Negotiation is an important part of everyday life, both at work and at home. In your personal life, you might have no trouble speaking your mind when it comes to choosing a restaurant or movie. Or working out whose turn it is to cook dinner, or drive. This is because when we’re in our comfort zone with family and friends, it’s not too difficult to make our opinions and preferences known.

But unfortunately, when it comes to important workplace discussions about salary, workload or job responsibilities, many people find it hard to be quite as assertive. Sound familiar?

If you feel uncomfortable when it comes to negotiating at work, you’re not alone. Many people feel intimidated at the thought of having these discussions with their boss, bargaining with clients, or going against the flow of their co-workers. However, negotiation is a critical and essential part of all aspects of life – and there’s no need to fear it in the workplace. In fact, improving your confidence in this area will have a positive impact on all aspects of your life, not just at work.

Read on to find out more about why negotiating and influencing people is so important in business, and how you can improve your workplace negotiation skills.

Why You Need to Know How to Negotiate and Influence People 

These days, most job descriptions include ‘negotiation’ as a desirable skill for potential candidates, with the ability to negotiate being more valued than ever before.

The Benefits of Negotiation for Your Business

Build and maintain positive working relationships

Improve the company’s bottom line, through increased profits and the ability to get the best deal possible

Increase their productivity and job satisfaction by expressing their needs

Successfully work through disagreements with co-workers

Contribute to a positive work culture, where opinions and needs are mutually respected

Show high level listening skills and emotional intelligence (EQ), helping them to succeed at work

Creating Win-Win Outcomes in the Workplace

Improving your negotiation skills isn’t about beating down the other party – it’s about creating a win-win situation, where each person involved leaves the table happy with their end of the deal. There’s no doubt that this can sometimes be difficult! Which is exactly why strong negotiation skills are so highly valued in the workplace.

When you feel more confident in your negotiation skills, you’ll be equipped to walk into any situation with the self-assurance you need to focus on the best outcome for the organization.

Use eLearning to Improve Your Negotiation Skills

Learning how to become a better negotiator can be challenging but also exciting. The good news is that this is a skill that can be learned and continually improved upon. So where can you learn these techniques?

Online courses provide a great way for employees to work on improving their skill sets. Through eLearning, your staff can simply enroll in their desired course, completing modules at their own pace and comfort.

Negotiating and Influencing People is a short eLearning course designed to help individuals improve their negotiation with suppliers, clients, trade unions or colleagues. The interactive course will help experienced negotiators enhance their existing skills, whilst beginners will be provided with new strategies to use and develop. Staff will also get the opportunity to test their knowledge with quiz questions at the end of each topic.

Check out the course today and arm yourself with the skills, knowledge – and most importantly, the confidence – to negotiate and influence in the workplace. This will also have a positive impact on other areas of your life, leading to more effective communication with family, loved ones and friends.


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How to improve your workplace negotiation skills

One of the most frustrating aspects of implementing a new training program at any organization is having to chase up your manager to get approval for both budget and structure. Not anymore! Our latest update takes the pain out of talking to your boss.

“Hassle Your Boss” is a new feature in which a button in the administrator dashboard can be linked to directly contact your boss via email and text message, prompting them to approve your training plan.

Unfortunately, we aren’t going to be implementing this feature - which I’m sure is a relief to training executives everywhere.

However, we do firmly believe that training managers should be taking their budgets into their own hands and communicating with their managers.

We are here to help you take charge so that you can create an engaging and budget friendly program. You can find a number of article on the Go1 website to guide you through this processes including everything from how to prepare your learning and development budget, through to the top things you need to consider when taking your learning online.

Not to forget about talking to your boss, we can help with that too. As online learning becomes the most popular way to deliver workplace training, some employees might find that their managers need a bit of a “push” to test things out. Convincing your boss to invest in eLearning is a simple process if you do your homework and cover a few key areas, and we’ve put together a guide to make it a quick and easy process for L&D managers.

