1. Cultivate a culture of learning

To transform your company into more of a learning environment, you should offer easy access to learning resources, set aside specific times for learning, and reward those who go out of their way to acquire knowledge. 

The culture of learning should start with leadership. It should be something that’s shared and social, and if at all possible, it should be something that’s fun. When you’ve got all of those aspects down, you should find it’s a lot easier to engage learners in your workplace.

2. Consider your workforce's learning needs

Employees learn differently, and they do so at different speeds. It’s important to understand the specific needs of your workforce in order to create a learning environment that is naturally engaging to them. 

You can do this with the help of surveys and suggestion boxes, or you can hold meetings dedicated to getting to know how best to help your workforce acquire and apply new information.  

3. Take advantage of modern learning technology

Technology allows not only for the creation of more engaging learning materials but also for greater access and convenience to those resources. 

That greater access means your staff will be able to set their own pace with their training. Offering such autonomy is crucial to inspiring engaged learners.

One way to do this is with a modern learning platform, like Continu.

Legacy learning systems make it clunky, difficult, and inconvenient for both admins and learners to create, share, and access learning materials.

But, Continu comes with features and solutions to increase learner engagement, such as:

• Powerful eLearning authoring tools
• Create entire training courses in one place
• Deliver learning materials to anyone, anywhere, at any time
• Track and measure employee training progress
• Provide assessments and quizzes to measure retention
• Plus, much more...

4. Provide ongoing feedback

If your staff isn’t being engaged by leadership during training, they’re unlikely to remain engaged with their learning in general. Offering them insight into their progress will allow them to recalibrate and learn better, and it will also let them know you’re invested in their success.

Giving helpful feedback is a great way to improve learning engagement.

5. Incentivize and reward learning

Let’s be honest — not everyone is going to become an enthusiastic learner without some kind of tangible reward to motivate them. Even some of your best employees might require this sort of incentive to engage in training. This shouldn’t be a problem; offering incentives is an easy and effective way to increase learning engagement. 

Some of the best ways to incentivize learning in the workplace are to set goals that offer specific rewards, keep score and post a leaderboard, and provide other perks to those who complete the training successfully.

6. Incorporate blended learning

One of the easiest ways to decrease learning engagement is to stick with a training program that’s boring or monotonous. Using a blended learning style can help keep things fresh and maintain engagement. 

Blended learning uses different forms of online media as well as in-person instruction in order to create a learning program that’s not only more interesting but also more accessible.

7. Practice instructional design

Instructional design is a discipline that’s applied to the creation of learning materials in order to make them as effective as possible. If you’re struggling to boost learning engagement in your workforce, and you haven’t retooled your learning materials in a long time, then instructional design may be the solution you’re looking for.

8. Use video coaching

Accessibility is crucial to learning engagement, and so is providing a stimulating learning experience. Video coaching can cover both of those bases at once. 

Providing your workforce with a series of training videos that they can access from anywhere they’ve got WiFi is a great way to allow them to learn at their own pace with material that’s engaging.

9. Evaluate your learning strategies and adjust

The best way to hone your learning experience into something that engages as many of your employees as possible is to constantly refine and retool your learning strategies. Collect and evaluate data wherever you can and use it as a means of quantifying the success of your training programs. 

Once you know where you’re succeeding, you’ll be able to see where you’re failing, too. From there, you can make your adjustments.

Benefits of increasing learner engagement

There are many different ways that inspiring learner engagement in your workforce can prove beneficial to you, your organization, and your employees themselves.

Here are a few core benefits to increasing learner engagement for your organization.

Improved employee performance

Engaged learners are far more likely to retain what they've learned and apply it effectively than learners who are not engaged. 

This means that if you’ve got a workplace full of engaged learners, they will more often meet or exceed the goals set out for them. Such a situation is obviously great for your organization, but it’s probably even better for your employees.

Increases engagement rates

Acquiring and applying new knowledge is an empowering process. It can instill a sense of confidence in your employees and make them realize what an important part of your company they are.

Such a realization can inspire a more engaged employee, and that leads to better learning engagement rates, greater productivity, lower turnover, and higher job satisfaction.

Creates a better workplace culture

Engagement is key to strong workplace culture. If you’ve got your workforce keyed in and motivated, then they’re much more likely to bring a greater sense of positivity, a higher level of dedication, and a healthy amount of competition to your organization. This all adds up to a better employee experience and a more successful organization.

Saves money on future training

Engaged learners use resources more effectively than those who require extra time and effort from your organization to acquire the knowledge they need.

Time and effort add up to money spent no matter how you slice it, and the process can become even more expensive if you need to replace a disengaged learner. That's why increasing learner engagement can reduce the cost of training.

Achieve higher engagement rates with Continu

Remember that no one method is perfect for all organizations, so you’re going to have to take a look at what your workforce’s specific learning needs are. Make note of what sort of resources you have at your disposal in order to determine which of these methods will improve learning engagement in your employees.

Paired with the right technology, these tips will help you transform your team members into engaged learners. So choose a learning platform that provides admins everything they need to boost employee learning engagement.

Continu is the perfect solution to breathe new life into your L&D strategy. We intentionally built all of these features into our platform, with the goal of making the ultimate learning platform for modern teams.

We understand the numerous benefits that come from social connections between engaged learners who feel supported and celebrated.