Many professionals choose their job because of personal and professional development opportunities, but only a small percentage feel their organizations are making ample use of their talent. Industry-wide, organisations recognize the business value of their learning programme, but many still struggle to engage their learners’ sufficiently with their training.
Below, you will find some simple guidelines for building engaging content that empowers learners to grow and caters to the realities of the modern learner.
Here are three steps you can take right now:
Make it relevant:
Attention is a finite resource, and we only spend it on the things that really matter to us. For that reason, training needs to be highly relevant to your learners’ role(s) in order to attract their full attention.
For example, if I ask you how interested you are (1 -10 scale) in watching a 3-minute tutorial on how to build a sales funnel graphic in PowerPoint, you might say somewhere between one and zero. However, if you are one day away from a presentation to upper management on sales funnel activity, your answer might be very different. The point is, you are much more likely to pay attention to something that is immediately relevant to your current position.
Make it interesting:
Let’s face it – no-one wants to see a 200-slide PowerPoint presentation as part of their professional development training. Lengthy instructor-led sessions simply don’t cater to the demands of a multi-generational workforce and make it very difficult for learners to engage in a meaningful way.
94% of learners prefer micro-learning, the process of breaking training into bite-sized learning pieces that can be consumed as needed. This approach boosts engagement significantly and helps learners apply their training as needed on the job.
Make it dynamic:
Our brains are hard-wired to be curious – when we see something presented in a new and interesting way, we can’t help perking up and tuning in. Novelty is a fantastic way to trick a disengaged mind into paying attention.
For that reason, packaging your training in dynamic ways can lead to higher engagement rates. For example, you could gamify your compliance training and encourage your learners to compete against each other with a monthly scoreboard. You could add interactive elements to your eLearning to encourage active, not passive, learning. Dynamic training provides instant feedback and prompts behavioural change, both of which can impact the return on your training investment.
If you’d like to know more about how to engage your learners, get in touch with a member of our team below!