Believe it or not, today’s best learning experiences aren’t happening in the classroom. They’re happening out there in the world, as individuals take new information on board in a variety of different contexts. At this very moment in time, somebody is learning that standing on a garden rake leads to a great deal of pain. And they learned this without opening a single workbook. That’s the magic of informal learning. There are a few different definitions of informal learning. For convenience’s sake, let’s just say that it’s learning that happens outside of the traditional sphere of education. It’s the learning that occurs once you’ve left the classroom or closed your textbook. Informal learning happens when learners start setting their own learning objectives. They drive the experience. Studies have shown that 70-90% of learning happens informally on the job (see the 70:20:10 model). That’s the lion’s share. If you don’t have an informal learning strategy in place to help support and promote this process, then your training programmes aren’t going to pack much punch. As if that isn’t impetus enough, here are eleven more reasons to get social: Drive Intellectual Capital: What’s your organisation’s most important asset? Your people and the network of information contained within them. As the EIM Institute note, ‘The value to the organization of such a knowledge repository is almost incalculable’. According to Babcock, Fortune 500 companies lose roughly $31.5bn a year by failing to share knowledge. We can empathise, having once lost 50p down the back of a sofa. Still, providing the proper support for informal learning within your organisation can help you to fight back. Continuous Learning Experiences: Formal learning experiences all have a beginning and an end. At some stage, you’ll be ushered out of the lecture hall. Your ‘How to Code for Dummies’ textbook will end at some stage. Conversely, informal learning has no predefined end-point. It can expand to cover any necessary ground whenever the need arises. Informal learning experiences expand and evolve as circumstances change and events unfurl. If your learners are an ambitious bunch, they won’t want the learning experience to end. Supporting an informal learning approach can help you to keep that ball rolling. Promote Innovation: A survey from Deskmag magazine recently found that improved team-work, collaboration and knowledge sharing spurs creativity and confidence. Indeed, 71% of those questioned suggest that they were more creative because of their team-orientated environment. Engage Your Team: Sharing drives engagement. A Harvard study has found that sharing triggers the reward centres in our brain and can even trigger the release of dopamine. Researchers found that there was a larger amount of ‘activity’ in the reward region of the brain when subjects were able to share information with friends and family members, than there was when they were forced to keep the information to themselves. The study concluded that sharing (on social media) can give us the same pleasure that food, money and sex does. More than that, however, supporting an informal learning approach can help to foster a ‘we’re all in this together’ culture that can lead to increased levels of motivation and drive among team-mates. Informal Learning is Effective: The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by ‘fully implementing social technologies’, organisations can raise the productivity of their employees by ’20 to 25 percent’. Imagine if you were able to squeeze that much more out of your team. That’d be like adding an additional thruster to Concorde. Formal Learning is (Sometimes) Ineffective: Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve shows that if we don’t contextualise information, we forget it within an hour. Yikes. We like to think of our brain as a giant pink sponge, but in truth, it’s a leaky sieve. Luckily, embracing informal learning can help you to turn that forgetting curve upside down. By providing your team with more opportunities to practise, discuss and contextualise the information you’ll soon increase retention. Autonomy sparks Motivation: We’ve leave this one to Daniel Pink: "Carrots & Sticks are so last Century… For 21st century work, we need to upgrade to autonomy, mastery and purpose". Here’s the link to his TED Talk. Increased Flexibility: Collaborative tools of all shapes and sizes are helping to facilitate the move towards a telecommuted workforce. As this happens, business can expect to strip back a significant chunk of their operating costs. In fact, according to ZDNet, 28% of UK workers would accept a lower salary in return for flexible working privileges. There are benefits to having a mobile workforce too. A Kcom survey recently revealed that 72% of global businesses say that flexible working practises increases employee productivity. It’s the Future: An Econsultancy report found that collaboration tools would be important to 86% of organisations by 2015. We assume that the remaining 14% are a bunch of fun-hating hermits! Employee Retention: Teamwork, collaboration and knowledge sharing helps to foster an exciting and engaging workplace culture. We’re more likely to stick around in an environment where we feel like we are still developing and learning from our peers. As the American Psychological Association note, 63% of us stick with our current organisation because we feel ‘connected’ with it. Save Money: Points one-through-ten prove that informal learning is effective. It’s driven by your learners and like a nightmarish tapeworm, it doesn’t end. It’s motivational. And it works wonders for your organisational wallet. Think of the savings you could accrue across your business. As the McKinsey Global Institute note, the average employee spends an estimated 20% of their time looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues who can help with specific tasks. On the flip-side, a searchable record of knowledge can reduce the time that employees spend searching for company information by as much as 35%. That will leave them with more time to do the things that really impact your bottom line. What’s more, information transparency leads to better decisions. Having all your information sunning itself out in the open, helps your team to make informed judgements and to create business growth. And isn’t that what it’s all about? Our Academy LMS fully embraces the informal learning process and the socialisation of knowledge. From learner profiles, a social media like timeline, user updates and leaderboards to Live Chat and access to Subject Matter Experts, our LMS can help you to support any informal learning initiative. Let us show you how. Click here to sign up for an informal tour of our Academy LMS.  