If you want your company to succeed in a competitive landscape, you need an engaged workforce who can work together to meet business goals. Your HR department probably already invests a significant amount of time and energy in designing learning and development programs to help train your workforce, but what happens if no one is paying attention? How can you increase employee engagement in learning and development programs to ensure your team is aligned and working productively?
Scoot is a revolutionary kind of virtual meeting platform that is used by HR professionals around the world seeking to improve employee engagement during their L&D programs, All-Hands meetings, town halls, and other virtual meetings, socials and events. Our platform brings movement, music and mingling to otherwise boring meetings. We’ve spoken to our top HR users and compiled this guide for you to help increase engagement in your L&D programs.
Current State of Learning and Development Programs
Data shows that only 36 % of U.S. employees are engaged in their work. Globally, only 20% of workers feel somewhat engaged in the workplace. If anything, these statistics should serve as a cautious reminder to employers hoping to accelerate their businesses and establish a functioning workforce.
Learning & development programs are essential to aligning employee goals with a company’s overall mission. In order to retain high-quality professionals and improve workplace productivity, management must identify employee skill gaps and implement strategies to address those gaps. Enter L&D.
When done effectively, these L&D programs can increase employee retention rates, enhance professional growth, and generate more profit for your organization. More importantly, they can showcase the human side of your company; the side that values employees constantly searching for professional development opportunities.
Best Practices to Increase Employee Engagement in Learning and Development
Yet the question remains: How can HR departments increase employee engagement in learning and development programs? To get started, focus on the five strategies we listed below:
Focus on customized learning experiences
These days, it is not enough to implement company-wide training programs. Companies must customize their training programs by tailoring them to what their employees need. Every worker has unique skills, personal ambitions, and career goals, and HR managers should use this information to establish individualized learning paths.
Allow for interaction and activities
Consider how much information you can retain from a webinar format, with one person talking at you for 60 minutes, compared to participating in a conversation about a similar topic. Adding conversation, small group discussion, and other types of media and materials will help your team retain more information. Some employees learn best through visuals, while others learn by reading materials. Using a platform like Scoot, you can have your team move around from one learning topic to the next, for a self-guided L&D experience. Or, they can break out into smaller groups for discussion without having to leave the room. However you choose to format your L&D experience, be sure to include ample opportunities for conversation and discussion to increase retention.
If the conversation isn’t flowing and you’d like to get people chatting, try adding an icebreaker or other team building activity into the beginning of your next L&D session to get the conversation started.
Establish leadership development opportunities
63 percent of millennials believe that they are not being developed as leaders by their employers. For organizations to succeed long-term, HR departments should focus on helping employees develop crucial leadership skills needed for management-type positions.
Keep your workers engaged and motivated by exposing them to leadership-style learning programs that can enhance their career development. As a bonus: you will see your workers emerge as leaders in their current positions.
Design a learning program for remote workers
Driven by the pandemic, remote work is becoming the norm for most businesses. The result: traditional learning sessions will have to change to accommodate virtual workers. The key is to find a suitable platform that enhances virtual learning and makes online communication seem like a personal experience. Scoot’s virtual meeting platform allows learners to move, mingle, and have smaller, organic conversations, just like real life. For companies looking to build culture and increase team cohesion, Scoot can help.
Take into consideration attention span
Anyone who has worked remotely has experienced the dreaded “Zoom fatigue” syndrome – a feeling of mental exhaustion following video conference calls. It turns out, prolonged online sessions can be detrimental to your employee’s productivity rate and health. Attention spans drop, engagement is non-existent, and employers are left wondering how they can re-energize their workforce.
To re-engage your employees, we recommend micro-learning sessions. These are short-style learning sessions that require no more than 30 minutes each day. Short videos, articles, and brief meetings are all forms of micro-learning.
Monitor employee progress
Tracking your employees as they go through their programs is the best way to identify what’s working and what isn’t. Do your workers have trouble comprehending the material or the interactive sessions? How well are they engaging with the content? By monitoring their performances, you can identify areas that need improvement.
More importantly, you can use the information gained to develop more effective employee engagement initiatives.
Engage Learners with Scoot
By increasing employee engagement in learning and development programs can re-energize your employees, align them to your company’s vision, and teach them on-the-job skills that will enhance their careers. Once you have a clear understanding of your company’s long-term initiatives, then it is time to set your employees up for success.
Get started on increasing employee engagement in learning and development, and enriching workplace culture with Scoot’s virtual meeting and event platform. The tool was designed to make online collaboration and meeting more interactive and engaging and to replicate the atmosphere of a real-life mixer.
Contact us for more information!
