Why Managers Push Back On Custom E Learning Development

When an organisation adopts a new format of training, especially when it’s expensive, like a custom e-learning development program, in the process of implementing the course, the managers have to engage with content and learners to drive actual results. 

But in many cases, managers are hesitant to take the program forward with employees, and the reason behind the disturbance might be a lack of evidence that custom e learning development is the right choice for the business and desired learning outcomes. 

According to 360Learning, nearly 92% of business leaders fail to see the impact of learning within their organisations. This informs us that the fault also partially lies in L&D for not showing enough proof of training outcomes. 

Understanding custom e learning development

Custom e-learning development refers to the process of developing a personalised training course for learners. The content of the program is built from scratch, and it is completely customised to target business goals, learning needs, workflow, and different roles of one organization. 

The course includes video lectures, assessments for practice, branching scenarios, product/services details, and interactive elements that are chosen by L&D. 

Reasons managers push away from custom training 

1. Lack of business results

When the learning and development professionals offer a custom e-learning development program to managers and urge them to take various initiatives that encourage employees to engage with content, but if there is no mention of what this program targets or the purpose of the training, managers will not be interested, nor will they prioritise it. 

2. Time consumption

Managers are constantly assigned to deliver impressive results to leadership and often are following tight deadlines, but when the custom e learning development training is adapted, the employees have to compromise some working hours for training, and that might feel like a time consumption whose results are not visible in the near term. 

3. No contribution

The L&D must take different opinions from learners and employees before building the program because they are the end users and know the root problem. But when there is no contribution from managers in the custom e-learning development process, the content does not target specific issues and hence is likely to get discarded. 

4. Experience of training

This factor could also be influenced by the experience of the manager in past roles, where they trained with a custom program themselves and didn’t see any impressive changes after the training, while the reason could be bad content or wrong strategy, but they failed to recognise and are now skeptical about similar courses. 

5. No assigned purpose

When the learning and development team assigns no specific work to managers, they never finalise their role in the training; the professionals could give tasks like keeping track of learners, communicating issues, or reinforcing skills on the job. The complete lack of important discussion leads to no effort from managers. 

6. Wrong timing 

If the custom e learning development program is introduced at a time when business performance is at its peak, like the end of the month, quarterly ends, or a major project briefing. In this case, even if the training is valuable, the managers won’t be able to encourage it because they have to drive results and revenue. 

Wrap Up

The managers are not at fault in most cases, but the issue goes beyond them and the learners. Mostly the L&D team and developers; when the training is just pushed forward by HR and other professionals, even the high-value training starts to appear as an obstacle in business. Hence, we can conclude ustom e learning development process is meant to be carried out with precision and managers' constant input.