The post Social is Sexy: 11 Reasons Why You Need an Informal Learning Strategy appeared first on Growth Engineering.

That’s right, it seems awards season is in full swing even at the tail end of the year! This time we’ve reached the finals of the UK Customer Satisfaction Awards 2016! You might remember that earlier in the year our Head of Customer Excellence, Richard Culpin, reached the Top 3 in the finals of the UK Customer Experience Awards. Well Richard didn’t want all of the glory, so this time our entire customer excellence team has been recognised, in the ‘Morrison Utility Services Customer Focus - SME’ category! But what are the UK Customer Satisfaction Awards anyway? Well, they’re run by the The Institute of Customer Service, the professional body for customer service. They’re designed to recognise organisations and individuals that have implemented successful customer service strategies. We’re one of just six companies to make the shortlist. The category is all about placing the customer at the centre of your operations and strategies. To be successful, you need to display a well communicated customer strategy and evidence of employee engagement in executing it. Over the past few years, we’ve really been living up to our name, as our GROWTH has entered Mach speeds! We’ve loved every minute, because it’s given us the opportunity to work with some incredible clients. But it’s also made it more challenging to maintain our exceptional levels of service… That’s why we’ve developed a robust customer focus strategy, which ensures that everyone we work with is supported from Day 1 to Day 1 Billion! This strategy is also coupled with a number of innovations, such as our Admin Training Portal, which is a dedicated Academy which allows our customers to interact and share best practise with one another! Our Managing Director Juliette Denny was mid-flight when she heard the news, but we’ve heard rumours that she got the rest of the passengers to join her in a celebratory dance of the Macarena. Here’s what she had to say: "This is simply incredible news! We work tirelessly to provide the ultimate experience for our customers, and this shows in the fact that we form genuine partnerships with every single one. To get recognised for this isn’t just a win for us, it’s a win for everyone we work with!" We’ve got a while to wait for this one though, as the winners will be announced during a glitzy ceremony on March 1 2016 at the London Hilton Park Lane Hotel. We can’t wait! Impressed by our commitment to customers and eager to find out more about what we do? Of course you are! Take a free tour of our gamified, social Academy LMS, named the world’s best learning management system!  The post We’re UK Customer Satisfaction Awards Finalists! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Did you ever get interrupted in the middle of a task? It’s frustrating, isn’t it? Your mind is fully absorbed in whatever you’re doing, you’re more focussed than a quality controller at the lens-making factory, you’re in the zone… and then somebody comes along with another urgent task that just needs to be done now. But you’re a helpful soul, so you stop whatever you’re doing and go to help your colleague. Meanwhile, a dull anxiety is bubbling up inside you - all you can think of is that unfinished task. No matter how much you try, you can’t devote your full attention to your colleague’s quandary. You’ve just been hit with the Zeigarnik Effect! What is the Zeigarnik Effect? The Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. Soviet psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, hit on the idea after noticing that a waiter could clearly remember the details of unpaid orders. However, after everyone had paid, he couldn’t remember any more details. Her report was published in 1927, but since then, numerous other studies have demonstrated that: Subjects will voluntarily return to complete a task after having been interrupted (McGraw et al., 1982) Subjects become frustrated when they are interrupted leading them to overestimate how long the task took to complete. (Greist-Bousquet & Schiffman 1992) The crux of the Zeigarnik effect is the basic human desire for closure. If you’re a fan of TV soaps and crime dramas, you’ll probably know how frustrating it is to see ‘to be continued…’ just before the credits roll. However, the chances are that because this gratification has been delayed, the show will play on your mind for the rest of the week. That’s annoying for you, but it’s gold-dust for the TV networks! The Zeigarnik Effect and Online Learning So, how can you use this effect to slyly hack your learners’ minds and change their behaviour? A Task List The first thing you need is a list of tasks that the learners need to complete. Ideally, these should be bite-sized chunks that can be realistically achieved in a short space of time. This task list should be easy to find so that the learner can refer to it whenever they need to. A completion indicator To get the most out of the Zeigarnik Effect, you need to remind the learners of their