7 Free or Affordable On-line Training Course Providers for Small Business

Increasing the competency levels of your staff will increase employee: satisfaction, motivation, morale and engagement. If your staff are constantly updating their skills in line with their roles and core competencies you will see efficiency and productivity gains to help put you ahead of the competition.

The trouble is hat in small companies where cash flow is usually critical, there is not usually the financial liquidity or cash stability to invest in training courses even though the intent and willing may be there. This does not mean that employees cannot do training courses, because fortunately there are range of free training courses on-line which your business may be able to make use of to aid staff development and I have outlined some of the best of these below.

1. YouTube Training

One of the best on-line sources of free  training has to be  YouTube. They have video based training courses in just about everything including: IT, Social Media, Project Management, Conflict Management, Negotiation Skills, Supplier Management, customer service, team leadership, management etc… Many of these courses are high quality information courses run by or presented by experience business professionals or professional training organizations who create training videos and post them on-line as a marketing tool to promote their business and other courses.

2. Virtual College. This is an online e-learning and micro-learning library, containing a selection of short, bite-sized courses of 15 minutes to about 3 hours in duration. They have courses in the following subject areas: construction, business, food hygiene, equality and diversity, health and safety, food hygiene, healthcare, management, retail, hospitality, and much more.

3. OpenCourseWare

OpenCourseWareconsortium is  a free and open digital publication of high quality educational courses and materials created by universities and these are all published on the internet. You will find courses in just about everything.

4. London School of Business and Finance

They are offering their entire on-line MBA programme for free. If students want to actually earn the degree, they can pay their tuition fees retroactively at the end.

5.MIT OpenCourseWare – Sloan School of Management

They offer business courses for free at both undergraduate and graduate level. There are 50 courses available.

5. CreativeLive.com

They have lots of great, free on-line courses covering areas such a business start up, preparing a business plan, social media, personal effectiveness — and the courses are taught by marketing gurus and professors. They have courses in photography, business, software, design, video & film, audio and lifestyle. Live courses are free but you have to pay to view recordings.

6. edX

EdX is a non-profit learning organization which is a joint venture between  Harvard and MIT. It provides a set of free onl-ine courses accessible from anywhere in the world. Courses cover areas such as science, technology and humanities, including topics such as innovation,  software as a service, statistics  etc…

7. Coursera.org

This organization partners with 33 universities including Stanford and Princeton and offers courses aimed at entrepreneurs and small business professionals. The courses are free and can be watched on demand.

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