Off-the-Shelf Generic Courses: What Works, What Doesn’t, and How to Get the Most Out of Them
When you’re looking to quickly train your team on a broad topic like basic management skills, compliance, or soft skills, off-the-shelf generic courses can seem like a great option. They’re ready to go, usually cost-effective, and can save you a lot of time and effort compared to building custom content from scratch. But, like any solution, they come with their own set of pros and cons. Here’s what you need to know about using generic courses effectively.
🡅The Upside:
Cost-Effective and Time-Saving
Off-the-shelf courses are usually much cheaper than developing a custom course, especially if you’re working with limited budgets. Plus, they’re ready to go right out of the box, which means you can roll out training quickly without having to invest time in a lengthy design process.
Wide Range of Topics
These courses often cover a broad array of subjects, from compliance and safety to leadership and soft skills. This range can be incredibly useful if you need training on common, standardised topics that don’t necessarily need customisation.
High-Quality Production
Most generic courses are developed by eLearning professionals, so they often feature high-quality design, engaging interactions, and are up-to-date with current best practices in eLearning. This can provide a polished and engaging experience for your learners.
Customisable (in some cases)
Many off-the-shelf courses offer a degree of customisation, allowing you to tweak certain elements like company branding, scenarios, or specific content. This can make the course feel a bit more tailored to your organisation’s context, without the need for a full custom build.
🡇The Downside:
Lack of Relevance
Generic courses are designed for a broad audience, so they might not always align perfectly with your organisation’s specific needs, values, or culture. Learners may find the content too general or not directly applicable to their roles, which can lead to disengagement.
Limited Flexibility
While some generic courses allow for minor customisations, they often have limitations. If your training needs are very specific, you might find that off-the-shelf options don't provide the depth or nuance required to address complex situations unique to your organisation.
One-Size-Fits-All Approach
Generic courses typically use scenarios, examples, and terminology designed for the average learner. This means they might miss the mark for your team, especially if your industry has specialised language or practices that aren’t reflected in the content.
No Control Over Updates
With off-the-shelf courses, you’re relying on the provider to keep the content up-to-date. If they don’t update regularly, you could end up with outdated or non-compliant training materials that don’t reflect current regulations or best practices.
Getting the Most Out of Off-the-Shelf Courses
If you decide to use off-the-shelf courses, here are some tips to maximise their effectiveness:
Customise with Your Brand and Language
Start by customising the course with your organisation's brand standards. Update it with your logo, colours, and fonts where appropriate. If the course allows, swap in key terms and phrases that are specific to your organisation’s culture. Even small adjustments like changing "manager" to "team leader" can make a big difference in how relevant the course feels to your learners. When we did this exercise with one organisation, it was a great prompt for the group of stakeholders to discuss and agree on the language that they felt most comfortable with. Not all companies have a detailed set of language guidelines already in place.
Supplement with Custom Content
Use the generic course as a foundation and add a personal touch. A great way to do this is by including a short video featuring one of your leaders explaining how the course content fits into your organisation’s current priorities and goals. This not only provides context but also signals to learners that the training is valued by leadership and directly relevant to their work environment.
Customise the activities
Some activities or quizzes may be too hard or too easy or simply not relevant for your company. It’s worth re-designing them to bring them into line with your context. Sometimes knowledge checks in generic courses are simply recall activities, Contextualised application activities may be more helpful to your learners
Use Blended Learning Methods
Incorporate an off-the-shelf course as part of a blended learning approach. Pair it with live workshops, team discussions, and on-the-job practice sessions. This helps contextualise the generic content and ensures that learners can immediately apply what they’ve learned in a way that’s meaningful to them. In our experience, live workshops after the eLearning allows for some ‘venting’ about what learners didn’t like in the generic course. Even laughing about what might not work in your own environment is a good way to warm learners up to thinking about what gems were relevant.
Pilot and Gather Feedback
Before rolling out the course to the entire team, consider running a pilot with a small group of learners. Gather their feedback on what worked and what didn’t—you might be surprised by their insights! Use their feedback to make adjustments, like providing additional context, tweaking the custom elements, or adding supplementary resources. One time we did this with a client, we had several people say the course “Felt so American!” This prompted us to look at ways to reduce the amount of American-accented video, and instead create short summaries in text, or if necessary, develop an alternative for those pieces, like an animated presentation with Kiwi voiceover. If you think replacing talking-head videos may be required, it may even be worth developing a custom AI Avatar for someone in your company that the learners would respect. While this does cost time and money up-front, but it could save a lot of time in the long run.
Are generic courses right for your company?
In a nutshell, when used thoughtfully and supplemented with other learning methods, off-the-shelf courses can be a lifesaver for the busy L&D professional!
Download our free checklist below, to help you think through how you can best make use of the generic courses you have access to.
Tip! If you don’t have access to such a customisable course library, get in touch!
We have access to customisable courses in the following subject areas, and would love to work with you to quickly get some relevant courses launched in your environment.
Compliance
Customer Success and Service
Diversity and Inclusion
Health and Wellness
Human Resources
Information Technology
Leadership
Personal Development
Professional Skills
Sales and Marketing