incomplete tasks at every opportunity. Depending on how you deliver your learning content, this could be something that’s already build into your UI and it could consist of little more than a percentage indicator or a progress bar. A Rewards area By gamifying your learning management system, you’re denying closure on a whole new level! On our Academy LMS, badges are awarded for completing tasks. When the learner navigates to the badge cabinet, they can see all of the badges they have earned. However, they can also see greyed-out versions of the badges they have yet to earn. Click to Download! As demonstrated by the Zeigarnik Effect, human nature drives us to focus on uncompleted tasks rather than completed ones. By combining these elements, you’re giving the learner a sense of what they need to do to complete their learning programme. Getting the most from your learners isn’t always about giving them the most elaborate eLearning or the most precise message - sometimes the best thing you can do is to try to change behaviour. At Growth Engineering, we use gamification in our learning solutions to create learning solutions that work in harmony with human nature. Check out our white paper to find out how you can drive engagement with gamification in your online learning.  The post The Zeigarnik Effect and Online Learning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

How did you learn to swim? Did you read ‘Swimming for Dummies? Did you watch YouTube tutorials and TED Talks on the topic? Did you study Michael Phelps’ biography? Did you complete a series of tests and assessments before dipping a toe in the water? Probably not. You were probably pushed in at the deep end (quite literally) and forced to learn via experience. Acknowledging this reveals a lot about how we learn and how we take on board new information. It also gives credence to the 70:20:10 framework of learning, which states the following: 70% of workplace learning happens ‘on-the-job’ (via experience). 20% workplace learning happens by watching others. 10% of workplace learning happens through formal training (classroom events, eLearning, downloadable resources, etc.) This is a framework that can generate fierce debate. In fact, just the other week, Charles Jennings and Craig Weiss were trading blows on Twitter about whether 70:20:10 was applicable to the wonderful world of online learning. We believe it is. In fact, we’ve come up with 23 ways to implement and support informal learning strategy within an online learning environment. Some are quicker and easier than others. We’ve also endeavoured to split these initiatives into the relevant section of the 70:20:10 framework. Let’s get this party started. 70%: Learning via Experience Some would have you believe that online learning approaches are, by their very nature, hyper-formalised, structured learning experiences. But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are tools out there that give your learners opportunities to play, explore and drive their own training experiences. Whilst rigid learning pathways (or ‘Levels’) have their place in the L&D landscape, there’s also something to be said for self-led learner exploration of training portals. If you load up your Learning Management System with content and let your learners loose on it without providing a predefined journey for them, then you’re essentially indulging in an informal online learning program. Any online learning solution worth its salt should provide a risk-free environment for learners to experiment in. Scenario-based eLearning helps learners to make decisions and apply their learning in a number of different contexts. Learning games and simulations offer experiential learning opportunities. They’re also surprisingly easy to configure. Asking learners to upload case studies to their learning portal is a great way to use previous experience to drive learning. Everybody has a camera nowadays, so we recommend asking your team to create short video segments describing how they’ve implemented the training material within their day-to-day role. Learning methodologies like ‘The Discovery Method’ use learners’ previous experience to drive their training. The Discovery Method can store learners’ data inputs throughout an eLearning course, tracking their experiences and requesting analysis when appropriate. 20%: Learning from Observing Others Online learning works particularly well for this segment of the 70:20:10 framework, as it opens up communication channels across your organisation, promotes easy collaboration and provides ample visibility for your subject matter experts. Here’s how you can help promote observational learning with your online solution: Encourage learner-to-learner communication through an organisational social stream. Provide opportunities for learners to communicate with one another via a Live Chat (on an individual or group basis). Better still, you should encourage your learners to communicate with each other and build networks around specific subject matter. We call this phenomenon, ‘Insight Groups’. Permit learners to share useful resources on your organisational social streams. This could be anything from a video or a document, to a link or a useful infographic. Facilitate the creation of learner blogs and wikis. Offer opportunities for your learners to become ‘Subject Matter Experts’. Better still, provide your SMEs with a platform to share their knowledge. Your learners should be able to view and answer Frequently Asked Questions. These answers should be visible to other learners. Run and monitor team-based learning initiatives throughout the learning platform. For example, why not offer a reward to the first team to successfully complete ‘Assessment X’ with a 100% score? Introduce a Mentor/buddy system across your learning portal. Provide a platform that allows your learners to recommend content to other learners. Most online learning systems provide opportunities for managers to offer feedback to members of their team. This can be a key driver within an informal learning strategy. 