With the unprecedented challenges brought on by COVID-19, organisations have either been forced to adjust, slow down, or adapt. One of the new adjustments embraced is the upskilling of staff through digital learning. The need to upskill became a key strategic imperative due to the advantages of time, cost savings, and, more importantly, knowledge standardisation and ease of application.
Despite the rise of digital learning, one challenge that persists is staff’s low acceptance and adoption, a cause for concern by learning and development professionals.
Digital Learning Adoption is the ability of organisations to significantly increase the utilisation of available digital learning resources by staff to address identified competency gaps. Essentially, it means adopting digital learning to the fullest extent. Adopting digital learning will ensure that organisations get the most out of the investment in acquiring these learning solutions.
A high digital learning adoption will result in the following:
Below are four insights on how to drive digital learning acceptance and adoption.
Announce Management Support
Whether you just commenced digital learning or it has been in existence in an organisation, there should be some form of an announcement that the initiative is fully supported by management. This can even receive a further boost if executive team members take courses to completion and have their completion certificate displayed to staff as evidence of their commitment and acceptance of the initiative.
Competency-Based Learning
Tailor your digital learning program to your company’s specific needs, bearing in mind time commitment, company goals and the skills staff need to develop. Staff will better develop a drive for learning when they see that their courses align with the competencies required to execute their respective tasks.
Assigning Courses In Bits
Since individual workload, learning, and attention span varies, it is also vital to ensure that courses assigned to staff are not overwhelming. Between one to three courses is recommended each month. Bit-sized learning will ensure that staff takes complete courses to gain knowledge and not to meet compliance expectations. It will also allow staff time to engage in additional learning courses for personal growth, increasing the learning adoption rate.
Celebrate Staff
Naturally, the act of celebrating changes our physiology and strengthens our psychology. If you fail to celebrate your many accomplishments, you train your brain that what you are doing isn’t that exciting and important. With this in mind, there is a need to celebrate staff who have performed exceptionally well on the digital learning program. A letter of recognition from a member of the executive management or an email announcing the staff performance can be just what is needed to spike the passion for learning.
Above all, the digital learning solution implemented must be easy to use, like, and navigate. The courses should also be engaging and interactive. An excellent digital learning solution with rich content will encourage a continuous learning environment.
At pcl., we deploy digital learning solutions, rich interactive digital learning courses and offer value engineering services to enable organisations to grow their learning culture from a push to a pull, thereby driving up adoption.
To find out more about our digital learning offerings, please get in touch with our Learning Consultants at digitallearning@phillipsconsulting.net
Written by:
Christian Edohor
Consultant
