Do you remember the last time you started a new job? With all of the new people, new processes and new responsibilities, it can be quite overwhelming. During the onboarding process, new starters are in a twilight zone between knowing nothing and knowing what they need to in order to do their job. For obvious reasons, this process should be as fast, as smooth and as enjoyable as possible. If you want your newbies to have a great head start, an engaging social learning platform lets your whole team welcome them into the fold. Your learning management system needs to deliver the induction content effectively. In the old days, you would just lock your newbies in a room with a dusty TV/VCR combo, and make them watch a grainy old induction video. While video can be an engaging way to deliver learning content, your learners can’t properly thrive in isolation. You need to unlock the power of collaborative learning! Social learning is more efficient Collaborative learning, or social learning, is a more efficient way of getting your message across. Only 10% of what we learn comes from formal learning materials - the rest, we pick up from our experiences and from interacting with our colleagues. With a social Learning Management System, like the Academy LMS, you can give everyone in your team a collaborative learning platform - whether they’re fresh-faced newbies or veterans that have seen it all. Identify experts in your team If you’re lucky enough to have a few experts in your team, the Academy LMS lets everybody find these know-it-alls and tap into their experience. If one of your learners has a question, they can access the Chat and Experts area and find the perfect person to ask. These questions then get added to the FAQ area and can be accessed by anyone else. This contributes to an ever-growing bank of information that’s visible to all. In essence, your learning management system will be automatically populated with content with little or no effort from the Learning and Development team. Levels create a clear induction journey For a more structured induction program, the Academy LMS lets you create an onboarding path composed of levels. This is just one of the Academy’s gamification features and it creates a more engaging learning experience and a clearer journey for the learner. A little encouragement goes a long way! As your new starters engage with their learning content, and the platform itself, they can earn badges and achievements. Each of these virtual trophies represents another learning hurdle successfully jumped! The more badges they earn, the higher they climb on the company-wide leaderboard. This game mechanic encourages healthy competition between all of the learners, adding to social engagement levels and ultimately revolutionising your company culture. Meanwhile, your new starters can interact with the team on the social feed and in specific discussion areas called Insight Groups. Each of these groups has its own Top Contributors leaderboard, letting your learners get recognition for their expertise. With all of these tools at their fingertips, your new recruits will feel like a part of the team in no time at all! Our Social Learning white paper has all you need to know about improving your processes (including induction) with a collaborative learning platform. Just click the button below to become an overnight expert in Social Learning!  The post Better onboarding with a social LMS appeared first on Growth Engineering.

That’s right, awards season is in full swing and we’re showing no signs of slowing down! This time we’ve won TWO GOLDS and a SILVER at the Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards! This prestigious awards programme has been running for more than 20 years, and it’s often referred to as the ‘Academy Awards’ of the learning industry. Seriously, it’s that highly regarded in our world! That’s why we couldn’t be happier to win such huge recognition for our work with our Academy LMS clients! The entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group Senior Analysts and Executive Leadership based on the following criteria: fit the need, design of the programme, functionality, innovation, and overall measureable benefits. Rachel Cooke, Chief Operating Officer of Brandon Hall Group and head of the awards program, certainly had some kind words to share: "All of these winning programs deliver meaningful business results to their organisations. Winning an Excellence Award is a great honour, but the real winners are the organisations themselves and their customers and clients because of the innovation and customer focus they demonstrate." So what did we win? TD Academy - GOLD for Best Sales Training Program for Extended Enterprise (Sales Performance category) TD Academy was a joint effort, built by Growth Engineering, Hewlett-Packard and Azlan, the Enterprise Division of Tech Data Corporation. This was our first gold of the night, and it was thoroughly deserved by the Azlan team! TD Academy is used to train Azlan’s 4,000 sales partners, spread all across Europe. The main goal of the programme was to outgrow the market and all competition. Sounds easy enough, right? Well despite setting such an ambitious target, since launching in 2013, the partners who are making the most use of TD Academy are now outperforming the rest of