Finding good reasons to move your training online is the easy part! Research everywhere is pointing towards utilizing an online learning platform and creating a more personalized learning experience for your team.  The cost savings when it comes to compliance are not just seen in your budget, but in reducing the risk against potential fines!

Being able to create a culture of learning with an on-demand training mentality will have a positive impact on not only your employees, but the growth of your business.

While the “Hassle your boss” button might be something that would make L&D managers very happy, the reality is that by taking your training budget into your own hands you can drive the direction of your program, and create higher quality training programs and are relevant to your team while sticking to your budget.

If you do have questions about aspects of preparing your training program, we’d love to hear from you so that we can help to provide you, and others in your position, with the resources that you need to take the next step!

For more insights, 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.

“Hassle your boss” with our latest feature!

Workplace health and safety proficiency is something we strive to achieve in our organizations, but sometimes its importance can be lost behind trying to hit revenue goals and/or please customers. However, it’s absolutely critical to pay attention to our health and safety practices because this is one way we can ensure that our workplaces run more efficiently, our staff are happier, and ultimately the product or service we offer is of superior quality.

Having a solid workplace safety and health culture in place not only protects our staff but ensures we offer a safe environment for customers and visitors too. When we’re viewed by outsiders as a company who takes pride in the health and safety of their staff, this reflects positively on our other practices too.

What you can learn from the safest companies in America

So, how do you ensure that your company not only meets the occupational health and safety requirements set down by law but exceed them? Some of the safest companies in America have revealed their top tips for how they earned the title, and they’re a lot easier than you might think.

There’s no need to try and tick all of these boxes off in a day, though, and being one of the safest companies in America isn’t a title earned overnight. However, with a few ideas on how you can make safety an integral part of your organization you can begin to make small changes needed to have a huge impact.

When we integrate safety into our everyday work culture, it becomes a lot easier to make it stick. Showing that we follow health and safety requirements in our work, as leaders, can create a consistent and thorough approach to creating this culture in the entire company. If we lead by example and encourage all levels of management to do the same, our employees will see this and follow suit.

Organizations that place a huge emphasis on their employee’s well-being will often see better results from occupational health and safety training, as it shows that you truly care about them.

When your employees feel that you truly value them as an employee, they’re likely to reward you with a more focused attitude to the workplace and upholding these values.

For an added interest from employees, you might like to introduce a rewards based or incentive program for reporting incidents and near misses.

Right from the first moment a new employee steps foot into your organization, they should be shown exactly how important occupational health and safety is to you. The best way to do this is incorporate in-depth training on the issue beginning with their new employee induction, and continuing on throughout their employment.

An employee who is well educated on the safest practices will not only be more likely to use this knowledge for themselves but be happy to share it with others.

By indicating just how important it is to be a safe company, you’ll leave this lasting impression on them throughout their employment.

Make training enjoyable and interactive too, so it’s more likely to be retained by your employees, and ensure that it’s always specific and relevant to your industry and work environment. This makes the teachings more relatable for staff, and they’ll better understand how it impacts them.

Many people think that to be a safe workplace you should meet the requirements handed down by governing bodies such as National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), but to have a truly safe workplace you should try to exceed these instead.

According to OSHA, just under 5,000 workers were killed in 2015 alone due to workplace accidents, which is a staggering amount when you consider how many that equals per day.

Imagine now that most of these workplaces followed the minimum requirements handed down by the governing bodies and you’ll see just how important it is to go above and beyond for the safety of your organization.

Share safety responsibilities in the company

It’s all well and good to have senior management and executives handing out orders about safety and health requirements in the company, but this won’t always have the trickle-down effect you might hope for.

The best way to ensure all staff is on board with the workplace culture of safety is to elect an official on all levels of employment, from managers down. The elected officers can be chosen by their fellow workmates to guarantee it’s someone whose opinion is respected among colleagues, ensuring it has a greater effect still.

