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How to Use Online Learning to Grow Employee Engagement

By: LearnDash Collaborator • June 1, 2023
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Building employee engagement should be a top priority for any company. Losing highly-qualified folks can be a huge hit and takes time to recover from. To prevent this, building employee engagement from the start may help prevent the loss of top-tier talent.

One easy way you can start growing employee engagement is by using an online learning program. Continuous, lifelong learning is a passion for many, and an inability to grow and learn in a position can be why employees jump ship.

Building an online learning program involves understanding employees’ needs, offering diverse learning options, and personalizing the learning experience. Below, let’s explore some benefits of creating an online learning course before exploring how this solution could be implemented easily into your workforce.

Benefits of using online learning for employee engagement

  • Accessibility. Ease of access to online courses eliminates the barrier of attending in-person classes. Now, employees can take online training and watch seminars from home, on breaks, or wherever. Combined with mobile training, online courses have the potential for company-wide acceptance due to ease of access.
  • Flexibility. Provide options for interactive e-learning modules, webinars, virtual workshops, podcasts, or discussion forums. Offering diverse options ensures employees can engage with the content in ways that resonate with them.
  • Personalization. Increase engagement by using an online learning platform that allows for a personalized learning path. Learning paths should be tailored to individual employee goals and career aspirations. By allowing employees to choose their learning journey at their own pace, you empower them to take ownership of their development, leading to higher engagement.
  • Gamification. Introduce leaderboards, badges, or rewards for completing modules or achieving learning milestones to boost engagement. Gamification achievements can also help facilitate acknowledgment and celebration of employees’ achievements. Celebrating progress boosts morale and motivates further learning.
  • Continuous learning. Make sure your courses are not one-time only. Ongoing courses can provide growth opportunities, stimulate the intellect, promote self-motivation, and improve performance and innovation. When employees feel their organization invests in their development, they may feel motivated to contribute their best.

How to promote engagement in online learning

  1. Talk with employees about what learning opportunities they would find valuable. Having this conversation is also a way to learn more about your team’s self-perceived strengths and weaknesses. For example, an employee who is keen to take leadership courses may help you discover a person who is ready to move into a management role.
  2. Make time for your employees to pursue online courses. Consider offering a certain number of paid hours for ongoing education quarterly. Let employees decide when to use those hours to build learning paths that fit their schedules.
  3. Create support materials to improve employee training. Think of your onboarding training in stages, with new employees receiving the next stage in their training after they’ve had a few months to master the basics. Offering these courses through an online platform means they’re also available for employees to review at any time.
  4. Encourage employees to create and share their own courses. Many employees will jump at the chance to share their own training or expertise. especially if their audience is eager to learn what they have to offer. Designing a course has its own professional development benefits by allowing the employee to review their knowledge and think about how best to present it.

Boost Engagement with LearnDash

Giving employees the support to improve their skillset through online courses is a relatively low-cost investment with the potential for huge returns. If you show your employees that you believe in their excellence and ongoing development, few of them will choose to take their skills elsewhere.

If you’re ready to build an online learning course for your employees,  LearnDash is a WordPress LMS solution that provides a variety of features to support employee training. Enhance your courses by adding in challenge quizzes, forums, mini-lessons, badges, and more with our easy-to-use backend. Features like Learning Paths and Groups can customize course schedules and create cohorts who can train together. Plus, building on WordPress means you own 100% of the content you create.

You can try LearnDash for free today and take the first step towards implementing a learning solution for employee training.

LearnDash Collaborator

A LearnDash specialist wrote this article to help guide new and current LearnDash members.