How to ignite a passion for learning among your staff

Are you struggling to get your staff to engage with the learning experiences you’ve created for them? Do you feel you’re running out of ideas? Fear not, in this article we’re going to provide you with some simple, yet powerful, advice that can transform your employees’ relationship with learning. 

In today’s workforce, employees crave purposeful learning, to the point where it’s become a non-negotiable demand for many when looking for a new role. And the skilled, passionate and smart HR and learning teams that we work with love nothing more than to chart out these learning journeys. A win-win, right? Yet the reality differs starkly – only 11% of employees engage in non-mandatory learning. 

Why is this percentage so alarmingly low, especially when L&D holds the potential to rejuvenate organisations by boosting productivity and enhancing employee retention?

The bitter truth about corporate learning

Let’s be completely honest here – the majority of our current learning models are boring and tedious. At home, employees are engaging with perfectly crafted digital experiences in apps like Duolingo or Yousician to develop their passions. These apps captivate users with an array of techniques – motivational cues, progress tracking, gamified learning, personalized schedules, and rewarding achievements. The result? Learning that’s fun, addictive, and competitive.

Contrast that with what happens at work, where you may find yourself sifting through a 120-page SharePoint document with a mundane questionnaire awaiting you at the end. Unappealing, isn’t it?

Turning the tables on corporate learning

Here at Electric Circus, we believe learning can be as fun and engaging in work as it is at home. And here are two major strategies for improving the experience for your staff: 

• Understanding purposeful learning

The first is to understand what purposeful learning means to your teams. What are their goals, what are their dreams? What are your company’s goals and dreams? How do they align? What will this create and how can you show them?

Pro tip: Put together a simple career pathway so people can see how learning can help them grow

• Modernise the training approach

The second is to make the training look and feel more modern. Activate some of the simple techniques used by successful non-work apps and make sure the design is on brand. Another big thing to watch for: make sure it works on all devices – we still see platforms that don’t work on mobile devices.

Pro tip: Think about how you can take an important topic and make it into a game to embed it into your experience

Since the pandemic, online learning has become huge, but it’s created more learning content for us than we could ever know what to do with. It’s quite clear that simply throwing all this content at our teams is overwhelming rather than helpful. 

So maybe it’s time we started to rethink the way we approach and tailor experiences that excite and thrill them.

If you would like a one-page pdf audit on the learning industry with some bite-size tips then email [email protected] to get your copy.