If you're a business owner looking for a way to train your employees, online training is a convenient and affordable way to get the job done. Training programs can be set up on your office network or the internet and employees can access them from work or home. This makes training convenient for workers, and affordable for employers, who don't have to pay the expenses of sending people out of town for training or shut their businesses down while employees train. Companies use online training for anything from introducing new software, to improving the way workers answer the phones, to keeping employees aware of new workplace legislation.

To begin your online training program you need to develop a lesson plan detailing how the information will be presented to your workers. Then you need to implement the plan, setting up the website where employees will access their lessons. Finally, you'll want a way of measuring their progress. Later in this article we'll examine your employees' needs when it comes to online learning and the methods you can use for training. First let's look more closely at what's involved in starting the training program.

Most likely you already know what you want employees to learn, but unless you have previous experience as a teacher, it's unlikely you'll know the best way to get this message through to them. You can approach this problem in two ways. The first is to use an employee training school. These schools have online programs designed to handle common work place training topics and their programs can be implemented in your office. As well, many of them design custom programs if they don't already have something that fits your requirements. The level of assistance they provide is entirely up to you. They may just design the lessons for you, or they may put together the entire website and even help you find a place to host it online. Try looking on the internet for "employ training online" or "custom employee training" and your search engine is likely to return a list of companies that provide these services.

If you already have experience in web design, a second way to approach the situation would be to consult an online teacher. A teacher can develop the lesson plans or advise you as to the best method you can use to get your message through to workers. An online teacher can help you convert a classroom based training program into one that works online. Depending on the nature of the training, you might need to hire an online teacher to assist your workers. For example, a teacher may be needed to grade exams or they may interact with students daily, helping them understand the lessons.

The final component of your training program is developing a method of measuring progress. You could use online quizzes that students take after each lesson or a final exam that is taken once all the lessons are complete. Both multiple choice and long answer tests can be created with online software. Another option is to monitor the training website keeping track of how often employees log on and how long they stay logged on per session. The method you choose will depend on the type of training you're offering and will be covered in part 2.