By appointing one person for each sector, you can ensure that workplace safety procedures are being met in all areas and that workers are able to have a say on anything that might affect them. According to EHS, the safest companies in America follow this shared responsibility model and have seen great success with it. In doing this, the onus of creating a safe workplace is shared among everyone and not simply an order passed down from the top.

There’s no need to complicate things when it comes to making your company safe, and if you start small and work on each of these tips one at a time you’ll eventually find your organization among the safest in America.

The best place to start is by looking at the training offered in your new employee induction, as this is where employees will get the first impression of their new workplace.

Workplace safety and health can’t be made perfect overnight, and it’s a continual work in progress to ensure you not only meet new requirements and recommendations but that you keep your employees engaged in the process.

Important training tips from the safest companies in America

No matter what industry you work in or type of job you do, your daily work life probably sees you interact with a team some way or another. However, unlike other job skills we learn and training we receive, we rarely understand the most effective way to actually communicate within a team environment.

The Team Working Excellence course is a simple way to learn how to get the best out of your team, whether you’re a manager or an employee, and how you can offer the best version of yourself to help with the team working process. This course teaches four key skills that can maximize the efficiency of your team working performance, and is an integral tool for all levels of employment.

It’s no secret that employers value teamwork and often look for this as a special skill in their potential candidates, but it’s not always a skill that we’re born with. While some people are more effective in the way they communicate with others, there are some who struggle with the right approach to working in a group setting.

Considering we are all a part of a team at work, whether we work alongside others in an office setting or not, we need to know to give it the best shot possible when dealing with colleagues. Effective teamwork can have greater results in productivity and results, so we need to start putting the emphasis on it that it deserves.

Every team has a purpose, whether it’s a goal or objective they want to achieve or a shared vision. By understanding the purpose of your team and what’s expected of you, you can be sure that you’re contributing effectively so that you can work together toward a common goal.

This lesson teaches you that it’s okay to ask for clarity when working in a team, and you should always voice your concerns if you’re unsure. This open communication is part of what makes a great team.

Dr. Belbin’s research spans over 40 years in regards to team roles, and it shows how different people have strengths and weaknesses that they bring to a team.

There are three separate categories of action oriented roles, people oriented roles and thought oriented roles, and for a team to be successful there needs to be a mixture of all three.

Teams should consist of people with different strengths and weaknesses in order to get the best out of them, so it’s essential to understand everyone’s strong points.

This section of the course will show you how essential it is to earn the respect of those in your team, and follows closely the teachings of the famous book “How to Win Friends and Influence People.”

With small changes to your attitude such as showing genuine interest in others, you’re able to build a rapport and friendship with them. Having this relationship makes it easier to influence others within a team, and will make it easier to offer constructive criticism.

There are many ways in which conflict can occur in a team setting, and how we approach this conflict is essential to excellent teamwork. This course can show you the correct way to approach conflict so that you can understand other’s point of view and help your team to work more harmoniously together.

With a thorough understanding of these important skills, you can increase your productivity in a team setting and ensure that everyone works as cohesively as possible. Considering so much of our work days revolve around our cooperation in a team setting some way or another, it’s too essential to pass these lessons up.

How You Can Benefit from Team Working Excellence

Just as it’s important to keep up to date with other business skills and learn about changes and advancements in our industry, so too is it important to learn these skills which help us become more productive employees and managers.

When you consider how often you work in a team setting through your standard work week, you’ll see just how important it is to learn these lessons.

With the Team Working Excellence course behind you, you’ll be able to effectively deal with conflict, build quality relationships, and understand your team’s purpose so you can work more efficiently to achieve it.

When we understand these skills we can impart our knowledge on others, so that our colleagues and employees can learn how to an effective team member too.

By improving our performance within a team, we’re able to maximize the benefits of shared knowledge and responsibility that come naturally with working in a team environment!

