Learning engagement is a measure of how actively a learner interacts and reacts to the learning process. Doesn’t sound so complicated, right? Well, it is, and your L&D team will back us when we say it can be extremely challenging to facilitate learning engagement among employees.
Learning engagement is a multi-faceted concept that goes way beyond just knowledge transference, especially when it comes to corporate learning. The primary focus of learning in an organization is application. This makes learning engagement even more critical to measure and vital to facilitate. In this blog, we will discuss the various dimensions of learning engagement, how it impacts your organization, and what you can do to improve learning engagement among your employees.
Dimensions Of Learning Engagement
Learning engagement is like a car; it requires all 4 wheels to work in cohesion to move forward. Similarly, learning engagement requires a learner to be stimulated on all four fronts mentioned below.
Cognitive
Most of us have our own strategies to remember content that is complex or new. Some people make mind maps, others may employ mnemonics, but the end goal remains the same – retention. If a learner is making efforts to learn the course material through any activity that represents an interest in absorbing the information, the learner is cognitively engaged.
To ensure cognitive engagement in your learners, you must implement a robust course design, and keep the training content consistent and rich. It is imperative that the course content adds value to your employees’ work or life.
Emotional
Emotional engagement among employees mostly revolves around relevancy. A learner is more likely to be emotionally engaged when feeling committed to the learning process. For example, when learning about something that addresses their pain points, or a new area of interest. If learners are made to take irrelevant training courses, they can feel isolated, disengaged, and detached.
To ensure your learners are emotionally engaged, you must design a customized course structure for employees in each role. It is also essential to brief them about the benefits of taking up the particular course/training program beforehand to establish context.
Behavioral
Behavioral engagement is the most shallow dimension of learning engagement, making it vital to simultaneously track emotional and cognitive engagement. If a learner is quick to respond during the learning process, you may consider them behaviorally engaged. However, it is essential to track if they are able to retain or apply the knowledge acquired to ensure they are not superficially engaged. Upon careful observation, you will be able to determine the difference between actual learners and the ones that are simply present to tick a box.
Social
Social engagement is a relatively new addition to the dimensions of learning engagement but is equally important as the other three. It marks the interaction among learners and helps build a sense of community. By bringing their personal experiences into the picture, the learners are able to better associate themselves with the course and build a platform that connects them to other learners with similar experiences. If a learner is active on social forums, participates in group discussions, and is enthusiastic about sharing new ideas or suggestions based on the course/training program, they are socially engaged.
To ensure social engagement among your learners, it is essential to give them a supportive platform and encourage them to share their experiences, thoughts, and feedback. For example, implementing an LMS with social features like forums wherein learners can discuss course materials, training programs, etc.
Impact of Learning Engagement
As per the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), organizations with engaged learners generated 218% higher income per employee and overall had an increase of 24% in their profit margin. Moreover, high-performance learning culture or HPLC organizations are 10 times more likely to build a sustainable business impact in terms of profitability, productivity, and growth.
Owing to such a favorable impact, business leaders are now recognizing the power of a strong L&D strategy. So much so that there is a 159% increase in CEOs expecting L&D to solve major business challenges. But, will the L&D teams be able to develop a high-performance culture to support these expectations? Yes! However, only the ones with engaged learners, and that will be a tough challenge. As per reports, only one in five organizations is able to build an HPLC.
Well, you have nothing to worry about as we have got you covered. Here are some key strategies that can help you improve learning engagement in your company.
Strategies To Improve Learning Engagement
Find Engagement Gaps
Achieving learning engagement takes a lot more than gamification. To facilitate long-term learner engagement, it is essential to continuously improve your L&D strategy, course content, and content delivery. Begin by understanding the engagement gaps in your organization through surveys and analyzing learner metrics. Understand how engaging the learning activities in your training programs are and based on the learner feedback, work on improving the learning experience.
Making Learning Convenient
Convenience is a primary contributor to learning engagement. To ensure your learners are properly engaged, you must focus on facilitating engaged learning strategies and making them readily available to your employees. For example, implementing an LMS with a user-friendly interface that also has mobile learning and content creation options.
Developing Rich Content
Course content is what offers the most value to your learners in their learning journey. You must offer your employees engaging learning activities and training programs built with quality content that the learners are able to resonate with. The content must be easy to grasp, backed by relatable simulations or on-the-job training aspects, and value-based.
Rewarding
Everybody loves rewards. No matter how small, incentives always work. So, why not employ this strategy to boost learning engagement? Besides an acknowledgment, you can offer your learners certifications, letters of recommendation for promotions, paid time-off, performance bonuses, or gift vouchers to increase their interest in learning.
Proactiveness & Personalization
In today’s hyper-personalized world, learning needs to be personalized as well. Even minor branding changes can make the learners feel valued. However, it’s not just branding changes you’ll need to improve learner engagement in your organization. For that, you can build custom training paths, share personalized course suggestions based on their interests, or tailor their learning experience as per their needs.
Supporting Free-Flow Of Communication
A feedback-based learning model is the only way an organization can attain an HPLC, and create a feedback loop, you need free-flowing communication. You can facilitate an open communication model by offering your employees supporting platforms like group discussions, guided peer learning programs, social forums, and more.
If you are struggling with maintaining learning engagement or would like to tap into the benefits it offers, we have just the right learning platform for you. Auzmor Learn is an award-winning, intuitive, super user-friendly, and customizable LMS that can perfectly cater to your unique requirements. Book a FREE demo today to know more!
