Day to day priorities, meetings and immediate issues often come before learning new skills or taking the time out for training and upskilling employees. Learning new skills, training, and taking time out to digest is critical for employee and business development. Not only does it encourage employees to stay in their role, but it also enables them to help the company grow and become more profitable. In this article we look at some great free online digital training courses you can encourage your employees to take the time out of work to complete.
Google Digital Garage
Google is the biggest player in digital, they have so many products and services to help businesses grow, review, and measure their digital presence. Their digital garage has over 150 free online courses to help employees and business owners improve their digital skills, improve their knowledge and even understanding the basics of code. Some of their courses also include certification which can be used by employees or companies to prove their expertise in a particular area or for a particular set of skills.
Here are just a few of the many courses offered for free as part of Google Digital Garage
- Fundamentals of digital marketing
- Get a business online
- Understand customers’ needs and online behaviours
- Make sure customers find you online
- Improve your online business security
- How to increase productivity at work
Moz – the beginners guide to SE
If you are looking to give your employees a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) the beginners guide to SEO from Moz is a great place to start. Offering everything a beginner needs to know in one place. It’s easy to read, written in simple informative language and can be beneficial to many areas of a business. SEO is the practice of improving a business’s rankings in Google for relevant search terms. Many employees are unaware that they are impacting on SEO within their job roles. For example, any content or updates to the website or any mentions of the company externally online, if not done correctly can negatively impact on a business’s rankings and lead to a reduction in sales and therefore profit.
It is important that everyone that gets involved with a company’s website has a basic understanding of SEO and the best practices. Providing the beginners guide to SEO to all employees with access to the website or the ability to influence it will help to ensure no issues are created from lack of understanding.
Wordstream
Wordstream has a whole range of free resources and articles to help improve employees’ digital skills. Wordstream covers the basic questions and more advanced topics for those looking to upskill in one area. Wordstream are also great at providing digital marketing benchmark stats by industry, so you can see how your activity is performing and if you are overperforming or underperforming compared to others within your industry.
Here are just a few of the free online courses that Wordstream have available for anyone to view on their website:
- What is PPC
- Why advertise on social?
- Fundamental Facebook ad tips
- Is Google Ads right for me?
- Facebook advertising benchmarks
- Write great PPC ads
The Skills Toolkit
The skills toolkit is a set of online training and resources provided by the government to help people wishing to upskill in numerous areas including, maths, computer essentials, professional development, business and finance, digital design and marketing, computer science, and coding. These free courses are offered by several different companies but collated online by the skills toolset website. They are aimed at people looking to learn new skills or change jobs. Find out more about the skills toolkit.
Informing employees
Providing employees with time for learning and increasing their skills during work hours is a great way to keep them motivated and up to date with the latest information and skills they may need to do their job. Regular emails communicating this is important, a monthly reminder of the great courses out there is an excellent way to do this. Where possible rewarding employees for prioritising and taking time out to upskill is a great way to encourage others to follow suit and to create a culture of learning within the organisation.
