How MOOCs Can Help Fill your Employee Training Gap

How MOOCs Can Help Fill your Employee Training GapHow MOOCs Can Help Fill your Employee Training GapHow MOOCs Can Help Fill your Employee Training Gap DeZubeIs your workforce equipped with the skills and knowledge it needs to remain competitive and grow? If not, think MOOCs.MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses offer employers the opportunity to train workers across a variety of skills. They can also help workers keep up with ever-evolving technology.Half of todays jobs wont exist in 2030, says Anant Agarwal, CEO of edX, a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) non-profit founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Whats more, the remainder of the jobs left will either change completely or be different in some way.Growing businesses in particular will be tasked with the challenge of how to empower their existing workforce to upskill and reskill to meet the changing demands of their jobs says Agarwal.Heres how MOOCs can help companies address their knowledg e gap and employees the opportunity to develop their skills.Keeping Up with InnovationThe typical MOOC is a college-level course offered via the Web to anyone who wants to enroll. Some are free to viewers who only watch the course. Other MOOCs charge students who want to complete a full course (including tests) and earn a certificate.For employers, MOOCs can be a cost-effective, efficient way to bridge employee training gaps. Theyre particularly useful for widespread workforces, smaller companies with limited time and budget for training as well as companies whose employees need to stay current as technology evolves.Steve Halligan, chief operating officer of N2grate, a 30-employee company that provides data center and cloud solutions to Federal agencies, uses the classes at Cybrary to keep his employees up to date on technical and cybersecurity innovations.Weve been using MOOCs for years, Halligan says. In a world in which no one can be an expert in all things, the ability to use on going, flexible content to sharpen the skill development saw has been a key piece for us.Billable hours drive PL at N2grate. That makes MOOCs a plus as employees can learn while commuting or in the evenings, instead of leaving the office to attend in-person classes.It strikes me as a smarter way to train, says Halligan. It doesnt need to be one-to-one or one-to-many at a certain time or place. Thats not how you bank or Christmas shop or how you work.MOOCs Can Help Reduce CostsAs MOOCs retrain your existing workforce, they can also help reduce recruitment and employee relocation costs.There is an arbitrage to assess when recruiting talent versus growing it in-house. Since online programs do not require massive internal resources to produce, update and roll out, there is a clear benefit in terms of cost and time for growing businesses, Agarwal says.There may also be an income-side boost gained from online learning. According to Bersin Associates, revenue generated per employee is 26% higher for companies that offer training using technology, including digital learning, Agarwal says.MOOCs as BenefitsParticularly for todays often restless Millennials, MOOCs can signal a commitment to employee development.As we think about the younger generation of employees, employee development is something they really care about, says Julia Stiglitz, vice president at Coursera, a MOOC with 2,000 courses and 180 specializations taught by instructors from 149university partners.Among the companys most popular offerings are information technology and project management courses, business classes that mimic the first year of a typical MBA program and specialized programs in hospitality and advanced manufacturing.Stiglitzsees larger businesses using MOOCs in novel ways that might also work for growing businesses.For example, when BNY Mellon onboards Web developers, it has them complete Courseras full stack Web development specialization taught by Hong Kong University of Science and T echnology. Once they complete the six-course series, employees share a common set of skills and language, Stiglitz says.Cosmetics company LOreal Paris also uses MOOCs as an employee perk. Staffers can choose to take any of a curated set of courses on management, leadership, business fundamentals and data science.MOOCs that Fill Skill GapsEven in a hot tech area like Silicon Valley, some jobs remain hard to fill and keep filled. These areas include data science, mobile development, or Web development. Sometimes, there simply arent enough qualified candidates around.These skill gaps often occur with new skills such as artificial intelligence or cloud computing all areas covered by MOOCs.MOOCs can also be an efficient way for in-house employees to gain soft skills. Agarwal says companies use edXs MicroMasters program to help new leaders gain specialized management skills without sending them to multiyear, on-campus MBA programs.Could MOOCs enable you to create a skilled workforce from the ground up? A company in West Virginia for example uses MOOCs to reinvent the careers of the 70,000 Americans who now work in the coal industry?Halligan is skeptical of using MOOCs to build a technically competent IT staffer from scratch. Yet some MOOCs offer a money-back guarantee of preparing workers for jobs.MOOCs can be of use to everyone including senior leaders. Consider the free business and enterprise skills courses at ALISON, a MOOC that covers entrepreneurship to risk management to employee management.After all, why should your staffers be the only ones learning something new?