Five ways to generate employee engagement through an unlimited corporate learning culture

Learning new skills that are directly applicable to your job increases motivation, job satisfaction, efficiency, innovation, adaptability and overall makes for better and happier professionals. The importance of learning today is greater than ever.

In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, an alarming 54% of employees will require significant re- and up-skilling by 2022.

There is not only a need for technical skills; soft skills are becoming a critical asset. The cost to the global economy is expected to escalate due to numerous issues such as increased workload, higher operating costs, difficulties to meet quality standards, challenges in introducing new working standards and more.

So, what can really give your company a sustainable competitive advantage? The ability for employees to acquire any skills they want, when they want them, without content limitations. Allowing your employees to have on-demand, unlimited learning possibilities is potentially the most powerful weapon a company can have.

So, let’s suppose you are convinced by the power of an unlimited learning culture and you are willing to offer a learning platform that includes ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, videos, courses and more. Now comes the hard part. How do you ensure your employees are going to engage with it and use it?

Here are five effective ways to generate that desired engagement with an effective unlimited learning culture.

1. Build trust

Trust should be both a cause and effect of the company’s culture. The trust we have in each member of our team is a way to show how we operate, and the way we operate should encourage trust. It is by building trust that organisations can create high performing teams, avoid bureaucracy and excessive oversight, that can inhibit innovation and slow down the processes.

Build trust by:

• Promoting accountability: give back to your workforce by facilitating training and development activities, and offering learning content that you know they will use and appreciate.
• Giving purpose: helping teams understand why having an unlimited learning culture is going to help them as individuals and the company as a whole will establish a strong relationship and make them feel their contributions are recognised and valued.
• Welcoming participation: seeking out others’ ideas and opinions and raising awareness of a team member’s contribution.

2. Encourage flexibility

Having a flexible learning and development policy always works best. It’s not about telling your employee that he or she has to read 500 pages by the end of the week…it’s about offering them a wide range of cool titles that you know will be interesting and useful for their development and giving them flexible hours to learn and share their learnings with the rest of the team.

And the experience in itself should be ultra-inclusive, easy to use, mobile friendly, offline and online – in short, to reduce any barriers to learning.

3. Promote collaborative learning

Encouraging independent and self-directed learning is very important, however, if you want to foster a strong spirit of interconnectedness across the organisation, a social element should also be included in your learning and training programmes.

Learning Clubs are, for example, a great tool to achieve this goal. People can come together from all parts of the organisation to focus on a common theme, exchange ideas on what they read, engage in role-playing and, hopefully, apply learnings to their company. Employees at all levels will be able to make meaningful contributions and further generate their sense of belongingness to their employer.

The most powerful learning cultures take Learning Clubs a step further and create “learning challenges” where active learners are celebrated. Learning is “gamified” and positive network effects then perpetuate across the organisation.

4. Personalise as much as possible

Having something that has been made exclusively for you is always more engaging but of course, HR departments do not have the time to customise benefits for every employee. Fortunately, the technology exists and having an unlimited learning platform is an effective way to make sure every employee has a clear learning path and a customised learning experience.

5. Ask for feedback

By asking your team for feedback, your employee engagement may increase. People managers are often the ones giving feedback to their employees and advocating typical workloads and working styles. However, asking employees about their benefits packages or encouraging them to present their own input on a certain proposal has proven to have impact – employees feel appreciated and play a key part in the company’s growth strategy.

Learning is now fun, engaging, ultra-inclusive, adaptive to modern lifestyles, and in-line with your company values.

This article is provided by Odilo.