Employee engagement is essential for the overall development of an organization. Given the times we live in, digital learning has become more relevant than before in driving employee learning and engagement.

The Pandemic has taught every organization to be more agile and adaptive in its approach to training. As work from home or remote working has become a new normal for many employees, digital learning has taken center stage when it comes to training implementations.  Employee engagement continues to be a priority for organizations as they continue to reinvent themselves for post-pandemic times as well.

In this blog, I will explore digital learning methods that can be used to drive employee engagement.

ELearning

eLearning can support the learning needs of existing and new workforce and drive employee engagement in different and interesting ways. Organizations can provide personalized learning with the help of eLearning. They can develop courses that match learning goals with individual competencies, skills, and business priorities. With eLearning, employees will have the flexibility to learn at their own pace and time. Organizations can develop engaging eLearning content with the help of videos, interactive games, animations, webinars, podcasts, etc. It enables the L&D professionals to capture the attention of employees in new and exciting ways.

With eLearning, employees will have 24/7 access to training materials. L&D professionals and SMEs can add new content or revise materials when business needs or trends change. Employees can also contribute to the development of content based on their experiences and challenges. All this will ultimately result in continuous learning for the employees and empower the workforce for the organization.

Virtual Classes

A virtual class is an online teaching and learning environment where instructors and employees can present course materials and interact with each other. Participants can work in groups and participate in learning activities. Virtual classes provide live interaction between instructors and participants, encourage group learning, and engage in online forums within the organization for enhanced collaboration and for building relationships between employees.

Also, optimizing the virtual classes to access through mobile devices like smartphones and tablets offer more flexibility to the learners. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to get your employees to participate in virtual classes when they don’t know what they will get out of the training. Therefore, it is better to communicate the specific benefits of the virtual training session, in everyday tasks and future activities, making virtual classes a good option for driving employee engagement.

Mobile Learning

Most of the traditional eLearning strategies can be well adapted for mobile learning. However, you can see some added advantages to the mobile learning approach. Mobile devices are well suited to offer short chunks or segments of training content, a popular learning method that can increase employee engagement. Mobile learning supports self-paced learning. It allows employees to learn at their own individual pace. Another advantage of mobile learning is that it can be molded to suit different learning styles of employees.

By using gamification elements, such as badges, leaderboards, points, rewards, etc., you can make mobile learning more fun and engaging for your employees. You can motivate your employees by rewarding those who watch a full video, complete a quiz, listen to a podcast, or take an online course on their mobile devices. This will encourage the employees to continue participating in mobile learning, which will ultimately drive employee engagement.

Microlearning

Mobile devices like smartphones and tablets are suited to provide bite-sized learning content or short segments of training content that can increase employee engagement.

Microlearning can hold an employee’s attention more effectively and, they can apply the learning on their job right away. For example, sales teams can spend a few minutes to refer a short learning nugget on sales techniques, sales pitch, new product or conflict resolution before they meet a customer. When they meet the customer, they have better clarity and increased confidence. This ultimately results in increased employee engagement.

Employee Engagement During A Crisis

In the present crisis time, many employees are working remotely from different geographical locations. In such times, driving employee engagement becomes a challenge for organizations. You can drive employee engagement during a crisis by maintaining regular communication with employees, motivating them to perform better, recognizing their efforts, conducting fun activities online at the end of the week, etc.

Leaders need to build a well-rounded communication strategy to drive employee engagement. This strategy must include newer methods of communicating and engaging with employees, along with traditional methods, like emails and phone calls. You can also consider knowledge sharing activities, online real-time surveys, virtual team building activities, entertainment activities, virtual quizzes, etc.