It’s the most wonderful time of the year! You know: time to get cozy in front of the fire, put on your fuzziest socks, and sit down with a cup of hot cocoa and your favorite holiday specials.

We here at Litmos love a heartwarming holiday tale as much as we love the joy of workplace learning, so we’ve combined the two for some very special holiday specials. So sit back, relax, and break into that box of candy canes while we share our favorite holiday learning specials.

It’s a Wonderful Learning Life: George is discouraged. He’s the head of learning at his company and it seems like the C-suite never listens to him or supports his learning strategies – while more than 60% of learning leaders do feel heard at work, close to 40%, like George, feel their company treats learning like a “nice to have,” rather than a “must have” according to LinkedIn. Fed up with this attitude just before the holidays, George attempts to quit, yelling “I wish I never took this job!” Suddenly, his guardian angel Clarence appears and shows George what would have happened if he’d never implemented any of his learning plans. In this alternate timeline, the company is in disarray: new sales reps who weren’t onboarded don’t meet their sales targets on time, customer service reps without soft skills training snap at clients on the phone, and even the executives are panicking — because they have no mentorship programs, there’s no internal talent to take over for them when they retire. George realizes how he’s changed the lives of everyone at his organization and begs Clarence for his old life back where he realizes how much everyone relies on his work.

Rudolph the Reluctant Learner: Poor Rudolph. He has a hard time participating in learning. He doesn’t feel comfortable with the other learners, new technology worries him and he’s always at the bottom of the leaderboard when it comes time for reindeer gamification. How can he be engaged in learning when every module seems to be a chore for him? Fortunately, Santa sees that Rudolph has special skills that need to be nurtured, so he adopts a coaching approach to training that engages Rudolph, makes his talents shine brighter, and even saves the holiday season!

The Year Without Good People Skills: The North Pole is panicking. Santa has decided to take a vacation instead of delivering presents and two untrained elves have to take over his duties. To make matters worse, they end up in the middle of a battle between two brothers — one who controls the world’s warm weather and one who controls the world’s cold weather. Can Mrs. Claus save the day by showing them all that soft skills — like communication, compassion (cough, cough, Miser brothers), and grit and timeliness (looking at you, Santa) — are critical?

Frosty the Mobile Snowman: Frosty the Snowman has been brought to life by a magical hat – but he has get to the North Pole so he can stay cold for the entire year and not melt. With all the traveling Frosty has to do to visit his friends in town every year and to get back to colder climes, it’s important that he can learn on the go. That way, he doesn’t have to sit at an overheated desktop or laptop (bad for Frosty and bad for the computer) to learn more about the powers of his magic top hat. He can learn while going bumpity bump bump through town.

An eLearning Carol: Can Rob Crachitt get his supervisor to believe in the power of online learning? “BAH HUMBUG. The old ways are the best ways! It’s not real learning if you’re not sitting in a classroom with a live instructor in there, so mask up and go sit in that three-hour training! And get all your other work done before you go home, Cratchitt!” Fortunately, a visit from three ghosts —  the Spirits of eLearning Past (dialup), Present (COVID safety), and Future (virtual reality) — are able to turn Scrooge around and get him to accept the magic of online learning.

A Miracle on Your Own Street: Doris has been working remotely for two years, which works well for her since she’s a single parent to a small child. She’s used to live, instructor-led training — there was a time when she used to fly out to conferences all the time. But recently, a kindly old man, Mr. Kringle has been hired as the new Chief Learning Officer. At first Doris isn’t too sure about him —  it might be that he exclusively eats candy canes and actually says “ho ho ho” when he laughs. So she doesn’t believe him when he insists that online learning isn’t just a replacement for learning, but the real thing. With the help of Mr. Kringle and her young child, Doris discovers the magic of online learning during the holidays.

The Grinch Who Stole ILT: Live Instructor Led Training (ILT) is one of the most popular learning modalities — more than half of learners prefer ILT according to Training Industry’s Learner Preferences Report —  but an evil creature who lives on a mountaintop near a convention center can’t stand in person training — all the coffee, all the courses, all the networking. One holiday season, he dresses up as an instructor and steals all the swag bags, projectors, and yes, even the coffee cups, from the convention center so that no one can ever do ILT there again. But he doesn’t count on the ingenuity of the learners, who brew their own coffee at home and sit down at their own computers to learn from instructors. Touched by the magic of VILT (Virtual Instructor Led Training), his heart grows three sizes and he returns all the swag to the convention center so companies have a choice between live and virtual training from now on.

The Nutcracker Suite of Learning Tools: Clara is new to her company and doesn’t know what to expect from the training, which is supposed to happen just after the company’s holiday luncheon. She’s surprised when she returns from lunch to find a nutcracker at her desk. When she sits down the Nutcracker becomes a magical mentor, who guides her through onboarding, showing her a fantastic world where many learning modalities dance in harmony so that Clara and her new co-workers can learn in whatever way works best for the content. While ILT is popular with learners, Clara finds that other modalities, like on the job training and online learning sometimes work best for learning certain content — she finds she prefers online learning for compliance training, for example.

And lastly, because we’re all in the holiday spirit, I leave you with a poem:

The Night Before the Week Off for the Holidays: 

‘Twas the night before vacation and all though the team
We finished our work to flee from our screens.
The projects were tied up  and closed down with care
In hopes they wouldn’t be there next year.
And in L&D there arose such a clatter
We peeked at our Slack to see what was the matter.
“The learners we find haven’t finished their training!”
“They don’t like the modules; they’re always complaining!”
“We work on the content, we write and debate it”
“By the time the team takes it, the content’s outdated!”
Just then there appeared a jolly old elf
Who smiled and produced content right off the shelf.
Ready-made, informational, up to date  — it’s amazing.
Even better, these modules were truly engaging.
We heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight
“Happy learning to all, and to all a good night.”