In many ways, COVID-19 simply accelerated some existing trends in online education. More and more Australian companies have been looking to upskill their workforce over the last few years, and many of them have been doing it online. The pandemic has just super-charged industry adoption.
Training a nimble, digital-ready workforce is no longer a nice-to-have; and most traditional, face-to-face certificates are currently on-hold. That leaves online shortcourses and qualifications, many of which have shown exponential growth during the pandemic.
We’ve been studying this trend for a while now. Research from RMIT Online found that many employers are now investing less money in recruitment and more money in staff training. Around 45% of Australian business leaders are delivering comprehensive internal training, and 44% are using external providers (like Udacity and RMIT Online).
More importantly, employers are seeing tangible results. Almost all the businesses surveyed (around 95%) said that they, as an employer, received some benefit from staff training. And two thirds of respondents said the benefits were split equally between the employee and the company itself.