operation of business.

By educating employees on the new changes to compliance in your industry, businesses give themselves the best chance of avoiding any nasty surprises.

But eLearning courses are only as effective as their structure. In this article, we’ll look at a number of ways online courses help reduce compliance risk by effectively educating learners. Away we go!

Spinning a compliance-themed yarn is one of the fantastic ways that online learning courses break the boring mold of compliance risk learning.

The inclusion of stories and tales in compliance learning is a useful training method because stories can tell real-life scenarios. Rather than explain compliance through a theory-focused, boring textbook-led method, the use of stories in compliance makes lessons relevant, exciting, and practical so that they can be put into practice quickly.

eLearning can use real events to explain some of the situations that other companies have faced.

And there is little better way to tug at the heart strings than through the telling of an emotionally charged tale. Like reading a book or watching a film, we care so much more about the outcome of the story if we feel emotionally connected to the characters within it.

eLearning offers likable characters to ensure students are fully engaged in their learning.

Regardless of the industry, the many facets of compliance regulations mean that learning how to avoid compliance risks is a tricky business.

Learning rules and regulations and how they are used in practice takes hours of studying. And if we know that our brains don’t have the ability to study for hours, but breaking learning down into bite sized pieces is a very effective and simple way to increase learning effectiveness.

Not convinced? Here’re a few more benefits of breaking compliance learning into delightful little bits:

Breaking learning down into easily digested parts means knowledge retention is increased.

Learnings are less likely to be bored because they see their steady progress. This also means they’re less likely to become despondent.

Students can engage with their learning in a flexible manner. eLearning can be done anywhere there’s an internet connection – spare minutes on the bus become productive mini lessons!

What’s the point of teaching if there’s no way to know what the students are being taught, and more importantly, how well they’ve understood it?

Compliance training is great, but you need to be able to review what students know before they’re ready to be placed into a position of responsibility. This is particularly important for a topic like compliance, when failing to meet requirements can be costly.

But eLearning offers major benefits for employers wanting to check that their employees have got the hang of compliance regulations. eLearning platforms store all data that is entered onto the platform, which can be quickly assessed to review a student’s performance.

Tasks, tests, quizzes and exams are all ways that eLearning platforms assess a student. With easy, definite answers, an employer can be sure that their employee is equipped with the resources to meet any compliance regulation in the industry.

There’s more than one way to make your compliance bed

Let’s not sugarcoat it – for employees who didn’t choose to work in compliance as their career, the process of learning about compliance regulations can be a bit dry. And that’s an obstacle for learning. But if a course is able to unsettle learner’s expectations and offer a few surprises, then it’s sure to be far more memorable. Luckily for us, that’s what eLearning is all about.

Compliance is a topic that affects the organization of a business in many, many ways. So to do justice to the multifaceted nature of compliance, it’s really vital that compliance is also taught from a range of perspectives. This, being blunt, is eLearning’s strength.

The variety of learning methods is what marks online training as the best way to reduce compliancy risk for an organization.  eLearning platforms use simulations, quizzes, stories (as mentioned above), gamification, role-play, audio, video, and almost any other multimedia you can think of! That’s a whole load of ways to take students through the complicated maze of compliance.

Sure, eLearning courses cost money. But compared to the punishing costs of non-compliance to industry regulations? They really don’t even compare.

You can think about eLearning as an investment for a company. To save a whole heap of cash, a little must be spent. But considering the costs involved, eLearning is incredibly cost effective as a way to educate employees and be sure that the company is up to date with compliance laws.

On top of these compliance-related benefits, there are also secondary benefits connected to eLearning. Staff retention improves in businesses who train their staff and staff morale rises too.

Compliance training through eLearning is a win-win situation. It’s an inexpensive resource to enjoy, but can be very expensive if forgotten!

How eLearning reduces your compliance risk

One of the most important characteristics of great leaders is their ability to set clear paths for their teams, leading the way forward with direction and purpose. In fact, this strong sense of direction is not just desirable in leadership roles – it’s critical for the success of any business.

So what do we mean when we talk about direction, in an organisational context? It’s easy to pull out words like mission, vision and values, but what does it all mean when you really get down to it?

Well, when we’re talking about direction we’re talking about knowing:

And your company’s mission, vision and values are an incredibly important part of getting there! Establishing these things are what will help you establish a clear direction, setting your business up for success and giving your team purpose.

Let’s look closer at how leaders can set the direction of their organisation and drive positive outcomes for their team. And how you can strengthen your own sense of direction as a leader.

The Importance of Clear Direction for Employees 

As we said above, your organisation's mission, vision and values are all central to creating the direction (and potential success) of your business.

