Per Deloitte research conducted by learning and development (L&D) experts, the real problem with L&D is that it isn’t marketed or promoted well enough across most organizations. In fact, 65% of L&D professionals reported that their prospective learners aren’t even aware of the learning opportunities available at their organizations.
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To ensure that all employees across your organization are aware of the L&D programs you offer, do one or more of the following this year.
Get Early Adopters for Your Programs
If you have a brand-new program you’re trying to promote, or a program that hasn’t received much traction yet, recruit a group of learners to try it out first. Get them to experience it firsthand and provide you with feedback so that you know what to emphasize when you promote it in your campaigns and promotional paraphernalia to other prospective learners.
And then encourage your early adopters to spread the word about your program and what they like about it to others. Employees are more likely to believe other employees about whether a program you’re offering is worth the time and effort—much more so than your promotional campaigns and efforts.
Make Learning More Convenient
The truth is that your learners don’t have a lot of time to learn and won’t care about your programs unless you make it easy and convenient for them to learn. According to a recent LinkedIn® survey, the number one challenge for L&D professionals is getting employees to make time for learning.
So, if you want your L&D programs to become more popular among your learners, make sure they’re accessible via mobile devices and that your programs are very convenient to access and participate in overall.
Let Employees Take Learning for a Test Drive
If you have implemented a new program, let your prospective learners take it for a test drive before they’re required to commit to the entire program. For instance, if you just released a new virtual reality training for your operations department, let learners try out the headset and learning experience first before you make them sign up for multiple training sessions and the entire training program.
Incentivize and Gamify Your Programs
Incentivizing and gamifying your programs will make them more fun and addictive for your learners and will entice learners to sign up for them and tell others about them. If your learners earn badges, paid time off, gift cards, trophies, etc., they will look forward to setting aside time for your programs and will certainly tell their coworkers about the programs, too.
Solicit and Incorporate Learner Feedback
To keep your programs popular and enticing to learners, you must request and listen to your learners’ feedback regarding what’s working and what’s not, as well as what they genuinely think about your programs. For instance, if your program isn’t easy to access, takes too long to complete, or is boring or irrelevant, it won’t ever gain popularity with your learners, regardless of how much you promote it.
Make sure that your learners know about all your organization’s L&D programs this year by keeping the tips above in mind.