With four of our nine South African provinces now battling the third wave of COVID-19 infections, and the possibility of other provinces following suit, President Cyril Ramaphosa has moved the country into an adjusted Alert Level 2 lockdown. Experts have warned that this wave might be even worse than its predecessors, and with cases of India’s  B.1.617 “double mutant” variant of the virus detected in South Africa, there has never been a more important time for students and those interested in further education and training to stay safe and study online.

For millions of high school graduates, professionals and businesses, e-learning and training is a skills development panacea, allowing them (and their staff) to get educated, grow skillsets and keep career trajectories on course, free of “new normal” interruptions that could hinder their academic and professional progress.  The remote learning and online courses in South Africa offered by SafetyCloud within the Occupational Health, Safety and Environmental Training industry provides several benefits to organisations and the individual learner.

The Advantages of Studying Online for Individuals:

• Easy on the Budget: E-learning is cheaper than traditional face-to-face study as there are no travel costs, venue costs or printing costs for training manuals involved. Digital training for E-learning courses requires fewer training facilitators, which is often a great expense. This results in cheaper tuitions fees that are easy on the pocket for a greater number of people.
• Schedule Flexibility: Life is busy, even in a pandemic, and the flexibility of e-learning allows you to study at any time which suits you, from any location. Employees can upskill without affecting company productivity which has a positive impact on the bottom lines of a business.
• Safety: As there is no physical interaction with another person, learners have a reduced chance of contracting the Coronavirus or any other human-to-human infections that may be passed.
• Personalised Learning: One can choose their learning path and study at their own pace. In this way, students become more motivated and invested in the course as it works with their schedule, not the other way around.
• Access Greater Earnings: Learning online can help students hone the technical skills they need on the job. The addition of new skills to one’s professional repertoire offers opportunities for career advancements and earning a higher income.
• Data free Learning via Mobile: e-Learning with SafetyCloud via smartphones is data-free, allowing you to connect and complete your training courses without using your personal handheld device’s data, saving you money and enabling you to study from any location. This includes mobile hotspots (T&Cs apply)
  

The Advantages of Corporate E-learning:

• Less Out of Office: Just as e-Learning saves money, it also saves on your employees time. Studies have shown that eLearning reduces employee study time by 60% when compared to traditional learning. This translates into more time being made available for employees to achieve business targets and deliverables, while still meeting their study and training obligations.
• Increased Staff Retention: Continuous learning is an effective way to increase employee retention. Employees appreciate employers who invest in their careers and choose to stay with them. By investing in employees, businesses have a greater chance of retaining gold-star workers and promote from within the business, giving managers and business owners confidence in their team, as opposed to new hires who are yet to prove their abilities and may require long, ongoing training.
• Business Expansion: Online training enables your business to hire remote staff that can work from home, free of costs such as office equipment, larger premises and other overheads. These remote employees can learn all the skills needed to thrive in your business, work from home and help to support company growth which can boost its bottom line.
• It’s Trackable: When registering your staff for a SafetyCloud online course, you are easily able to track their progress and measure each employee’s professional development.
• Aligned to 21st-century Business: Given that most jobs today require employees to leverage technology,  E-learning exposes students to new digital platforms and technologies that are essential for operations in the modern workplace and the modern world.

The benefits of e-learning are plentiful and as we prepare to embrace the Next Normal, online training is undoubtedly the future.  If you’d like to explore just how E-Learning can benefit you or your business, contact us today.