If you’re in a management or team leader role, you have the opportunity to create a more purpose-focused culture for your employees. When each individual team member knows what they are working towards, and how they fit into the big picture, they have a much stronger sense of being valued. This helps to create a more positive work culture and leads to higher levels of productivity and performance – happy employees, happy business!

As a leader, it’s important that you define and communicate this ‘big picture’ concept to your team, so that they know how their work fits into the organisation’s goals and mission. Ask yourself (and be honest) how many of your team members actually know the company’s vision and values – would they even know where to find this information?

If you’re eager to get your team back on track and moving forward in a more positive direction, you can get the ball rolling by working on your own leadership skills.

The online course, How to Succeed Through Direction, is a great place to start. With this short eLearning course, running for approximately 30 to 45 minutes, you’ll gain a wealth of leadership knowledge in less than an hour.

Through videos, interviews and presentations from experts, you’ll understand more about the importance of company mission, vision and values. You’ll learn how to:

Drive the organisation’s mission, vision and values

Know your values and align them to your business

Use mission, vision and values to support your team and culture

Identify how you measure and build your business beyond the bottom line

Feel confident in your ability to paint the ‘big picture’ for your team

The course will also provide you with invaluable tips for leveraging your clarity on direction and behaviour to further drive your culture. As the Learoy team says, if you feel like your team needs a GPS to get back on track, “make the mission clear by figuring out a direction – then, get everyone on board!”

Online Courses to Increase Your Leadership Skills

You may have also seen our recent article on how to choose the best learning environments for your team?

Both of these eLearning courses are part of the Leadership – Off the Leash journey, developed by the Learoy Tonight team and created specifically for today’s managers and leaders.

With the release of the end of July Go1 update we have several improvements to the platform that will help to improve managing both users and content for Administrators. Updates to the way learning items are displayed, tool to allow Administrators to mark attendance in events, region based tags and the introduction of coupons headline our improvements, as well as a stack of other updates to improve the way you train your team.

Assessors can mark attendance for events in courses

After introducing the ability to include events within courses earlier this year, we have now added a new tool to make tracking in-person events even easier. You can now open a list of all event attendees and simply click the button in the ‘Attended’ column to track the user.

Go1 GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

Administrators can now generate their own coupons within Go1 which can then be applied by users to redeem courses in a portal, or specific courses as specified by the Administrator. These can be created for a percentage or monetary value, with the ability to cater for partial or full purchase of content on behalf of the user.

We understand that one of the most important aspects of engagement when it comes to learning content is how it looks to the end user. In this updated the way that learning items will appear both individually and within modules, to allow for a more visually friendly experience.

Add tags and regions to individual Learning Items

If you are creating content that is available across a range of topics and specific locations, our update to tags will help you to get your content seen. You can now specify tags and regions for individual learning items making it easier to create material across a range of locations where the content is relevant only to a local audience.

Show next available event on card for course with multiple events

Transaction history page available for course credits/purchases

Improvements to reporting for assigned courses

Administrator can bulk import enrollments

Course Authors can change assessors after course has been active

Admins can generate multiple LTI’s for a course

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 your training with our end of July update

With the sheer number of online training courses now available, you might think they all start to look the same.

But the differences can be profound - especially in the case of corporate and academic training.

The clearest way that online training and eLearning platforms differentiate corporate and academic training is in their intentions.

Speaking generally, corporate training is intended to teach students skills that will improve their performance in their work lives. Corporate training is often requested by businesses who are looking to educate their employees on contemporary issues within their industry.

Academic training has different goals. Academic training is usually sought after by individuals who want to gain knowledge, and often qualifications, in a chosen field. It’s all about learning and increasing knowledge. Sometimes a student intends to use their new knowledge in their career, and sometimes they don’t. Education for education’s sake is as much as a reason as any.

So when choosing corporate or academic training, you need to know the differences between the two. Luckily, that’s what we’re about to do!

Corporate training: what can be expected?

The corporate world doesn’t have time to wait around. Business moves incredibly quickly and every competitor in the market needs to keep up or lose out.

It’s for this reason that corporate training tends to hold the quick fix above the life-long learning model; the corporate environment changes so rapidly that processes and ways of working are constantly be revolutionized. This is what molds the corporate training model, and it’s the reason for corporate eLearning courses to be structured in this particular way. Short and sharp, that’s the ticket!

Specialization: Most jobs don’t require workers to take on a wide range of tasks. In fact, with ‘hyper specialization’ of the workforce, jobs are becoming ever more specialized. This is why eLearning platforms offer such specific courses – so that the requirements of specialized labor are met!

