CultusTechnology is barreling forward, especially when it comes to learning platforms. They’re becoming more cutting edge, more dynamic, and more collaborative. This is great for businesses. It’s also great for team managers. But often employees are resistant to new learning platforms.
Maybe it’s the frustration with constant change, or maybe corporate learning feels condescending to a seasoned employee. Whatever the case, often the tricky part of LMS is engaging employees in order to get the maximum benefit from the new learning platform. If your employees aren’t engaged, the strongest learning platforms won’t help.
So here’s how to engage employees and achieve success with your learning platforms.
Define clear goals
If you don’t know what your LMS goals are, your employees certainly won’t. You have to set a clear goal and a strategy and make sure it’s clearly communicated at all parts of the process. This will both help team leaders keep their focus and will help employees to feel more engaged and passionate about the task.
In defining your goals and strategy, you should also keep in mind the team that will be affected by the new LMS. Is this a group of employees that have been through a few systems at this point, or are they largely new employees? Is it a large or small team? How much time can they take to adjust to this new learning platform? If you’re unsure, the best way to find out is asking. This sets an example of good communication from the start, which is the next point.
Communicate
There’s nothing that frustrates a process more than a lack of communication from the top. It can be easy to be hopeful when starting a new LMS procedure but don’t give employees false expectations or tell them that the adjustment will be effortless if that’s not likely to be the case. Communicate honestly and regularly so that they know what to expect and what’s expected of them. And talking is only half of communication. You also need to listen to your team about their concerns and the parts of the new platform where they’re weaker or less certain. You can easily do this by heeding the next point.
Choose a user-friendly, collaborative platform
After all, this is a new experience. The more user-friendly the learning platform is, the easier it will be for your team to adjust. The more collaborative the platform is, the better your team will be able to communicate with each other. Look for learning platforms that offer strong data visualization, real-time project tracking, and alert you when a member of the team is having trouble with a particular task. There are also learning platforms out there that ask for feedback from team members so they can answer themselves as to what works and doesn’t work for them. If employees feel that their feedback is valued and their work is valued, they’ll be much more engaged in the project and the LMS implementation.
Track progress
The appeal of modern learning platforms is that you’re able to track progress in real time, often with complex models and statistical functions. So if you’re concerned that your employees aren’t engaged enough, the results should tell you. Look at reports. How long does it take employees to complete a particular task? How often do they log in and how long do they spend logged in? What’s working, what isn’t? Here you can re-evaluate how to engage employees by playing on the strengths of the LMS strategy and seeing where you can improve otherwise.
Gamify it
If you have younger employees who struggle to engage with your LMS platform, one way to hold their interest is to make a game out of it. Millennial employees especially, those who grew up on computers, are much more likely to respond to an LMS strategy when there are games. Games also call for more active engagement — it won’t work without it. Choose a platform that rewards achievement and includes gamification features, so they’re not just clicking through a slideshow or a lecture. It will likely even make them better able to retain the information.
Make it accessible
Do employees have to be logged into a 10-year-old office desktop to engage with your learning platform or is it accessible to other devices? Employees will have a much easier time engaging with online or cloud-based learning platforms that they can access remotely than local platforms.
At the end of the day, this might be the best choice for the organization as a whole, but you need everyone to be on board in order for it to work. Failing to take time to properly engage employees will only lead to low morale and discouragement. Understanding your employees and what works for them and using that to engage them with the new learning platform will be much more successful.
Author: Christine is an assistant for Practera and enjoys fine dining during her spare time among other things.