10%: Formal Training Even a super-basic, out-the-box, no-frills Learning Management System will help you cover off this section of the 70:20:10 framework. The formal elements of online learning include: The delivery of eLearning units and video-based learning content to your learners. As you would expect, this can all be reported on. Pushing resources, materials, links, etc. to your learners through an online learning portal. Setting your learners assignments to complete and then upload to their learning portal for marking. Asking your learners to complete a variety of ‘Tests’, ‘Assessments’ and ‘Quizzes’ through their online learning portal. This is a great way of getting information to stick. For bonus points, set your assessments up to automatically push new learning content to respondents whenever they get a question wrong. Running webinars/virtual labs. This can be done through your Learning Management System (if the functionality is available), or through webinar tools like Webex or GoToMeeting. Structuring the learning experience by creating courses, curricula and fully-fledged pathways for your learners. Our Academy LMS is a social learning paradise, capable of providing elite levels of support for your informal learning program. Social features include: Learner Profiles, User Updates, Social Timelines, Leaderboards, Live Chat, The Experts Area, Insights Groups and more. Why not embark on an informal learning experience of your own, by signing up for an informal tour of our Academy LMS?  The post 23 Ways to Map an Informal Learning Strategy to Your Online Learning Solution: appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Think of any big multinational brand. Chances are that you have a good idea not just about what they do, but about why they do it and what they stand for. No-one likes a faceless organisation. After all, companies are made up of real people sharing goals and ideas, which is why they will inevitably develop a corporate culture. We’ve talked before about the ground-breaking book by Professors John P. Kotter and James L. Heskett - Corporate Culture and Performance. Their 11-year study found that companies with strong corporate cultures grew their net income by an astounding 756%, compared to a meagre 1% for the companies lacking in culture! But how could corporate culture and performance possibly be so entwined? Share the leader’s vision To be a successful entrepreneur you have to be truly passionate about what you’re doing. As you work tirelessly to build the business, you’ll have strong ideas about what the company should be and the direction it needs to be moving in. But as the business grows and takes on more people, the founder will find it more and more difficult to get to know everyone on a personal level. But if they manage to inspire a strong corporate vulture based around their vision, then every employee will know exactly what they should be working towards! In this way, the culture helps drive the company forwards without forcing the leadership to micro-manage everyone individually. By sharing the vision of the leaders, there is also less tendency to adopt an ‘us vs them’ mentality. The culture helps humanise not just the company, but those in charge. So even those employees who might not have much contact with the top dogs will find them more relatable, and will be encouraged to work harder for them. Let employees connect with the company On a similar note, employees find it much easier to relate to the company as a whole if it has strong culture and values. It’s not just a building they march to every day, but rather the culture brings it to life! They really see themselves as part of a team, which will not just boost their productivity but will make them more committed to the company. So you can expect to see your attrition rates staying nice and low, as staff are reluctant to leave a company they truly love. As if that wasn’t enough, a strong corporate culture will also help you bring the right people on board. Job applicants will probably be aware of the culture and values from their research, so you’ll be attracting people who really resonate with them and will be likely to put in 110% should they get the chance to work for you! Rewarding great behaviour Finally, by developing a strong sense of company culture, you’ll be able to encourage your staff to behave in the ways you want them to. For example, if your culture values collaboration and you reward people for great displays of teamwork, the rest of your workforce will be incentivised to work together as well! This is exactly what we designed our online Performance Centre to do. In the Values and Principles section, an employee can remind themselves of each of the values which define their company, and can get rewarded for demonstrating them. Employees can be awarded badges by their colleagues and managers each time they put one of the company’s values into practise. Having the badges awarded by colleagues helps to foster that sense of team spirit. Soo enough, everyone will be looking for opportunities to reward each other! You can even tie this into reviews by setting a target number of badges to earn within a set period. So, for example, you can task employees with earning three of each type of badge over the course of the year. This is sure to get everyone living and breathing your values and principles, which in turn will make them more productive! Interested in taking a closer look at how culture can impact performance? Sign up for a free tour of our Performance Centre today!  The post Corporate culture and performance: What’s the link? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Being in charge of your organisation’s training initiatives and learning roll-outs can be a lonely job. Even if your chums call you, ‘Miss Filo-Fax’, because of your organisational genius, there’s still only so much you can do. The very nature of your job means that you have a task-list as long as a football pitch and that deadlines are approaching thick and fast. Before long, even the world’s most astute learning & development professionals start blasting ABBA’s ‘SOS’ and sending makeshift Batman signals into the sky. There’s a reason why Doctor Who never travels alone. Sherlock Holmes has a super-powered intellect, but he still relies on John Watson for support. As an online learning superhero, you need a Chewbacca to provide support for your Han Solo. Luckily, you’re not alone. You have an army of helpers ready to do some heavy-lifting. Who are we referring to? Why, your learners of course! In a formal training course, your learners turn up, absorb information and check-out. It’s a one-way relationship. You’ve created an army of vampire learners who leech information from your training content and then fly off into the night. But with an informal learning strategy, this entire dichotomy is flipped on its head. Your learners don’t just take in information. They share information and collaborate with other learners. In fact, they drive the entire learning experience. Still not convinced that a social learning solution is right for you? Here are three stats that should have the lone wolf within you running in fear: Trainees increased their performance by 22% through ‘deliberate reflection and sharing lessons with others’. (Source: A Harvard study) 88% of employees prefer a collaborative work-culture than a competitive one. (Source: an Intelligence Group study) 80% of those surveyed said ‘working with people they like is highly motivating’ (Source: a Glassdoor study) Social learning really is super learning! Now you just need the right tools to make it happen. With that in mind, we’ve drawn up a list of seven absolutely essential social features that any learning platform needs. Let’s get social! Feature #1: Live Chat Live Chat is the communication method of choice for learners longing for instant gratification. If they have a question, or need help right away, they can view a directory of ‘available’ learners and get in touch immediately. There’s no sitting around waiting for somebody to see your post and get back to you. Your learners are talking directly to people who can help them by sharing content recommendations, solving learning challenges together and providing encouragement whenever it is needed. Feature #2: Social Stream A social stream, or ‘timeline’ is crucial to any informal learning strategy. We’d go as far as to say that it’s what pulls the whole affair together. This stream should display news, announcements and updates from learners. Because it’s visible to all learners, it’s a great place to share some of your learner’s key achievements. Think about it. If Batman knows that Robin has picked up an award for completing ‘Vigilantism 101’, he’s going to be keen to dive into the content himself. Feature #3: Groups Live Chats are good because they’re instantaneous. Social Streams are good because of their visibility. Groups, on the other hand, can be effective because of their focused nature. Instead of trying to create discussion areas covering the length and breadth of your training programme, we recommend that you create distinct groups, each focused on different criteria (e.g. training topics, job roles, experience levels). This provides your learners with an opportunity to have better discussions with the right people at the right stage. Feature #4: Team-based Learning & Leaderboards Encouraging team-work is a great way to drive learner engagement and improve the ROI of your training regime. Collaboration drives completion and team-work can produce impressive results. To make this work on your LMS, you’ll need to build a team structure into your platform. You’ll also need a leaderboard system in place that’s capable of tracking team activity. Once that’s all set-up, you can take things to the next level by offering group rewards to the best performing teams. Days out or team lunches are a good fit here. Feature #5: Experts Area Knowledge transfer is a major issue within organisations of all shapes and sizes. Throughout your business, you’ll have a variety of different subject matter experts acting as knowledge silos. You need a solution that allows your learners to tap into what your SMEs know. If you’re trying to improve your team’s customer service skills, then there’s no reason not to unleash your secret weapon: your organisation’s best and brightest customer service operator. If Jimmy is a lauded customer service veteran with more than 30 years of experience to his name, then he deserves a suitable knowledge-sharing platform. He knows your business, the problems your team are likely to face and the best possible solutions. It would be foolish not to provide him with visibility on your online learning solution. You’re essentially giving your learners an opportunity to learn from the very best. Feature #6: Social Q&A Throughout the course of a learning initiative, the same questions are likely to arise again and again. That’s why FAQs are a common part of any training programme. They provide a repository for all the important stuff that your learners need to know. A Social Q&A area takes things to the next level, by actively encouraging learners to participate in the question and answer process. They’re rewarded (with points and badges) for asking good questions and offering good answers. The up-voting system also allows the very best answers to rise to the top of the thread. This is crowdsourcing at its most effective. The more you get your learners thinking about the training content in a variety of different contexts, the more information they’ll embed in their long-term memory. Feature #7: Surveys Unless you’re a powerful mind-reader, it’s