You’re unlikely to find much fluff in online corporate courses because it’s a waste of both time and effort. It’s not what they’re for!

The goal behind corporate training can be thought of as teaching the specialized, essential information so that an employee can perform their job well. That’s the reason they’re taking the course, after all.

Rapidly changing and dynamic: Due to the incredible pace of the business world, there is a constant flow of training courses to educate employees on the changes going on around them.

For example, compliance frameworks governing the way an organization stores data changes frequently as potential online threats come and go, or technology evolves. It’s really important, therefore, to make sure that compliance is adhered to. And to do this, employees have to be educated on the changing sands in their industry.

eLearning courses are able to react quickly to changes within an industry, making them the ideal tool for corporate training.

Practical: Perhaps the most important difference between academic and corporate training is the corporate training’s focus on the practical use of skills. For a business, there is little point learning a skill if it isn’t then put to use. What a student learning in a corporate training course is to improve their work performance.

Holistic: Academic training is more concerned with teaching a balanced, developed, and deep understanding of a topic. Unlike corporate training, there is less focus on the speed of communicating an idea, and an increased desire for full understanding.

Slow and steady: Unlike corporate training which is constantly having to keep up-to-date with the breakneck speed of business, academic training tends to focus on traditional theory or thought as the basis of further development; for academic training there is worth and need to understand the evolution of a major thought or theory in a particular subject.

Theory rather than practice: And it’s for this reason that there is a greater focus on theory rather than action in academic training courses.

So there are the key differences between corporate and academic training. They’re important to know so that you can choose a model that is suited to the learning outcomes and intentions that you seek.

Before choosing either model, ask yourself some questions about what you want from the course.

Am I taking this course to learn a specific skill that I will put to use in my work?

Do I want an understanding of a broad and complex issue or a specialized topic?

The nob of the matter is simply this; corporate training focuses on performance while academic training focuses on learning. Neither is better nor worse, but both have different uses.

Understand which model is better suited to your need and then prepare to enjoy your experience!

The difference between corporate and academic training

As a CEO, it’s important to support and champion employee training programs within your organization. Good leaders know that professional development is integral to the success of any company, creating a more positive work culture and better business results overall.

If you’re a HR manager, or have the task of developing training programs for your team, it’s a good idea to think about it from the perspective of your CEO. Taking the time to consider what senior executives look for in training will help you to meet your leadership team’s expectations. It’s also a sure-fire way to make sure your training program is as effective as possible for your employees.

So how do you know what CEOs look for in corporate training programs? What outcomes and results are likely to be expected? Read on to find out.

Improving employee skills and productivity

The first thing your CEO and senior leaders will want to see is an improvement in staff productivity. After all, the main objective of corporate training is to help workers be better placed to achieve organizational goals.

To do this, employees need to acquire the skills they need to perform certain tasks and carry out certain work duties on the job. Training allows them to do this, developing and improving skills that can be applied and used practically – not just in theory.

Your training program should aim to improve staff competencies and increase productivity. Consider how you can measure improvements in staff skill levels. Technical skills can often be measured quite easily, in tangible figures and numbers. Productivity itself is a very good indicator of the success of your company’s training methods, allowing you to see if your training program has been effective.

Your CEO will want to see concrete results when it comes to productivity. For example, are individual employees now able to perform certain tasks more quickly? Do they require less supervision or assistance from management? Is there a decrease in the amount of errors and mistakes made by workers? All these factors show a positive boost in staff productivity, which is good news for your training program.

CEOs will also look to training programs to help bridge any skills gap present in their organization. A skills gap occurs when there’s a mismatch between the skills that employers want and need, and the skills their employees currently have.

HR professional Jessica Miller-Merrell says that skills gaps can be seen as “the point at which the organization can no longer grow or remain competitive, because they don’t have the right skills to help drive business results and support the organization’s strategies and goals.” This is a very unstable situation for any company to be in – ongoing training can help prevent this from occurring. 

It’s important to carry out skills testing to provide your CEO with a benchmark of results across the organization, which can then be used to show changes in employee performance after training.

Last but certainly not least, CEOs want to know that they’re getting a good return on investment for the money they’ve invested in training. You should be able to clearly identify and outline any financial benefits that a training program is bringing to the organization.

As we said above, skills testing allows you to see improvements to staff productivity, performance and skill levels. In this way, the data also reveals whether or not you’re getting a good ROI. We’ve talked before about measuring the impact of employee training: you’ll know whether a training program is a worthwhile investment by measuring the impact it has on your employees and organization.

