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.

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Why is community important in L&D?

Knowledge sharing

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.

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Engagement

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.

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Communal knowledge

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…)

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How to create a sense of community using your LMS

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.

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User generated content (UGC)

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:

• User generated content is proven to be effective. 92% of people are more likely to trust a recommendation from another person over branded / official content, 90% of consumers say authenticity is important, and 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions. We understand that these stats apply to advertising, but instilling this same marketing know-how into your L&D strategy will help your people retain the information you need them to. To borrow a quote from our previous blog Why your LMS should facilitate social learning: “People trust UGC more than official content. It’s more authentic and passionate, and it’s in a language the learner understands.”
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• User generated content saves time and resources. Much like our previous point on communal knowledge, UGC can help to alleviate some of the pressure felt by L&D to constantly be sharing knowledge and resources – and instead make use of the knowledge that exists within your employees’ heads. This then frees up L&D to focus on the bigger picture, rather than creating all content themselves.
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• You can use your LMS for quality-control. If you’re worried about Doug from Sales sharing a slideshow of dog pictures in the “Product Knowledge” channel, you needn’t relinquish 100% control. As a learning administrator, you can approve or reject content before it’s posted to the wider organisation (as long as your LMS is set up to facilitate this.) Doug can then just share his pictures in the group WhatsApp or on Instagram, where they’ll be better appreciated…

Social learning features

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?

• Reactions: “Like”, “Comment”, “Share”... sound familiar? A good LMS will have these reactions built in, so that your employees will instantly understand how to use the platform – and feel encouraged to do so. Once the dopamine-hit of receiving feedback and reactions is established, people will actively want to make use of the platform.
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• User Generated Content: Yes, we’re mentioning it again – it’s just that important. After all, without UGC, what is there for people to react to? Encourage knowledge-sharing at every level, and watch engagement levels soar.
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• Notifications: With an LMS that has Notifications built in, your learners will never miss an update. The presence of the tempting icon in the sidebar of the screen will encourage them to interact with their colleagues, ensuring that the sense of community is upheld by everyone.

Events and broadcasts

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!

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