Get the most out of your team and build a collaborative culture

When it comes to learning, everyone is unique, responding to different types of teaching methods and absorbing information at different speeds. Some people find visual aids help the learning process, while others learn faster when carrying out practical tasks or exercises.

Whether it’s in the classroom or work environment, one thing is clear – taking a cookie cutter approach to learning isn't the best way to educate students or staff. Unfortunately, many companies still deliver training in a one-size-fits-all model, neglecting to tailor teaching methods to cater for individual learning styles.

So how can you find the best training method for your employees, to help them learn in the best possible way for them? The answer is eLearning.

eLearning responds to different learning styles

With ongoing advancements in technology, we now have the tools to deliver more customized and flexible learning options to staff. As a response to this, many organizations are switching to eLearning for staff training, as an alternative to traditional teaching methods.

Online learning can very successfully respond to the needs of individual employees and organizations, allowing staff to choose how and when they want to learn, at a time and place that’s convenient to them.

When you take a cookie cutter approach to training, you’re assuming that all employees will respond in a positive way to a particular learning environment. But this isn’t the case. While certainly, many people participate easily in a formal, classroom type setting, others may not be able to retain knowledge so well in these circumstances.

Employees who are more introverted, for example, might learn better on their own, without the social distractions and pressures of a group dynamic. Extroverts may thrive in a workshop setting, bouncing energy and ideas off other people and learning in the process.

Find out what learning approach works best

The best thing to do is develop a training system that offers staff choices in how they want to learn. With online learning, individuals can interact in group discussions as much or as little as they like, giving them the option to work in a way that fits them best.

Finding the right learning approach for your employees will greatly help them become more engaged with the content and improve knowledge retention. Knowledge retention is a vital component of successful learning and development. With this in mind, eLearning courses aim to be short, engaging and goal-oriented – a learning method that’s been proven to be effective many times over.

As well as differences in personality and learning style, you also need to consider the amount of training your employees have already received. Some staff may have already completed formal education or qualifications, while others may be brand new to your company and the industry. eLearning allows you to customize training options for each individual, delivering the information and knowledge they need quickly and effectively.

Using eLearning for better employee training

Interested to find out more about online learning to deliver training to your staff?

In a previous article, we looked at the many benefits of using eLearning for staff training, with online courses bringing a number of advantages to your employees and business. To recap, eLearning delivers:

Content you can customize for your specific audience

Consistency across training materials, even when updating

As you can see, this offers staff a form of training that is far more flexible and convenient, and that works with their busy schedules, not against it. With many modern workers operating remotely or across different time zones, training materials that are available 24/7 provide employers with a very effective solution for accessible training at any time. Online courses are also readily accessible through mobile-friendly apps and devices, making eLearning even more convenient for your staff.

A good investment for your employees and your business

Making sure staff have the right tools and systems for training will go a long way in making your employees happier and more satisfied in their jobs. It also makes sense for employers – with learning and development taking up a significant part of the budget for most organizations, it’s important for employers to see a positive return on their investment.

By investing in eLearning, you’ll be showing staff that you’re putting their needs first, while allowing them to take charge of their own learning and professional development. If you’re interested in finding out more about eLearning and effective training solutions, visit the Go1 website and see how online learning can work for your staff.

How eLearning can help you avoid cookie cutter training

Webinars are a great way to deliver a presentation, host an event or increase sales lead for an online audience. What’s more, this technology provides you with a very easy and cost-effective way for your audience to consume information – wherever and whenever they like.

This convenience and flexibility has made webinars a very effective method of learning for students and professionals across all industries. But how can you make sure your webinar is a success for your audience? What is it that makes some webinars great, rather than simply okay?

We’ve put together 5 top tips to help you create a successful webinar that your audience will love.

First up, you’ll want to get your audience excited about the webinar before it takes place. This is a vital part of making sure your webinar is a success. There’s no point creating the perfect slide pack or presentation if there’s no one to deliver it to.