not always easy to figure out what your learners want. But there’s no need to do any guesswork. A good survey tool can help you get answers to important questions. Want to know which type of content your learners enjoy the most? What content you should release next? What features your learners feel are missing from their Academy? Ask away and get meaningful data to help you make important decisions. Wouldn’t it be neat if all these features were rolled up into one world-beating, super-social, next-gen Learning Management System? Well, as it happens… Our Academy LMS is the world’s best social gamified learning platform. The feature set includes Live Chat, Social Streams, Insight Groups, Leaderboards, Expert Zones, Surveys, Social Q&A (coming soon!) and much, much more. In other words, it’s the perfect home for your social learning strategy. To find out more, or sign up for a Tour of the Academy, please reach out to us here.  The post 7 Essential Social Learning Features You Need on Your Learning Management System: appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We know what you’re thinking. ‘Pushing? Pulling? Sounds like a violent scene from a Black Friday deal stampede!’ In fact, pushing and pulling is all about how you make your content accessible to people. It’s most commonly used in the world of marketing to describe the ways in which a customer will find and buy a product. A push strategy is generally a quick one, and involves shoving your product out there for the customer to see! Traditionally this meant sending someone a leaflet or brochure, but now you see it in the form of email marketing and paid advertising on search engines and social media. A pull strategy is about bringing the customer to you. With the entirety of human knowledge available at our fingertips, we’ve become pretty damn good at doing our own research. So companies need to spend time and effort to prove to people that they offer something of value which is worth checking out. This might involve building their brand so that it becomes a household name, or maintaining a blog full of industry-leading thoughts (sound familiar?). But just how does this apply to learning? Push and pull in learning When it comes to learning, a healthy blend of pushing and pulling can help your learners go a long way! Think back to how pulling in marketing often involves creating great content. The same is true in learning! You need to spend the time and effort on your training programmes to make sure that they’re top-notch and something which a learner will get real value from. Pull content works especially well for informal learning programs, which revolve around self-led knowledge discovery. But relying on pulling alone is less effective in L+D than it is in marketing most other products. Most consumers have access to a wealth of information in the form of online product reviews, thousands of search results and recommendation from friends. But learning content is generally designed for a much smaller group of people, making this information much more limited. As such, you need to push your excellent content out to your learners so that they can actually find it! But again, pushing on its own is no good (unless you’re in labour). You need to be pushing them towards something which is of high enough quality to pull their attention and engage them with their learning. How do we do it? Our gamified, social Academy LMS is equipped with enough features to push and pull your learners wherever you need them to be! Through the ‘My Things to Do’ section on a user’s dashboard, you can push the perfect content to meet every individual’s needs. Simply invite them to take it, and it will show up in the box. Similarly, you can also push out emails to anyone you want, recommending any training content you think will be relevant for them! There’s even a pushing method hidden in our gamification features! On our Academy LMS you can level-up as you learn, and you can assign new content to become available at each level. This means you can push content to people in the order of your choosing, such as giving them more foundational content at first and more advanced things later on. Then there are ways to pull learners to the best content. Remember how it’s harder to research which content is best among an internal training programme? Well we allow learners to rate every piece of content, so everyone can see at a glance what’s been reviewed most positively. You can also leave more detail in the comments, so savvy researchers can be pulled towards something perfect for them! Finally, our Performance Centre is the perfect way to push people in the right direction. This is a performance management solution which is fully integrated with our Academy LMS. As employees use it, their managers will be able to build a Personal Development Plan, or PDP, for every single one. This collects all of the content recommendations a manager has made, into one simple package. This lets learners work their way through their own individually tailored plan, all pushed to them by their manager! Fancy taking a closer look at all of the features on our Academy LMS? Book a free tour today!  