For example, when staff need less supervision, managers and team leaders have more time to focus on their higher-level duties. And with improved productivity levels, you’ll have less overtime and often increased profits – win, win. When these kinds of changes and improvements can be seen after initiating your training program, your CEO is most likely getting a solid return on their investment.

Thinking about these three things when developing your employee training program will help you keep the end game in mind. You want to show your CEO and senior leaders that the training program you’ve developed has resulted in:

You’ll be showing your strong capabilities as a leader, getting clear results for both your team and organization.

If you’ve found it useful to step into the perspective of your CEO, you may also like to read our previous article on how to think like a CEO. You’ll gain a greater understanding of how things fit together to contribute to the company’s ‘big picture’ – which is an essential part of becoming a more effective leader.

What CEOs look for in an employee training program

It’s great that you want to invest time and money into training for your employees – we all know the benefits that professional development brings to both individuals and organizations. But before you go ahead and decide on the best training program for your staff, it’s important to carry out a proper training needs assessment.

This way, you can determine just what kind of training your employees need, to make sure they’re confident and competent in completing the tasks you need them to do.

Unfortunately, when it comes to employee training, “one of the biggest mistakes that companies often make is that they start putting together training plans based on perceived training needs.” When this happens, we see training programs being designed around the leadership team’s perception of staff competencies and skill gaps, rather than their employees’ actual needs. This leads to ineffective learning – and watching your L&D budget go down the drain.

To prevent this from happening, employers and managers need to make sure that all training programs are based on the results of formal training needs assessments. But how exactly do you go about evaluating and assessing employee training needs?

Here, we’ll take a look at the steps you can take to conduct a training needs assessment for your organization.

What Does a Training Needs Assessment Do?

A training needs assessment should always be the first step to any training program if you want it to be a success. An assessment will help ensure that your training investment is properly targeted, to bring the best results to your company and staff.

Put simply, the assessment looks at each staff member and evaluates whether they have the skills and knowledge to do what you need them to do. This means considering the role of each worker and how it contributes to the business goals of the organization, then measuring their current level of competence, skill or knowledge in one or more areas.

When there’s a mismatch between the employee’s skills and the skill level you need them to have, you can then focus on finding the right training to bridge that gap and bring things into line.

How to Conduct a Training Needs Assessment

Keen to know the right way to conduct a training needs assessment?

The assessment should be a three-tiered process, that moves through the following steps.

In this first step, you will outline your company’s goals and objectives. Any training initiatives that are proposed from the results of the assessment must be in sync with these organizational goals and vision.

Next, analyze the specific jobs and tasks that need to be carried out by staff. Be specific. Consider the skills, tools and resources needed. And how the capability of staff can be measured to ensure each task is being done correctly.

You can look at industry standards, time frames and measurements as you assess this. This will help you set more tangible goals as you develop training materials.

You need to look closely at who is to be trained – on an individual, team and department level. Because “performance gaps may not always be across-the-board, necessitating training for every employee in the organization.”

Looking at performance gaps will help you ascertain whether there are skills lacking in individuals or whole teams. If the problem lies across a whole department, for example, there may be external factors, such as poor leadership or a challenging physical work environment.

Again, this will help you focus and target training initiatives and learning materials. These results will also allow you to personalize training towards individual employees, which is more effective.

Using the Results of Your Training Needs Assessment

Once you’ve carried out the assessment and gathered this feedback, you’ll have a clearer snapshot of the current tasks, skills and capabilities of your workforce. You can then see how you can use this information to create an effective training program that helps you to meet organizational goals and targets.

By using the results of your assessment to develop more focused training, you’re making optimum use of your L&D budget and helping employees to boost their skill sets and professional development.

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.

Before selecting training for your staff, it’s crucial to conduct a training needs assessment. Here's a complete guide to conducting a training needs assessment.

How to assess employee training needs

When it comes to your career, professional development is an important part of feeling satisfied, rewarded and inspired by your work.

Employees who receive ongoing professional development report being happier at work than those who are not being sufficiently trained or challenged in their roles. In fact, over half of today’s workforce considers professional development to be a contributing factor in their job satisfaction, with 58% of Millennials expecting employers to provide them with relevant learning and development opportunities.

Making sure that you’re continuing to improve your skill set will show employers that you’re committed to both professional and personal growth, which is essential if you want to get ahead in your career. One of the best ways to ensure that you keep learning, developing and growing within your role and industry is to invest some time in professional development courses.

Online courses are one of the easiest and best ways to help you get from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future. There are eLearning courses covering a huge range of professional development topics, from role-specific skills like programming and graphic design, to interpersonal ‘soft’ skills such as improving your communication and dealing with change.

