Employees who earn technical certifications drive outcomes that business leaders care about — increased productivity, accuracy, and quality of work, along with reduced project costs. But even if leaders are concerned about seeing the return on investment with technical certifications, it might not be obvious how to help your employees prepare for them. We asked several Business technical certification instructors — Jason Dion, Scott Duffy, and Alan Rodrigues — to share their tips and tricks.

Familiarize yourself with the available modes of learning

In the past, employers that wanted to offer technical certification education to their employees had limited options. One of the most common styles of preparing employees for certification involved paying an instructor to come in and lead an intensive boot camp. This approach to development costs several thousands of dollars per learner and takes time away from learners’ daily tasks. On the other side of the spectrum, books were a low-cost and easily accessible option, but they required a lot of heads-down time to study and absorb the information. Today there are plenty of more flexible options. Here are some of the insights the Udemy Business instructors shared about the different learning modes available now.

Videos

Jason Dion is a big proponent of video content because it’s fast and convenient: “For a lot of things, it’s easier to see a video to demonstrate it. Something that might take five to ten pages in a book could be shown in a two-minute video, and it’s going to be a lot more effective because I can watch the person doing the steps and follow along.”