You can generate interest and excitement by promoting your upcoming webinar across social media channels. It’s best to create a unique hashtag beforehand, for participants to use when posting questions, comments or images around the event. This will help build an online community, as posts about your webinar will be linked under one consistent hashtag.

It’s important to take the time to write a proper script for your webinar, which works as a storyboard for your content. Even though you think you have the knowledge or experience to speak for an hour on your topic, you’ll greatly benefit from having a script.

Start with a simple welcoming note, with your first slide containing a relevant and engaging image and the webinar title of your webinar. Your next slide might like to remind your audience to feel free to ask questions throughout the webinar.

Be sure to include the social media handles, such as Twitter, of your company, event or speaker when you prepare your slide pack. You’ll want your audience to be able to direct questions, comments and feedback both during and after the webinar. You should also provide relevant contact information for your organization and speakers.

Like it or not, when it comes to technology, looks matter. When faced with so many choices of webinars online, people aren't likely to sit through something that's unpleasant to look at - they'll simply switch over to something that captures their attention!

Putting some effort into making your webinar slides look good will go a long way in keeping your audience interested and engaged. You don’t need to be a graphic designer to make your webinar aesthetically pleasing. There are plenty of handy templates available online. Choose simple, consistent color palettes and images and your slide deck is sure to look good.

The most important thing to remember about webinars is that you need more images than text. You don’t want to bore your audience with endless slides containing slabs of text. So make sure your images outweigh your copy.

Webinars work very well when combined with other forms of media, such as short videos, audio and animation.

How can you complement your webinar with these different kinds of elements? Think about how your audience can use them throughout the webinar, as well as after. This will keep their attention and interest and help them to interact more with your content.

For webinars that walk people through a particular process or product, you could include a real-time demonstration rather than just screenshots or images. Audience polls work well as part of a webinar, providing an easy and instant way for individuals to participate, while also adding value to the content.

Last but not least – don’t let your sound let you down. Audio is a critical part of your webinar; it’s one of the main reasons people choose to watch and listen to a webinar rather than reading. Creating a great webinar, only to have audio issues on the day, is a real let down. For both your audience and you.

So first of all, make sure you record your webinar in a quiet, preferably sound-proof, location. Do a complete dry run of your webinar before launch, testing all media elements. Then carry out a thorough sound check on the day, just before your webinar goes live.

Hopefully this has provided you with some useful tips, that will help make your webinar a greater success. For more help creating effective and engaging webinars, why not enroll in Webinar Fundamentals? This free online course, led by webinar expert and instructional designer Sally Norred, walks you through the basics of creating a webinar for your business. You’ll also get expert advice on choosing the best webinar tools and hosting software, which is vital for your webinar’s success.

How to create a successful webinar that your audience will love

Many eLearning professionals are familiar with the Discovery Learning model and its application to online learning. If you’re new to the industry, you might like to know more about this learning methodology and how it can help improve your eLearning practices.

As its name suggests, Discovery Learning is all about letting students explore solutions and subject matter – on their own, with less instruction than we usually see with traditional teaching methods. How can this methodology help students to learn more effectively?

With Discovery Learning, students experience self-guided learning, which has the benefits of allowing them to become far more engaged in the learning process while retaining a greater level of knowledge. In this way, learners are given the power to explore topics on their own and develop the confidence to successfully apply new skills to real world situations.

Let’s look more closely at the Discovery Learning model and how you can use it for more effective eLearning with your students.

The first person to define and introduce the Discovery Learning model was Jerome Bruner, an American psychologist, in 1961. From Bruner’s perspective, learning needed to be primarily about discovery, with instructors working as facilitators to create the necessary training materials and provide structure to the learning environment.

