Surprise! Your Workers Want to Learn

by Glen Vondrick

October 11, 2016

No eLearning program is fully immune to the occasional grumbling that occurs when busy employees are pulled away from their work. It’s not that workers don’t want to learn. It’s just that more and more learning is happening out of the office and on their own time.

According to recent research from educational tech company Degreed, while workers spend an average of 37 minutes learning through employer-sponsored training and resources every week, they spend 3.3 hours learning on their own through articles, blogs, videos, books, apps, networks, online courses, podcasts and more. Last year, 75% of workers even invested their own money into individually led learning—to the tune of $339 each. And when does this learning occur? According to the same research, about 67% happens off the clock.

These are phenomenal stats that suggest engagement should be extended beyond corporate-led L&D. A big part of this is recognizing that the pathway to learning now often starts with social and search. The level of guidance and support workers can find on such sites is nothing short of phenomenal. The motivation workers have in going there to learn is matched only by the motivation of those who go there to teach. Organizations that can come up with the social learning strategies that help support, track and reward the informal learning taking place beyond their learning platforms will emerge with a critical competitive advantage: fully engaged employees continuously applying newly developed skills to support their careers at the company and the growth of the business at large in today’s knowledge-based economy.

So what can you do to better support your worker’s natural desire to learn?

• Video: Break webinars, tutorials, and other video content into smaller trackable segments

• Microlearning: organize these (along with other content) into small, easily searchable topic snippets

• Multi-sourcing: link educational content to other formats (PDF, website, technical review sites like GitHub) for deeper learning

• Gamification: Foster competition through badges and leaderboards

• Dynamic content: Make content more dynamic using such tools as Captivate

• Mobile: Provide persistent, anywhere, anytime access to eLearning

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