the market by a whopping 70% year-on-year growth! Read more about TD Academy and its incredible ROI figures in this case study. GAME Learning Zone - GOLD for Best Use of Learning and or Talent Technologies (Sales Performance category) Built by Growth Engineering and GAME Retail Ltd, GAME Learning Zone was our second gold winner of the night! This is a massive win because they only launched a month prior to the award submission! But GAME hasn’t delayed when it comes to delivering results, because their Learning Zone has already made an impact on their 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. Find out more about GAME Learning Zone and its super engaged learners in this brand new case study. Steinhoff Learning Store - SILVER for Best Results of a Learning Program (Learning and Development category) Steinhoff Learning Store has been built by Growth Engineering and Steinhoff UK Retail. Despite being entered into one of the most competitive categories, the programme took home a silver award! The platform is used to train the 2,300 salespeople across Steinhoff’s UK businesses - Bensons for Beds, Harvey’s and Cargo. We’ve worked very closely with Steinhoff to fully brand and customise their learning platform so that it’s just right. But what sorts of results has it achieved? Well since launching, Steinhoff’s three UK businesses have increased sales revenue, reduced staff turnover, and cut down the time it takes to train new starters by a third. No-one can grumble at that! Read more about Steinhoff Learning Store and its awesome ROI figures in this case study.   Our Managing Director, Juliette Denny, is just about ready to explode with joy from hearing about all this success! Here’s what she had to say: "It’s simply staggering just how much of an impact we’re making on the world stage! These awards truly are testaments to all the incredible hard work our clients put into their training programmes, and to the fantastic relationships we build with them." So what’s next? Well, each of these clients are also currently shortlisted for more awards! Both TD Academy and Steinhoff Learning Store are on the shortlist for the Training Journal Awards, while GAME Learning Zone is on the shortlist for the e-Learning Awards. Keep watching this space! If you’d like to see how our Academy LMS could deliver results for you (including awards), why not sign up for a free tour today?  The post We’ve won THREE Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

People make a business, so they should be treated as importantly as any other asset (if not more!) Unfortunately, if you’re a small business, scooping the cream of the crop often just isn’t in your budget. However, it is within your means to grow a new crop of experts from the seeds you already have! A whopping 98% of staff find annual performance reviews unnecessary. But with an online performance centre you can avoid large, unproductive discussions dominated by the loudest voices. Choosing a dynamic, social system neatly ties the employee’s perception of their performance with the wider business expectations and values. This way, your seedlings flourish into ravishing trees, planting roots far into the company’s future.   Why Annual Appraisals don’t work Reviews have become something we all dread. Sometimes they leave us feeling as though it’s a simple tick-box exercise, or wondering if reviewers are even concerned with our development in the company. Once objectives are set, they’re usually locked in a drawer and not seen again until the following year, making you feel like you’re all on your own. The  ‘Performance Centre’ add-on for our Academy Learning Management System, is a live growth-monitoring tool, not just a data capturing tool. Sounds great! But what does that mean? It lets you track the growth of an employee by creating objectives, monitoring progress and building personalised growth plans. And the best part? You can do all of this from the same system, pulling all of your employees’ progress together in one happy place.    Just ask Vicky Edwards, Chief People Officer at Grass Roots Group, one of our clients. They use our Performance Centre for their entire performance management, and for her the best part is… "understanding the part I play in the business, and seeing that what I’m doing is having a direct impact on business performance". Tick-Box Management   "Set objectives", "Envision your goals", "Work towards them"… Appraisals have become a part of the ‘to do’ list, and who can blame managers? Tasks pile high and wider business objectives often dwarf the more subtle managerial duties such as nurturing a positive culture. In a study by Quantum Workplace, employees listed lack of growth opportunity as the highest reason for leaving. And don’t think career development is one-sided either, in the same study 81% of people said that professional development is a shared responsibility between manager and employee. This really isn’t a surprise, it’s human nature to grow, develop and soar to new heights. So what can we do? Holding more reviews won’t work because even in the best case-scenario "employees often don’t understand how to move either horizontally or vertically in an organization".   