How Can You Use eLearning to Upskill and Reskill Your Blue-collar Workforce?

eLearning for blue-collar employees — why is it critical today? In India, the number of blue-collar employees has reached around 500 million. Firms attempt to automate as many blue-collar positions as possible due to rapidly advancing technology. Yet, automation only touches the surface of our blue-collar ecosphere’s problems.

Breakthroughs in AI, ML, robotics, 3D printing, advanced analytics, and deep learning contribute to the problems facing blue-collar employees by posing additional difficulties for their productivity and employment.

Blue-collar employees have extremely few opportunities in these places to receive training and upgrade their skills. Compared to their white-collar peers, this makes it harder for these individuals to stay current and hold onto their positions as technology advances.

E-learning is an excellent solution to upskill and reskill blue-collar workforces. It is a flexible and convenient way for workers to learn new skills, and it is cost-effective for companies and organizations that want to invest in developing their workforce.

Furthermore, e-learning provides access to a wide range of training materials and allows workers to learn at their own pace. Yes, there are many benefits to e-learning for the blue-collar workforce. Let’s go through them.

eLearning for blue-collar employees: Why is online training vital to upskill and reskill your blue-collared workforce?

Traditionally, blue-collar employees involved in sectors including agriculture, production, infrastructure, and transportation were responsible for carrying out the most taxing, repetitious, and physically demanding jobs. Simply put, working in blue-collar jobs requires individuals to engage in their roles manually.

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However, now, the majority of physical jobs are performed by technology. Today, managing and monitoring these devices is a concern that falls under the purview of blue-collar workers.

Blue-collar professionals require a specific digital literacy level to efficiently embrace and apply innovation for goal accomplishment.

Why doesn’t this worker segment yet have recourse to eLearning though it has moved so much nearer to tech and acquired computer literacy?

In a recent poll, 50% of the businesses questioned acknowledged that some workforce groups had minimal or no exposure to eLearning. Retail employment, manual laborers, and technicians are featured among these professions.

Employees typically receive training in the below-mentioned key segments, although there are undoubtedly some disparities between the industry sectors:

Recruitment and retention, on-the-job instruction, machinery guidelines, and operational processes. The person in charge of leading this instruction has typically been a supervisor, a senior staff member, or a manager.

The challenges of traditional approaches to training blue-collar employees

There are specific difficulties with running live training sessions in a production setting. Your instructors and learners must be removed from the daily tasks and given a substitute because corporate workers frequently handle the instruction instead of external specialists.

Although performing the instruction in teams might be more economical, dropouts are frequently possible, necessitating the requirement to schedule at least one additional training session. Furthermore, a workstation must be temporarily removed from the assembly line for any learning.

Following this effort, your HR team will discover how well a specific training is performed. However, the progress won’t be able to be tracked.

Because of this, instructor-led training or ILT in the context of manufacturing could be expensive and logistically complex, in addition to being difficult to oversee and evaluate.

Even while ILT still predominates in the industrial sector, these are the reasons eLearning is gradually making its way into the training procedures here.

How is eLearning transforming the ways blue-collar employees learn?

VR training

Virtual reality (VR) training simulates a real-life workplace and enables the practice of specific skills without posing any risks or delaying or decelerating production.

Certain firms even employ VR-driven simulated scenarios during the hiring phase to offer applicants an actual feel of their role. This reduces job resignations during the initial weeks post-joining.

E-kiosks

Employees can access educational materials anytime convenient or required by using e-kiosks, which are eLearning points of entry. They could look like a laptop shielded from the manufacturing environment or as specialized interfaces.

Since e-kiosks are often solitary booths instead of e-cafes, they provide instruction to a select group of staff members — only if they have time for it.

Training on a broader range of topics

If you examine your training topics, you will see that blue-collar employees only receive instruction on the knowledge required to do their jobs effectively.

There aren’t any training programs that might aid them in advancing their knowledge, pursuing their hobbies, or obtaining a promotion or raise. Furthermore, the supervisor, not the worker, is only accountable for the course’s design.

All of these factors have a very detrimental effect on staff’s willingness to learn — since they are more willing and interested in participating in exercises that will increase their work performance and less likely to participate in operational instruction, which makes up most of the syllabus.

Professional fatigue is a severe issue for blue-collar employees, but it is possible to mitigate this with the correct training. It has been demonstrated that providing blue-collar professionals with a wide range of training options increases their work-related motivation.

Instruction via common devices

If e-kiosks are your sole entry points for offering eLearning, providing blue-collar employees with handpicked, optional online courses may become difficult. Thanks to the most recent technical advancements, professionals can practically hold all the potential in their hands, particularly with the use of headless tech in online learning.

Virtual reality goggles, PCs, mobile and manufacturing consoles, as well as other smart gadgets, among others, can all access instructional content through headless LMSs.

This implies that a worker can obtain instruction from a computer or other technology they use daily. They can effortlessly shift between the gadgets to carry on their training, too.

This might make it possible for businesses to train employees on a broader range of subjects with less need to detach individuals from their jobs.