To help get you started, here’s 5 of the best online courses around for professional development.

One of the best professional development steps you can take to boost your career is learning how to properly set and achieve goals. Identifying goals, setting them, and making them stick is easier said than done. But this course can help you do just that.

As the course outline says, “being able to set a path and stick to it, having the perseverance to make it work, and then recognising when you have found success are all the things great leaders are made of.”

This course is about taking responsibility for managing your professional development to achieve your career objectives. At the end of this course, you’ll feel more confident in knowing how to create and achieve your own goals, while using strategies to overcome any obstacles. You’ll understand the importance of networking and career planning – things you may have overlooked or seen as unimportant in the past – to set yourself up for success.

With customer service being central to many job roles, not just the retail and hospitality industries, it's an important part of your professional development. Whether your customers are internal stakeholders or external clients, your attitude towards customer service is likely to have a big impact on the company or organisation you work for.

Improving your understanding of customer service will help you in identifying your customers' needs while building stronger connections and relationships with them. This course will give you the tools you need to understand your modern customer base and how their needs have changed over time. You’ll explore topics such as:

why employee satisfaction is key for customer satisfaction,

the link between decision making and emotions, and

After the course, you’ll be able to review your customer experience strategy and respond more confidently to your customers' needs.

As we said earlier, improving soft skills such as communication can be a great place to start if you want to stand out from the competition and climb the corporate ladder.

No matter what role you’re in, or industry you’re working in, being able to communicate with colleagues, stakeholders, clients and senior leaders is one of the most important skills you can have. And if you want to move into a management or team leader position, you’ll need to know how to communicate effectively with your team.

This online course will help you find the right methods and channels of communication, to help lead you to more engaged and productive working relationships. You’ll leave this course with plenty of tips and tricks to use, and a clearer understanding of the environment you're trying to create within your workplace. Improving your communication skills won’t just benefit your work life – you’re bound to see positive benefits in your personal life also.

Another customer-focused eLearning course, this is interesting material for anyone who is keen to learn more about customer experience and improve their levels of service.

In order to provide extraordinary customer service, you need to understand the journey of your customers. This course teaches you how to map out the customer journey, helping you to understand the critical points in their journey, and how you can make sure their experience at these points is a positive one. You’ll gain important insight into the customer experience, which you can use to improve your customer strategy.

Adding these kinds of skills to your professional development will show your commitment to your customer base and the reputation of your organisation – both very valuable and valued traits in any employee.

This online course is particularly good if you’re looking to increase your leadership skills, as it explores strategic direction and ‘big picture’ thinking.

Leaders not only set the direction of an organisation, but also the company culture. This course will help you build a more collaborative and focused work culture by developing strategies that encourage positivity in the workplace.

identify and drive your organisation’s mission, vision and values

establish your values and align them to the business

use mission, vision and values to support your team and culture

help team members understand how their role fits into the bigger picture.

Even if you’re not currently in a management role it’s worthwhile taking this course. It can help prepare you for a promotion or relief position, giving you a competitive edge over other candidates.

The threat from online insecurity is no laughing matter for organizations doing business in today’s market. Yahoo’s 2016 security breach, which comprised one billion user accounts and cost an estimated $4.8 billion for the company to deal with, is a well-known case. Yet there are many others that while not so large, cause untold damage to businesses both large and small. Considering these dangers, isn’t online security an area that your business needs to get absolutely right?

Thankfully, the Internet has many online courses for improving both personal and organizational online security. There are plenty of online security courses being offered, but we’re here to suggest five of the best. This brief list offers cutting-edge knowledge, expert opinion, and a varying level of detail. We’ve arranged our list from most basic to most advanced, to offer someone for all levels of expertise.

When these valuable resources could be the difference between business success and business insecurity, the only difficulty is deciding on which course to pick.

The Security Awareness Training course, available from online training provider Go1, is the ideal introduction to internet security for individuals who need to learn about the basics of keeping safe online.

This course is aimed at professionals with little prior knowledge of internet workings. It employs language that is easy to understand yet teaches vital lessons on security and privacy, including phishing attacks, the importance of passwords, and how to keep personal devices like mobile phones secure.

If you’re not familiar with online security or feel at risk using the internet for work-related tasks then this is the course for you. It will provide a solid foundation upon which to build your confidence online, keeping you safe from potential predators.

Security Awareness Training is extremely well priced and offers incredible value for money. Sign up!

As this course explains, online threats are all too frequent and the signs of threats too frequently ignored. That’s why Open Sesame wants to improve student’s understanding of cyber security and keep machines, and the valuable information they hold, safer than ever before.