5 reasons to use our Performance Centre   Saves Time & Money Saving you recruitment costs: no more unproductive meetings & awkward conversations. ThePerformance Centre is a live platform accessible at any time, offering a more realistic solution for self development at work.   Grows experts without the expert salary Expertise isn’t always transferable: There’s no guarantee that an expert at another company would understand yours. Instead, grow expertise by regularly assessing & developing your existing staff through fun, interactive communication and solutions.     4 realms of development From setting objectives, to being awarded a badge for winning targets! We give you a full cycle of staff development. Creates a happy, open culture Reward staff with badges, live feedback & congratulate their achievements amidst their peers. No stress We take care of all the boring bits like migration & paperwork. What’s  more is you’ll get a personal tutorial from a Growth Engineering Superhero - for free! Are you ready to empower your people, by giving them access to an all-in-one online performance management solution? Then head to our ‘Contact Us‘ page and tell us that you’re interested in finding out more about the Performance Centre. We’ll be delighted to help!  The post Why use an Online Appraisal System? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’ve all had reviews at work. It could be the comforting end of a probation period or an exciting opportunity for a promotion. Maybe it’s just a health check of your progress at work. If you’re part of the 98% who thinks that performance reviews aren’t engaging enough, we’re with you! As in life, everything must evolve so we went ahead and revolutionised the dreaded performance review. Are you usually busy fretting in the days leading up to the ‘big meeting’, when really you should be excited to explore new ways to grow at work? When it comes to your development you shouldn’t regress into a shrinking violet. And you know what guys? It’s just too bad. You should be engaged at work; after all it’s your hard work that keeps the company ticking. Be more Hermes, the God of transition & boundaries If you have even an ounce of the superhero spirit we have here at Growth Engineering, you relish the opportunity to seek out daring adventures in far off places. But do you ever get the feeling that someone keeps stepping on your cape? Feel like Zeus forced to walk through radio-active sludge in sandals? Oh darn…There’s that pesky kryptonite again, throwing you off. If the yearly wait to voice your concerns at work is masking your potential, it’s time to BOOF! KAPOW! FWAP! Boring bureaucratic appraisals into the next galaxy. Err…. Models went out with She-Ra in the 80’s   Yes, we know there’s a whole metropolis of models and diagrams to ‘help’ you achieve your goals, and we can see your eyelids sliding shut, so we won’t bang on about those. Reaching your goals is an ongoing development, not a once a year showdown. So what we’ve done is create an additional area on ‘The Academy’ LMS, called ‘The Performance Centre’ and it completely turns goal setting (and getting) on its head! This is a real-time platform that lets you see how your own objectives meet with the wider company’s KPI’s and long-term goals, so you can always see how super you really are. Since it’s online it’s also accessible to your leaders and they can give you regular feedback & suggestions on how to improve. This way you always feel valued, and encouraged to become the best that you can be. You can also view your workload in the Performance Centre and manage the status of tasks. So whether they are complete or in-progress your department will always be kept up to date. Praise your employees with gamification tactics There are so many ways to review performance. You can praise your employees with big-league badges, provide direct learning content so they can progress further or even offer verbal praise on the integrated social network. Either way, this is a one-stop station for powering up your heroes. Annual appraisals, they dull your powers Think about it: What superhero is going to reveal any weakness if he knows the admission will come back to bite him in the next review? (Hint: only the stupidest superhero.) Instead, the employee is going to spit back exactly what he knows the boss wants to hear. That’s hardly the way to get an employee to become utterly awesome at their job.     "The way for reviews to be effective is on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis - not once or twice a year." Says Michael Dean, Glenroy’s executive vice-president. Some management experts go so far as to say that 90% of a manager’s job today occurs in the day-to-day coaching of employees. Nobody’s doing them anymore, stop embarrassing yourself Take Accenture who employ 330,000 people globally. They recently wreaked havoc in the HR world by announcing their plan to scrap annual appraisals in favour of more frequent live communication. Saying they were frustrated with a process that was "too heavy & costly for an outcome that isn’t that great". Now even Microsoft and Deloitte have jumped on the bandwagon cited as a ‘massive revolution!’ So what do you think? Are you brave enough to ditch annual performance reviews, and make them a year-round experience on our Performance Centre?  The post Year Round Performance Management: Your One Step Guide appeared first on Growth Engineering.