As a method of inquiry-based instruction, Discovery Learning encourages learners “to build on past experiences and knowledge, use their intuition, imagination and creativity, and search for new information to discover facts, correlations and new truths.” Under this model, learners have the opportunity to look at the problem from every angle, allowing them greater scope for reflection and understanding of core concepts and ideas.

While Discovery Learning can use various techniques, the goal will always be the same – and that is, for learners to arrive at a result on their own. In this way, the learning experience can be enriched, as individuals use the resources and knowledge they have to reach a conclusion, instead of being given the answers directly by their teacher or instructor.

The benefits of Discovery Learning for students

In this way, Discovery Learning sees students and learners exploring situations, performing experiments, searching for new information and raising questions. All of these practices are designed to build curiosity and interest in students, helping them to achieve new ways of thinking about problems and solutions.

Most eLearning professionals know the benefits of using short, concise modules to keep students engaged with online content. The Discovery Learning model works well with this approach, favoring the use of small amounts of information delivered over time, allowing learners to discover and retain knowledge in a more successful way.

Following the principles of Discovery Learning 

Learning should focus on the development of problem-solving skills, with instructors working primarily as guides to motivate learners to seek for solutions.

Teachers and instructors should allow participants to work either alone or with others, learning at their own individual pace.

Learners are encouraged to learn how to combine prior knowledge with new. There is an emphasis on connecting to the real world, with the core curriculum centering on skill mastery.

As discovery learning is process-oriented, rather than content-oriented, students learn to analyze and interpret information, rather than simply memorize the correct answer. This allows learners to organize concepts and expand their knowledge base through self-exploration.

Recognize that failure is a part of learning. Discovery learning does not focus on simply finding the ‘right’ answer, but the new things we discover in the process. Instructors have a responsibility to provide feedback, since without it, learning is incomplete.

Using the Discovery Learning model for eLearning

Stress is no stranger to the workplace, and there’s no doubt that every adult can say with confidence they’ve felt it at some point in their professional career.

However, did you know that stress is an important emotion and we actually sometimes need it to be productive in our daily lives? The trick is learning to harness the stress and put it to good use, rather than allowing it to cause us problems.

We learn all kinds of soft skills and training methods throughout our careers on how to deal with customers, coworkers, and external factors. However, there never seems to be enough education on stress. As something that everyone experiences, it’s just as important a business skill as any other, so you need to educate yourself.

Thankfully, there is a course now available that teaches you exactly how to manage stress so that you can use it to your advantage. This Managing Stress Course is a compact but effective way to give you the tools and knowledge needed to manage this tricky emotion before it overruns your life.

Stress isn’t always a bad thing, as we usually need to feel some form of stress to motivate us to get things done. With the Managing Stress Course, though, you’re able to learn how to use this stress in a positive way.

According to the American Psychological Association, stress in Americans can have a wide range of different consequences. These consequences can range from yelling at loved ones, to overeating, to sleep problems, and beyond.

When we don’t know how to properly manage our stress, it can manifest in unproductive and unhealthy ways. In today’s day and age when stressors seem to be getting more prevalent, a course like this is as important as ever.

Although you might think that only high powered executives and managers get stressed at work, this emotion can affect people in all kinds of positions and responsibilities. Stress is even felt by those who don’t have a job, so it’s not just reserved for people in the workplace. The Managing Stress Course can be useful for anyone looking to improve their personal development and understand how to cope with this sometimes overbearing emotion.

If you think back to a trying time at work when you felt stressed, and take a serious look at how you handled the situation, can you confidently say that you were able to manage your stress?

This isn’t necessarily a trait we’re born with, so for many, they will remember themselves getting flustered or angry in the situation. Learning how to manage stress with this course will mean future scenarios go very differently, so you’re able to use your energy someone more productive.

Even for those who are usually calm and collected, it’s natural to let stress creep in and affect our daily lives. With just a little bit of knowledge and some tips and tricks for how to manage this emotion, you can ensure it never impacts you negatively again.

