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What is the secret ingredient to an effective L&D strategy?
You’ve probably already guessed from the title of this blog: Community. Fostering a sense of belonging, community and collaboration amongst your employees leads to success for so many reasons.
In this blog, we’ll explore what those reasons are, as well as tips on how to use your learning platform to achieve them.
Fostering community encourages that coveted practice of “knowledge sharing.” This is when your employees freely share knowledge with one another, without being prompted to do so and without outside input. It’s something that L&D professionals are constantly striving for, and can really only be achieved once this sense of community has been established.
Why is this?
To understand, let’s first define what we mean by the word “community” in this context. When we talk about community, we’re referring to feelings of belonging, support, collaboration and connection. These feelings lead to employees experiencing total comfort with one another, and in the space this comfort creates, ideas and expertise can be freely shared.
There are a few reasons why this is a great thing to encourage, which we’ll delve into later in our “user generated content” section. But we’ll leave you with this one for now: Don’t you want a diverse range of perspectives and insights coming from multiple angles within the business, rather than just from the top down? Knowledge sharing amongst employees is the secret to achieving just that.
It’s a proven fact that when employees feel connected as part of a community, they are more engaged.
A previous LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report found that learners who used social features spent 30x more hours learning than those who didn’t – a pretty compelling argument for the effectiveness of community in L&D.
How often have you repeated exactly the same training to each new starter, running through the script on auto-pilot as your brain goes off on a tangent to decide what laundry needs doing when you get home?
A sense of community negates this need; by promoting knowledge-sharing amongst employees, you create a “collective memory” of sorts, a repository of shared knowledge that can be retained within your organisation even as people move on. (Plus it prevents you from re-enacting a corporate version of Groundhog Day wherein you have to repeat the same sentences over and over again…)
So if community is the secret ingredient to an effective workplace learning strategy, what is the recipe that helps you achieve that?
A learning platform with a variety of features is a great way to encourage that sense of community amongst your people, but with such an overwhelming amount of features and providers to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start.
Here are a few features and techniques we’ve identified to promote a sense of belonging using your company’s LMS.
User generated content is exactly what it sounds like: Learning content generated by the end user (your employees) as opposed to the learning administrator. Some L&D professionals have reservations about using this tool, wary of their employees inadvertently sharing information that isn’t accurate or useful.
We understand the hesitation, but we offer these counterpoints:
On top of user generated content mentioned above, another community-based LMS feature is social learning. In this context, we’re referring to features that are reminiscent of social media to make the experience of using your learning platform feel natural and effortless – as well serving as an easy way to connect with colleagues.
So what does this look like on a practical level?
There’s nothing like a live event to make people feel truly connected.
To see this action, look no further than Thrive customer Princes Foods. One of their main objectives when launching the platform was to encourage better communication and collaboration between every single employee, in order to make sure that everyone felt truly a part of the brand.
Using Thrive’s Broadcast feature, Princes holds a bi-weekly event called Food for Thought. During this company-wide event, people from all over the business are brought together virtually to discuss the various projects, initiatives and ideas that are helping to keep Princes at the forefront of their industry. This knowledge is shared with absolutely everyone in the company – so no matter their department, people feel connected to every facet of the operation.
Your organisation can mimic this same sense of connection by holding regular broadcasts and events – whether it’s news from the CEO or product updates!
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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What is the secret ingredient to an effective L&D strategy?
You’ve probably already guessed from the title of this blog: Community. Fostering a sense of belonging, community and collaboration amongst your employees leads to success for so many reasons.
In this blog, we’ll explore what those reasons are, as well as tips on how to use your learning platform to achieve them.
Fostering community encourages that coveted practice of “knowledge sharing.” This is when your employees freely share knowledge with one another, without being prompted to do so and without outside input. It’s something that L&D professionals are constantly striving for, and can really only be achieved once this sense of community has been established.
Why is this?
To understand, let’s first define what we mean by the word “community” in this context. When we talk about community, we’re referring to feelings of belonging, support, collaboration and connection. These feelings lead to employees experiencing total comfort with one another, and in the space this comfort creates, ideas and expertise can be freely shared.
There are a few reasons why this is a great thing to encourage, which we’ll delve into later in our “user generated content” section. But we’ll leave you with this one for now: Don’t you want a diverse range of perspectives and insights coming from multiple angles within the business, rather than just from the top down? Knowledge sharing amongst employees is the secret to achieving just that.
It’s a proven fact that when employees feel connected as part of a community, they are more engaged.
A previous LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report found that learners who used social features spent 30x more hours learning than those who didn’t – a pretty compelling argument for the effectiveness of community in L&D.
How often have you repeated exactly the same training to each new starter, running through the script on auto-pilot as your brain goes off on a tangent to decide what laundry needs doing when you get home?
A sense of community negates this need; by promoting knowledge-sharing amongst employees, you create a “collective memory” of sorts, a repository of shared knowledge that can be retained within your organisation even as people move on. (Plus it prevents you from re-enacting a corporate version of Groundhog Day wherein you have to repeat the same sentences over and over again…)
So if community is the secret ingredient to an effective workplace learning strategy, what is the recipe that helps you achieve that?
A learning platform with a variety of features is a great way to encourage that sense of community amongst your people, but with such an overwhelming amount of features and providers to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start.
Here are a few features and techniques we’ve identified to promote a sense of belonging using your company’s LMS.
User generated content is exactly what it sounds like: Learning content generated by the end user (your employees) as opposed to the learning administrator. Some L&D professionals have reservations about using this tool, wary of their employees inadvertently sharing information that isn’t accurate or useful.
We understand the hesitation, but we offer these counterpoints:
On top of user generated content mentioned above, another community-based LMS feature is social learning. In this context, we’re referring to features that are reminiscent of social media to make the experience of using your learning platform feel natural and effortless – as well serving as an easy way to connect with colleagues.
So what does this look like on a practical level?
There’s nothing like a live event to make people feel truly connected.
To see this action, look no further than Thrive customer Princes Foods. One of their main objectives when launching the platform was to encourage better communication and collaboration between every single employee, in order to make sure that everyone felt truly a part of the brand.
Using Thrive’s Broadcast feature, Princes holds a bi-weekly event called Food for Thought. During this company-wide event, people from all over the business are brought together virtually to discuss the various projects, initiatives and ideas that are helping to keep Princes at the forefront of their industry. This knowledge is shared with absolutely everyone in the company – so no matter their department, people feel connected to every facet of the operation.
Your organisation can mimic this same sense of connection by holding regular broadcasts and events – whether it’s news from the CEO or product updates!
Explore what impact Thrive could make for your team and your learners today.
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