I don’t know about you, but we’re tired of seeing the same old advice for managing your workload. Check your email first thing, take regular breaks, spend time in nature… This just sounds like ignoring the stress instead of getting rid of it altogether. When you’re constantly juggling 1,000 things, no amount of meadow frolicking and bunny stroking on your lunch break is going to calm you down. If stress balls, and mini zen gardens are falling off your desk, then you’ve come to the right place.       1. Stop rushing Your daily tasks should fit on a post-it note. Before you say "It depends what size?" We mean the standard yellow square. (and just normal sized handwriting by the way) ….Anyway, you get the idea. Time management is stress management. Now obviously we’re not telling you to avoid all deadlines, but trust us, in the long run work that is well executed will always benefit the company’s wider strategy. Part of this is being part of an organised team. Growth Engineering’s online Performance Centre is built to organise your ‘To-Do List’ with a simple traffic light system; green = complete, amber = in progress, red = incomplete. Simple, right? It’s also live and can be accessed by others. This allows you to give and receive feedback, suggestions and reviews at the click of a button - when you really need it, rather than just in the big meeting which is a fortnight away. 2. Avoid large, unnecessary meetings Never go full David Brent. If you’re having a meeting about having more meetings then you’re not creating meaningful work that has real value. Most meetings can be avoided through quick regular feedback and transparency of your workload. What you don’t need is time spent navigating your way through endless email chains that confuse the pants off of you, when you could spend this time more effectively. You don’t need that in your life…   What you do need is an online learning platform with an integrated approach to performance management. If you use our customisable Academy LMS (Ahem! The world’s #1 learning management system) then you could have access to our shiny new ‘Performance Centre’. Here your managers can see exactly what you’re working on, and you have full visibility of how your objectives/KPIs match the larger business objectives. Intrigued? Get in touch here and we’ll show you how it all works in a live demo. 3. Take Breaks We’ve found an ingenious way to get work done while making you feel like you’re taking a break. Your company intranet might be an endless library of information that ticks all the boxes… But do you even feel like finding or using it? With a social learning platform you get colour, fun, games, smiley faces, and bring your whole team together for a group hug. So if you need to brush up on new procedures at work or if there’s an important new program you need to master, why not  learn through a game? You could climb Mount Everest perhaps or race your colleagues on a dirt track, picking up knowledge without tiring yourself out. The way we see it, you’re having a blast while getting round to those things you keep putting on the back burner. Intrigued? Click here to try it now for free! Happiness is a Serious Business On a final note, look after yourself. If you like what you do and you’re good at it, you’re more likely to be engaged and happy, rather than seeing work as a chore. For the past ten years NEF, the new economics foundation, has been publishing its Happiness at Work Survey. Their research has consistently shown that happier employees show a 10% decrease in staff turnover and show a 5% increase in productivity. This could save your business a whopping £110,000 ($170,000) a year!     There really is no time like the present. So If you’re tired of bogus remedies and need a solution fast, contact us here & tell us your worries. We’ll make you the smartest, happiest, most proficient performer in your industry.    The post 3 Surprisingly Effective Ways to Work Smarter appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Average is burning your toast in the morning and eating it anyway, average is doing a job you hate everyday because the leap to happiness is too daunting. So you settle. You’re a middle of the roader, a make do’er, compromiser, a grade-C, fate acceptor. But here’s the twist: maybe it’s not your job that’s the problem. Maybe your company is structured to prevent you from unlocking your full potential. Contrary to what the Wu Tang Clan said, cash doesn’t rule everything around us. Nearly 70% of employees said they would work harder if they were better recognized for their efforts. What’s more, a study by Glassdoor found that an unhappy 33% quit their jobs due to a lack of career growth.   So in this new age of meditation apps & organic driftwood phone cases, we’d like to think that we wouldn’t sacrifice our happiness for a few bucks. Obviously cash is king but there are a dozen kings at this table, and a King is nothing without its Queen and courtiers.     The King of Communication   The holistic, unmeasurable nature of these things may grind your finance department’s gears, but solving these problems are essential to running a good business. The top two factors cited by workers are a lack of advancement opportunities and excessive overtime.That’s according to a new survey by EY of 9,700 full-time employees in eight of the world’s largest economies: the United States, Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, China and Japan. Also on the list were companies that don’t encourage teamwork (71%); and bosses who don’t give employees flexibility in when and where they work (65%).     The ‘Flexibility Stigma’   On paper everyone’s a nice guy, and more and more companies are starting to encourage a flexible work policy. But the cynics amongst us might see this as some nefarious plot to integrate work into our lifestyle, rather than shoehorn your lifestyle into work. In the same survey 67% of employees said they worked in offices where there’s a sense that you’ll be penalised for working from home. So none of this matters if you’re too afraid to take advantage of flexible working perks.   What’s more, a new study by the Institute of Leadership & Management found that "negative attitudes towards flexible workers are often prompted by a sense of unfairness and poor communication from senior management on policy. So you see, communication really is King.   All You Need is Us   One way to heal all of these problems is to have a central online platform that your entire team can access, such as our multi-award winning Academy LMS. The built-in performance centre takes care of all your talent management needs, and its social features stimulate instant live communication. So you end up with a happy, loyal team working for a company that pushes employee growth and open communication! And all you needed was Growth Engineering!   Ready to tackle the underlying issues in your business? We’re ready and waiting to turn your business into a shimmering jewel of pride. Soon enough you’ll have the world’s best talent flocking to your doors.   Click here to watch our awesome videos or tell us your biggest concerns here and we’ll have you up and running in no time!    The post How to remove the BIGGEST obstacle to your employees’ happiness appeared first on Growth Engineering.