You’ll know how to master stress and use it to your advantage, rather than let it be a detriment to you and those around you.

Live a Better Life When You Manage Stress

If you’re tired of allowing stress to impact your life and want to learn how to manage it better, then this is the course for you. Whether you’re a senior manager and want to stay calm and collected when dealing with employees, or need to learn how to not let stress interfere with your productivity, there’s so much to learn in this short and concise course.

Taking the first step and enrolling will lead you to begin thinking about stress in your life, so you can hopefully begin to pinpoint why and where you become most stressed. By understanding this vital emotion, you can ensure that you harness and turn it into something positive.

If you’re new to creating eLearning content, there’s something you absolutely need to know before you get started – and that’s the importance of storyboarding. Good eLearning courses have one thing in common. They all use effective storyboarding in the development phase.

In fact, many eLearning professionals consider storyboards to be the most important element of online course creation. Why are they so important? Let’s take a look.

Storyboards give you a map of your content

Think of a storyboard as the foundation of your eLearning course, a map that illustrates your ideas and design elements. The storyboard document will clearly show all the visual, text and audio elements of every screen in an online course. The learning objectives of your online course can also be added to this document.

In this way, you use your storyboard to communicate your ideas and objectives to clients and developers. Diving straight into the development phase, without this solid foundation, makes production more difficult for everyone involved.

Storyboarding helps your development team

Having a strong storyboard for your development team to work from will make this phase far more efficient and also make your content flow more easily. The storyboard document will clearly show your programmer, graphic designer, illustrator and narrator exactly what they need to do.

For example, your storyboard may contain notes to developers like what media to be used, what elements get synched with which part of the audio narration, which elements would be clickable, and the resultant reaction. If you have a lot of people working together on your eLearning course, a storyboard will greatly help the collaboration process and keep things in order. As Denielle Richards writes, “the more people involved in the eLearning development process, the more important the storyboarding process becomes.”

“If you are developing courses as a team effort (rather than as a one-man band), then eLearning storyboards are crucial to the process, and I’m not clear exactly how a quality eLearning product could be developed without this important step,” she says.

With this, it’s also a lot easier to see if a concept will come together well – or not! When you show a storyboard to clients, they can easily approve or pass on your concept at this stage, meaning you won’t waste any further time or money in development if the idea isn’t hitting the mark. In the case of complex animations, where it takes a lot of time and budget to develop the final product, it is a good idea to have an approved storyboard from the client first.

You’ll also be improving quality control, as your storyboard will allow you to pick up on any errors and make sure everything flows well, screen by screen. Any dialogue and media elements can be tested in this stage of development. You might even decide to use a pilot, or test, group to see how your concept works with a relevant audience.

Storyboarding allows you to make changes to content

Because your storyboard is like a blueprint of your course materials, it makes it very easy to update content at any time. You can simply edit and update your storyboard document whenever you like, as your one central file. This means you don’t have to worry about different versions or any confusion.

This is also very useful if you want to easily translate your eLearning course into another language at some point in the future.

How to create a storyboard for your eLearning course

Now you know the benefits of using a storyboard when creating your course, you might be wondering how to get started.

Connie Malamed, writing for The eLearning Coach, outlines the four main ways to go about creating a visual storyboard:

Create a template in Word (in landscape mode) and let each page represent one screen

Create a template in PowerPoint and let each slide represent one screen

Create a template in a commercial storyboarding application

For the rapid development approach, begin writing the course directly in the authoring tool, such as Storyline, Captivate, Articulate Presenter, iSpring Presenter or any of the other hundred tools. In some tools, you can write the script and other notes in the Notes section below the slide. This integrates storyboarding with actual development.

You then choose the multimedia elements you will incorporate into your eLearning course, such as videos, audio clips and graphics, and describe each element in the corresponding part of your storyboard. Make sure you leave room on each screen for these elements – simply note their position on the page with a quick sketch or text description.