The post Push and pull - Get learners using the right content appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Left to right: Craig Mills (Learning Manager at GAME), Richard Culplin (our Head of Customer Excellence), Harry Cloke (our Head of Marketing) We do work with some real learning superheroes, don’t we? Last night we donned our black ties and rolled up in a luxurious minibus to the glitzy e-Learning Awards gala dinner! The awards are run by CloserStill, and were established in 2005 to recognise and celebrate eLearning excellence. It’s one of the most celebrated, independently judged awards schemes within the sector. We were treated to a champagne reception on arrival, followed by a magnificent three-course dinner. But the real excitement began with the announcements, and Phill Jupitus was on hand to deliver gags and gongs galore. We were waiting eagerly for the ‘Best Learning Management System Implementation’ category, along with our wonderful client GAME Digital, who we’d entered in partnership with. This category recognises the impact an LMS has had on an organisation. And then, when the moment came, there was a dramatic pause before the victor was revealed… They’d only gone and given the gold to us! We went mad, and we’re pretty sure we made the most noise of the whole event! The reason for the win is GAME Learning Zone, an online learning platform built using our Academy LMS. That means it’s not just packed with interactive content, but it’s fully equipped with social and gamification features to keep learners engaged! Though it only launched in April 2015, it’s already impacting on GAME’s sales figures. Their learners have also shown enormous levels of engagement with the platform and its social features. They’re actually using the platform as a social network so that they can communicate and share with their colleagues nationwide! We cornered our Managing Director, Juliette Denny, on the dance floor so that we could grab a few words: "I could not be happier with this result! The guys at GAME have been nothing short of a joy to work with. We’re all on the same wavelength so we’re building a really magical partnership, and it’s just going to keep delivering results like this for years to come!" Craig Mills, the superstar Learning Manager who runs GAME Learning Zone, was also pretty chuffed: "Training and developing people has always been a passion! From small changes to giant leaps, there is nothing more rewarding than feeling yourself develop and seeing other do the same. With the astounding LMS provided by Growth Engineering I was able to realise my gamified learning goals and provide an experience for our learners that is as rewarding as it is addictive. I’m excited to see what the future of GAME Learning Zone will look like through the partnership and shared passion of Growth Engineering and GAME." If you’re itching to find out more about GAME Learning Zone, download the free case study! If you want to see first-hand why we win so many awards, why not book a free tour of our Academy LMS?  The post We brought home the gold with GAME at the e-Learning Awards! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Whilst some may argue that professional development is inherently rewarding, learners sometimes need an additional push to encourage them to engage with their training program. That’s where rewards muscle in, with all their motivational mojo! Did You Know: Companies that score in the top 20% for building a ‘recognition-rich culture’ have a 31% lower voluntary turnover rate. (Forbes) But: 83% of organisations suffer from a deficit in ‘recognition’. (Forbes) And: According to a survey, 35% of learners want real-life rewards based on learning progress. (Software Advice) Rewards drive engagement, create motivation and make your learners more effective. Providing rewards, even on a small scale, can trigger the release of dopamine, (a brain chemical that is also associated with eating, drinking and sex) and stimulate the production of the ‘love hormone’, oxytocin. Research shows that those who work under the influence of this hormone, perform better! Game mechanics like badges, levels and leaderboards work really well as a reward structure. But today, we’re going to be looking at some of the real-world rewards you can use to create a motivation-overload among your learners. Whilst give-aways like vouchers, coupons and concert tickets work well, they’re not your only option. If you’re balling on a budget, there’s still plenty of reward options for your hard-working learners. Let the countdown begin! A sit-down with your CEO: This is a reward-masterstroke. Your learner will feel valued and will have an opportunity to get to know your organisation’s MVP. In turn, your CEO will have an opportunity to find out more about your learning program and what it’s like for those who are really engaging with it. That’s a double-whammy! A sit-down with an SME: If you’ve got subject matter experts within your organisation (for instance a customer service champion, or a sales superstar), their know-how is highly valuable. The opportunity to pick their brains should be seen as a big draw for your ambitious learner base. Recognition in your organisational newsletter: Recognition works really well as a reward. Shining a spotlight on your learners’ hard-work shows that you care and gives them some major bragging rights. The opportunity to suggest a development for your platform: Given that you’re rewarding your best learners (those who are making most use of your training platform), there’s a good chance they’ll have a few suggestions regarding how the development program is being run. Giving them an opportunity to share their ideas will make them feel like their voice is being heard. Call-outs on social media or your organisational intranet: Providing your brightest and best with more visibility is never a bad thing. If they’ve done something remarkable, then you should let the whole world know (or at least your organisational network!). Offer the learner ‘Expert’ status on your LMS: If a learner has proven to be particularly astute on a certain topic, you could set them up as an ‘Expert’ on your Learning Management System. This is a great way of recognising your learners’ bona fides and driving intellectual capital. If Kim is set-up as a ‘Sales Presentation Expert’, she’ll get a major ego boost and she can then act as a focal point for any future questions relating to presentations. A month’s primo-parking: Walking is wildly overrated. Give your best learner the best parking spot in the lot (for a limited time). They’ll feel like royalty! Radio Rights: This one only works if you play