It can sometimes be surprising how important the little things are; things you don’t often think about or consider. Saving a receipt, for instance - the one you chuck straight in the bin, thinking, "I’ll never need this…" is always the one you need. And don’t get us started on stocking up on flea treatments for the cat. "I’ll pick it up next time I’m here…" soon leads to itchy bites and an infestation. Keeping on top of these little things is hard. Life gets in the way. And it’s the same in eLearning - if we’re not careful, we overlook the little things a few too many times and soon we’re knee-deep in the bog of eternal stench with no obvious way out. Think about it. You spend a bit too long on one aspect of your eLearning module - say, picking the best images or creating a gorgeous-looking bar graph - and have to sacrifice a well thought-out quiz section for some really basic multiple choice questions in order to meet the deadline. Once, and it might not matter too much; but keep doing it and you’ll soon discover just how important it is that learners’ knowledge is properly tested! There are a few ways that you can make sure you stay on top of these things: Make a checklist of essentials It might seem like you’re adding more work initially, but setting out your eLearning plan before you properly start working on it can really help in the long run. Not only will you be able to make sure each section is completed, but if you add timeframes into the list you can see how long you should be spending on each element in order to hit deadlines. If you have 4 hours left and you know that an awesome quiz will take 2.5 hours to complete, you won’t spend longer than the stipulated 1.5 hours sourcing images and making the eLearning unit look pretty. Be consistent One way to make sure the little niggly details aren’t overlooked is to be consistent. Pick your preferred style and stick with it - that way you won’t need to think about it each time. For example, decide whether you want to tell learners to ‘Click here to go to the next slide’ or just provide a clickable arrow to do the same. Once you’ve decided, use that format throughout the eLearning module. Not only does it make your job easier and allow you to think about other, more important things, but it makes the learning journey less confusing for learners, too. Think like a learner To really create great eLearning, you need to get under the skin of a learner and think like they do. If you were taking the eLearning module, what would you like to see? How much would you care about the colour of the title, or the size of the ‘Next’ arrow? Is it really important that every image is square? Once you begin to think like a learner, you’ll discover which details are really important - and which are barely noticed. Striking the correct balance of attention to detail versus working efficiently can be tricky, but once achieved you’ll find the quality of your eLearning increases tremendously. Want to learn more about what it takes to create great eLearning? We just wrote a white paper on it! Click the button below to download it.  The post 3 tips for eLearning efficiency appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Why do we have reviews?   Reviews have got a bit of a bad rep, mustering bleak images of oversized board rooms, and intimidating managers ticking off long lists. They can make you feel like you’re being put in front of a firing squad. Essentially, reviews are an attempt to measure an employee’s performance against company goals. So why is measurement so important? Because you cannot manage what you can’t measure. Yet so many companies find the area of measurement so difficult. Especially when it comes to managing things like staff development. You probably want to keep track of things like: Seeing if your staff are working towards the goals of your company Seeing if your staff need a little sprinkle of magic to help them improve And obviously being able to identify the weaknesses in your business   Stuff like this is crucial for quality and productivity activities. But how do you do all this? Formal appraisals seem to be getting chucked out the window alongside fax machines and stuffy suits, and now It’s generation Y’s turn to rule the roost.   Generation Y   Generation Y covers people born between the 1980s and the year 2000. They will make up 40% of the global workforce by 2020.   And they are a pretty kick-ass bunch.   