Professional training exercises may be controlled and evaluated from one platform, and identical eLearning materials can be made available to your blue-collar workers.

Blue-collar employees aspire to become more proficient in their profession. When individuals can choose what to study tomorrow, they become more driven. They require the same soft skill development and burnout support as every other employee group.

Recent technological advancements enable blue-collar employees to acquire eLearning courses through everyday tools. This makes it possible to treat every staff group inside a business more equally.

Instruction on critical subjects post-COVID

Companies must now automate processes and lessen their reliance on human labor due to the outbreak. This has boosted the demand for basic process-related online training modules for front-line staff.

Courses for safety training also have attracted attention. In addition, eLearning has replaced the traditional ILT and seminars because assembling big groups is no longer feasible, which has increased demand for courses pertinent to managerial approaches, management professionals, and salespeople.

The urbanized states have the most significant requirement for initiatives that develop blue-collar skills and abilities.

The pandemic impacted several industries, including e-commerce, transportation, and medicine, providing jobs and driving up demand for trained individuals. Businesses employ eLearning course packages to integrate new hires swiftly and to assist them in becoming efficient and job-ready.

What are the benefits of eLearning for training blue-collared employees?

Flexibility and accessibility

One of the most significant benefits is the flexibility and convenience of e-learning. Workers can access e-learning materials anytime, making it easy to fit learning into their busy schedules.

Additionally, e-learning is cost-effective, as it eliminates the need for travel and accommodation costs.

E-learning also provides access to a wide range of training materials, which means that workers can learn about various topics and skills.

Furthermore, e-learning allows workers to learn at their own pace, which means they can work through the material as quickly or slowly as needed. This is particularly beneficial for workers with limited technology experience or those struggling with a particular topic.

Gamification

According to a report by Cognizant, skilled job roles are expected to grow by 3% across industries over the next five years.

Again, as per recent research by the World Economic Forum (WEF), by 2025, the advent of robots and automation would produce 97 million new employment while removing 85 million existing ones. The technological disruption will widen the talent gap even further. Approximately 49.2% of Today’s working population is digitally proficient as things currently stand.

It is necessary to create training programs and materials tailored to this group’s behavioral patterns, anxieties, and motivating factors if any retraining of blue-collar workers is to become effective.

Internationally, the blue-collar population is predominately low-income and has little training and experience. In addition, they behave differently from their counterparts in the white-collar sector when praised or competing.

In terms of accessibility and accessibility, the recent emergence of mobile-friendly instructional methods by ed-tech skilling platforms has proven to be quite successful.

With its capacity to convey complex real-job principles simplistically, PlayAblo’s training content frequently leverages gamified elements, which integrate gameplay design parameters into the setting of non-game events, to improve engagement effectively.

In this model, active learning improves the learning experience from carefully designed lessons. It provides users with a risk-free simulated space to enhance their preparation for the workforce.

mLearning

Training technologies should keep up with the pace of change to address the consequent skills mismatch. In this novel environment, conventional training approaches aren’t any longer functional.

The information must be succinct, pertinent, industry-specific, and engaging in guaranteeing that the teams get off to a strong start.

Companies can no longer remove teams from service for a single training day. Continual high investment in learning is also impractical, given the workforce turnover.

To keep up with rapid changes, the units must be adaptable, and the technologies should be scalable. Mobile learning is the best solution that satisfies each of these demands.

Evidence shows that mLearning can considerably improve a blue-collared workforce’s training productivity and effectiveness. To assess the effectiveness and return on investment of m-learning, a recent survey compared it against conventional online courses.

A follow-up poll showed that 99% of smartphone users believed the mobile formats enhanced their education and expressed a desire for additional mobile training. And over 75% of respondents named ease, time savings, and no disturbances as the top three advantages of mobile learning.

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Summing It Up

There are also challenges to e-learning for the blue-collar workforce. One of the most significant challenges is the lack of access to technology. Many workers in blue-collar jobs may not have access to the technology they need to participate in e-learning. Additionally, limited digital literacy can be a barrier to e-learning, and it can be difficult to engage and retain workers participating in e-learning programs.

Companies and organizations should consider partnering with educational institutions and training providers to overcome these challenges. These partnerships can provide the technology and digital literacy training workers need to participate in e-learning. Additionally, companies and organizations can develop interactive and engaging e-learning content that will help to keep workers engaged and motivated.

Furthermore, offering support and guidance to workers throughout the training process can help ensure they are successful in their e-learning program. This can include providing a mentor or coach who can answer questions, provide feedback, and offer additional resources and support materials.

In conclusion, e-learning is an excellent solution to upskill and reskill blue-collar workforces. E-learning is flexible, convenient, and cost-effective, providing access to various training materials. However, there are also challenges to e-learning, such as a lack of access to technology and limited digital literacy.

To overcome these challenges, companies, and organizations should consider partnering with educational institutions and training providers, developing interactive and engaging e-learning content, and offering support and guidance to workers throughout the training process.