music in your place of work. If you do, then why not let your best learner(s) play DJ for the day, as a reward? The Standing ‘O’/Slow Clap: This one works better with certain personality types. Some people like being the centre of attention and others don’t. Regardless, breaking up a meeting to ask for a standing ovation for the ‘Learner of the Month’, is a great way of dishing out recognition. Compliment Box: This reward spares no blushes! Create a special box (or just grab a bowl) and ask your team to write down one nice thing each (anonymously) about the learner you are rewarding. The steady flow of sentiment should cause warm, fluffy feelings to abound. Coffee Captain: It can be hard to get through the day without a nice hot brew, but having to get up and make it can be a real drag. Why not provide coffee-making exemption rights as a reward for your best learners? They could even wear a special hat to signify their role as ‘Coffee Captain’. A day-off pass: This is a reward that will have real value for your learners! Of course, there is an opportunity cost here, but there’s no doubt that providing an additional day of holiday can be a hugely effective motivational tool. A token for a free hug: This reward speaks for itself. What’s better than a nice, warm hug? Weak, wet-noodle huggers need not apply! Of course, if you do have a bit of cash to spend, there are a few affordable options that you may wish to consider. Why not offer small give-aways like branded t-shirts, trophies, mugs or specially designed certificates? This kind of thing won’t break the bank, but it will create excitement and drive activity. Do you have any more free or affordable learner reward suggestions? Let us know in the comment section below. Real world rewards, gamification and your learners’ pride in their professional development achievements provide a reward-system triple threat. As it happens, all these elements are configurable on one platform: the Academy LMS. To find out more, or to sign-up for a tour of the LMS and Reward Centre, please click here.  The post 13 Totally Free Reward Ideas to Get Your Learners Inspired appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Employee reviews, or appraisals, are one of the staple parts of any performance management programme. It’s the big one, the meeting to top off all of the performance efforts thus far and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction! But since reviews generally happen face-to-face, they have the tendency to become a pen-and-paper affair. Both the manager and employee need to make notes, which they try to keep somewhere safe (AKA where they end up forgetting about them). Surely there must be a better way! Well actually, by making use of an online performance management system, you can make your appraisal process more efficient, saving time (not to mention pens and paper!). Here are five reasons to make the switch to online employee reviews: 1. Easy access In 2014, 600 business leaders were surveyed at London Business School’s Global Leadership Summit, and they predicted that more than half of their full-time workforces would be working remotely by 2020! But one of the biggest advantages when taking your reviews online is that your employees will be able to access them at any time and from any location. Whether you’re just doing the planning online, or the full review meeting, you’ll ensure that you can actually reach the person you need to! 2. Permanent record Just as schoolteachers motivate their pupils by threatening to put bad behaviour on their permanent record, having a lasting performance review can be worthwhile as well. But notes made on paper at an appraisal are easy to lose and forget about, and extremely difficult to pin down when you actually need them. But by placing all of your records online, both the manager and employee can check up on it at any time they want. So you can refer back to what was said during the meeting to stop it from becoming empty words, and to actually do something about it! 3. Data at your fingertips If your online performance management system covers areas other than reviews, such as Objectives and KPIs, then this information will help you plan for the appraisal itself. You can see at a glance whether Gary has been smashing his targets day in, day out, or whether he’s been slacking and letting the side down. And then, once you’ve finished everyone’s reviews, having everything online means you can work your magic to pull up some more stats! Want to see whether Joy’s appraisal scores have improved year-on-year? Go for it! Interested in comparing Steven and Eric? Do as you please! 4. Visible planning Research conducted by YouGov for Investors in People found that one in five employees (19%) are convinced that their manager doesn’t even think about the appraisal until they’re in the room doing it. Even more employees (23%) believe that their manager sees the review as little more than a ‘tick-box’ exercise! But on an online system, you can set some preparatory work ahead of the appraisal. This shows that you’re already planning for it, and gives the employee a chance to raise anything they want to discuss during the meeting. 5. Link to development materials For a lot of organisations, performance and learning management happens separately. But if you take both of these operations online, then there’s no reason they can’t live in harmony! Take for example our online Performance Centre, which is fully integrated with our Academy LMS. When it comes to employee reviews, a manager can recommend the perfect learning materials to address anything raised during the meeting. These then get wrapped up nicely into a Personal Development Plan, so the employee has easy access to it! Want to see more of what our online Performance Centre can do? Book yourself in for a free tour!  The post 5 reasons to take employee reviews online appeared first on Growth Engineering.