As you can see, storyboarding is a very powerful development tool for creating online content. Using storyboards in eLearning production will save you time, money and potential stress later down the track.

Want to discover more about what storyboarding can do for your eLearning? Enroll in this free online course, Instructional Design Essentials: Storyboarding, for more best practice tips on using text, mockups, and rapid-prototyping tools for storyboarding. You’ll learn how to publish your project, incorporate feedback and share storyboards with others.

Why storyboarding is important for eLearning development

As organizational leaders, it’s important for CEOs to support and champion employee training programs, and getting them on board with your plan is critical for success. Knowing how to talk to your CEO about training could be the difference between implementing a successful program, or being stuck with sub par development.

If you’ve been tasked with developing a training strategy, as a manager or HR professional, it’s important that you seek direct input from your CEO. You might think that chief executives are too busy to bother with these kinds of conversations, but it’s in the company’s best interest to have a CEO that provides input and feedback on this area.

By being directly involved in the company’s learning and development strategy, your organizational leaders can help to ensure that staff are equipped with the right skills and being supported in their professional development. To help you feel more comfortable discussing with your CEO about training, here are some points you may like to consider.

Discussing the organizational benefits of training

Before you approach the subject with your CEO, put some time into thinking about the benefits of training for both employees and the organization as a whole. What are the company’s priorities and goals? How will training help to actively support these goals?

CEOs will want to know that they’re getting a good return on investment for the money that is invested in training, so you should be able to identify and outline these benefits. If you’re not sure how to start the ball rolling, take this suggestion from Forbes in 5 Things You Should Be Talking To Your Boss About. You could say something like, “I’ve noticed that our new hires aren’t picking up on the new CRM program very easily. I’d love to put together some training documentation to help them learn it a little quicker. Here’s a quick outline I threw together—what do you think?”.

Eoghan Quigley, writing for eLearning Industry, agrees that for CEOs “prioritizing the development of their employees provides one of the biggest returns. Making sure that the culture is strong, that people are learning, and that they know we’re investing in them every day is always ROI positive”. Keep referring back to the organizational benefits of training when meeting with your CEO.

Talk to your CEO about bridging the skills gap

You can also discuss the importance of training in helping to bridge the skills gap in your organization. The skills gap is a challenge and concern for many modern companies, with a mismatch between the skills that employers want and need, and the skills that workers actually have. This mismatch, or gap, can be addressed through ongoing training.

Quigley looks at telecommunications giant AT&T as an example of a CEO who recognizes that ongoing training is essential for the success of a company and its employees. Randall Stephenson, AT&T’s chairman and chief executive, is reported to have said that employees who do not spend five to ten hours a week in online learning “will obsolete themselves with the technology”.

With ongoing training, leaders can make sure staff are equipped to deal with any changes in technology and the industry, while continually improving their skill sets and contributing to the success of the company. As Quigley says, while CEOs are responsible for setting long-term strategy and short-term goals for a company, “it will be employees that will execute against this strategy and these goals”.

Encourage your CEO to invest in eLearning

Telling your CEO that company staff need more training will go down a lot better if you can also offer a solution at the same time. What training tools and methods can you include in your strategy, that are up-to-date, effective, and provide good value for money?

One of the best ways for employees to learn new skills, or improve existing ones, is through online courses and eLearning. In fact, eLearning has become the most popular way to perform workplace training these days, with online training courses proving to be a very successful and effective way for staff to receive ongoing learning and development. A massive 77% of American companies are already offering online corporate training to their staff, with this figure likely to continue to grow throughout 2017.

With eLearning, you can significantly reduce the costs of training by removing the need for room hire, travel, trainers and facilitators, and other associated costs of traditional training methods. Outline these facts in your discussion, to show the potential benefits of online training for the company. By being prepared with some clear statistics, facts, and viable training solutions, you can have a far more open and productive conversation with your CEO.

This article was originally published on elearningindustry.com

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