According to Pew Research, 87% of employees believe that training and learning new skills at work will be essential or important to their future career success. And even though 93% of workers claim that they prefer to learn while they’re on the job, the average worker is still only able to set aside around 1% or less of his or her time each workweek to learn.
Additionally, even though they don’t have much time to learn while at work, most employees also want their learning experiences to be timely and occur exactly when they need them to, tailored and personalized for them, of high quality, easy to navigate, and initiated via mobile devices.
In order to get more employees learning while they’re at work, or during times that are more convenient and relevant for them, self-service learning options and platforms have been popping up everywhere. If you’re interested in exploring self-service learning or implementing self-service learning, here’s what you should do to get started.
Understand What Self-Service Learning Is
Like it or not, your employees are already turning to their mobile devices to get answers to their questions in their time of need every day. And they’re already expressing their desire to learn because they like to learn, as well as their desire to be continually learning.
So, whether you implement self-service learning tools or not, your employees will be going somewhere on their mobile devices to find the answers and information they seek. Bottom line: Make sure you are offering learning platforms and avenues that adapt to your learners’ needs, demands, and behaviors and not vice versa.
(For more details, read “Understanding the Nuances of Self-Service Learning in the Workplace.”)
Do Your Research
Not all self-service learning platforms and apps are the same. So, make sure you do your research first and explore multiple self-service learning options before you acquire and implement a self-service learning option that is not ideal for your organization’s learners or its overall goals.
Select a vendor or platform that is ideal to work with and that easily complements, integrates, or works well with your organization’s other systems. And make sure your self-service learning option is based in the cloud so that it’s easy for your learners to use and access. Here are some options to consider:
Remember Your Organizational Goals
As you’re researching self-service learning options, don’t forget what your overarching organizational goals are and why your organization needs to implement self-service learning. Is it to retain more employees, endorse a company culture of learning, land more high-quality sales leads, increase workplace productivity levels, or something else?
Monitor Analytics and Remain Adaptable and Agile
After you implement your self-service learning platform or app, don’t forget to collect data and information about how your learners interact with it so that you can determine whether it’s truly helping your organization reach its original goals and whether your learners are truly engaging with it.
And make sure you are remaining agile and constantly adapting to how your learners are engaging with and interacting with your self-service learning implementation so that it continues to yield ideal results and a high return on your investment.
As you start exploring self-service learning implementations, follow the best practices above first.