Breaking the Limits to Maximize Results

For businesses large and small, eLearning for employees has become a popular choice. eLearning courses help ensure ongoing professional training happens on time. They also offer employees the opportunity to improve their skills and move up in the ranks. However, conventional eLearning courses have their limits. An organization that sees the benefits of employees’ continued education can break these limits by providing additional resources that make it possible for motivated learners to increase their knowledge.

Employees’ Learning Interests

Understand that many employees are already going beyond provided courses to improve themselves. Often, mobile devices are the medium of choice, allowing learners to find information on a broader range of topics than what is available within a specific eLearning course.

Based on this, it is important for business decision-makers to know how, where, and why employees are developing themselves.

-What are they learning?

-Where are they finding the information?

-How can this information be made readily available to employees?

-Could it be feasibly included with a course?

Recognize Trends

After asking employees about their self-led learning and discovery efforts, it is likely that certain trends will appear. These trends can be tied in with the organization’s fabric as a whole.

For example, one trend might be improving on customer service and retention. Another might be how emerging technology can be utilized within the organization. Building on these trends by including them in course content or in new mobile learning initiatives can yield significant results.

Curated Content – Make it Better

The goal here is to help employees do what they are already doing, but better. One way of achieving this is to utilize curated content similar to what employees are finding on their own. Not only does this make it simpler and easier for the employee, it can also help to add context. Combine things like videos, articles, short stories, and other existing material into contextually relevant link sheets or supplemental material and make it available to learners.

The content must be prepared, labeled, and curated correctly and efficiently. Will it inform? Will it inspire? Will it instruct? Each of these is different and requires a unique approach to ensure that the material is user friendly. By categorizing content, employees can easily access the content relevant to their needs.

Categories of content provided for employees might include:

Informational content – material for learning
Inspiring content – new or different ways of achieving a goal
Instructional content – how to do something unfamiliar or new

Find In-House Leaders and Let Them Share

Few things can inspire learning and development the way that personal success stories can. This is one of the simplest ways to break out of the boundaries set by courses.

Put successful employees in front of a video camera and have them tell their story. The concept here: eLearning for employees created by employees. Let them share in their own voice their challenges, the reasoning behind their action, and how it was achieved. This content can then be easily added to a mobile learning initiative, which would provide additional value and information for other learners.

By breaking out of the artificial limits imposed by courses, it is possible to help employees do what they are already attempting to do on their own – better themselves. Learn what employees are doing in order to improve the process, provide easily accessible resources, and allow successful employees to become a powerful resource for the organization.

Beyond eLearning for Employees