Training Industry Magazine - May/June 2018 - 57

WHAT'S NEXT IN TECH
ERIC SHARP

HOW TECHNOLOGY
CAN SUSTAIN YOUR
TRAINING EFFORTS

Thanks to the internet and technology,
people can learn anything they want,
anytime, almost anywhere. And they are.
In 2017, over 25 million hours were spent
learning on our platform. That's the
equivalent of 4,400 bachelor's degrees.
But because they are inundated with
information, employees need help
cutting through the noise. To get them
to engage, successful organizations
are doing more than making content
available. They are giving their
employees
personalization
and
relevance in their learning and training.
So how do you get learning that's
personalized and relevant? You make use
of things like curation, design thinking
and tools that use machine learning
(REAL machine learning, not systems
that just hype it!) that can take employee
interactions with the system and make
adjustments for each individual user.
Sustaining the momentum after launch
is tough, and you're not alone in the
struggle. Bersin by Deloitte reported
66 percent of enterprise L&D leaders
have trouble getting employees to
engage with their training programs.
Personalization and relevance increase
the likelihood of your employees finding
the right match of content at the right
time, resulting in higher engagement
with your training.
In addition to personalization, we
recommend business leaders make sure
the learning systems offer engagement
levers, like notifications and reminders.

And remember, if you have a choice to
enable these levers or not, enable!
Just think about your own personal
online habits. You might notice there are
certain things that drive you back to the
same websites and apps day after day.
In many cases, this repeated behavior
is encouraged by way of a reminder,
likely in the form of an email or pop-up.
These notifications provide a one-click
option to go back to sites you visit often.
Think of your fitness tracker: "You aren't
as far as you usually are" or "It's time to
stand up!" All of these calls to action are
driving you towards repeat behavior
and habit development. Specific and
relevant learning alerts spark the same
repeat behavior.
Here are two more reasons we think
you should empower employees with
notifications and reminders:
It's standard. They're doing it with other
tools already - Facebook, LinkedIn,
etc. Like other tools, it's easy to turn
off. Unsubscribing is easy for those
who don't want to get it all the time.
Switching to a social tool (like Slack) or
to your mobile device can also help.
It's personal. Personalize their learning
for them and notifications allow them
to do that. Empower your learners to
make the decision to be notified. It's one
thing to get a marketing email trying to
get you and one thousand other people
to buy something. It's another to get
personalized learning content, based
on the skills you're building, as a daily
reminder to learn.

Don't just take my word for it, though.
Based on pilot user feedback, Degreed
client Xilinx enabled daily reminders
for their team to encourage learning.
And it's working. Over 43 percent of
employees have visited the platform
over five times (repeat behavior) and
over 88 percent of their total employee
base has logged in (activation).

SUSTAINING TRAINING
REQUIRES A SHIFT IN
PARADIGM BY YOUR
L&D TEAM.
Sustaining your training efforts requires
a shift in paradigm by your L&D team
as well. A holistic approach is ideal
in this new world of learning. Rather
than focusing on just the assigned
training, step up a level to look at a
user's engagement across all training
and learning. As mentioned above,
engagement levers and the resulting
engagement should be the metric
used internally to judge the success of
training initiatives.
Move beyond the knee-jerk reactions
to pushing training to your employees.
Find ways to make sure training is part
of the learning system and brought
to employees at relevant times in the
process of their job. Your learners will
thank you and your engagement will
reflect the value of your efforts!
Eric Sharp is the co-founder and chief
technology officer at Degreed. Email Eric.

T R A I N I N G I N DUSTR Y MA GAZ INE - GIVING LEARNING A BOOST 20 18 I WWW. T RAININGINDU S T RY . C OM/ MAGAZ I NE

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