Whilst their parents were faced with Thatcherism … depression, these lucky guys have more job options than any other group in history. They want to know why they are doing work and how it contributes to the world, not just their pockets. But with this new culture comes a new attitude to work. They’re demanding to know what a company can give to them in exchange for their hard work. And with more and more companies offering sabbaticals and flexible working hours to try to please this gang, it begs the question: What are you going to give to a generation that will cover an earth shattering 40% of the global workforce by 2020? Having regular performance reviews is one way of making them feel valued. Plus you get to flutter your angelic wings and show your care and commitment.   But someone please! Blow the dust off these boring reviews   The top 5 reasons why people quit are "lack of growth opportunities" and a "lack of teamwork". This is according to Gallup research, which included a meta-analysis of 44 organizations and 10,609 business units.   So reviewing performance all year round in a meaningful way has to be the way to go for all you big bosses out there. I mean who would want to slug their guts out in a dead-end job, day in day out, to have appreciation dictated to you once a year? And even that depends on whether your managers can muster up the enthusiasm. If this all sounds way too familiar? Then check out our Learning Management System and its Performance Centre add on, it’s a clever little platform that gives you all the connectedness you could ever need with your team-mates, and its online and accessible 24/7!  The post Has the rise of Generation Y rendered formal reviews useless? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Maybe it’s time to savour your solitude? In a corporate world that is obsessed with self promotion and networking we have cultivated a similar personality style to go with it: the extrovert. The introvert is thoughtful, calm and prepared but is often pushed into positions where they have to play the extrovert. This can be a draining experience, which can lead to frustration and a lack of job satisfaction. Introverts also love to write and make fabulous writers and bloggers, and with social media ruling as the top internet activity they can work up a storm straight from their office chair. We live in a world where some people like to think technology has replaced all ‘meaningful’ communication…. But actually, what it’s really done is create new channels of communication to facilitate a huge rainbow of personalities. No longer are we held back by the lost letter, the awkward silence in a dull conversation, or the beeping of a disconnected phone call. Instead we have access to instant messaging…social media…apps… to name but a few, and they’re all accessible 24/7. Get closer to your team The company-customer relationship may seem like the holy grail of success, but the manager-employee relationship is almost as important as the bond between Batman and Robin. Yes, one might get to wear the fancy cape and play with the big guns, but without Robin watching his back, Batman would fall flat on his masked mug. Speaking of good teams; teamwork, company guidelines and mentoring are some of the best ways to nurture this relationship. Which means that employees need engaging training and informal monitoring to keep them from turning into stagnant worker zombies. Snuggle up to your employees We’re all social at heart, we just socialise in different ways. So getting closer to your employees has never been more important. This is why we’ve integrated a social media platform and a  performance centre into our learning management system, The Academy LMS. This way managers can monitor their employees’ development whenever they need to, and all levels of staff can communicate with each other within the same platform. Meaning you’re able to grow great relationships and see how your work is impacting the company’s wider goals. What a killer combination. Batman and Robin better watch their backs! Whether you’re an introvert, or an extrovert, you’ll feel perfectly at home on the Academy LMS. Why not see for yourself? For the master plan on bringing your team together click here and we’ll be in touch in no time  The post Understanding Employee Performance: The Power of Introverts in a Social World appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Keeping busy can be like a disease. It’s the foolhardy urge to do something… anything and everything… all the time! As long as you’re busy, you’re being productive. In a culture of fast-food, sound bites, links and one-click ordering we’ve lost the skilled craftsmen who are capable of creating a masterpiece instead of something else that will get lost in one of your drawers, or disposed of instantly. Obviously we’re not recommending that you live a monk-like existence, sitting cross-legged at your desk, head-bowed, pondering over your next project. That would just be monkeying around. The corporate environment is a hustle and bustle of clicks, emails, paper jams, coffee, deadlines, project launches, system failures, more coffee, parties, planning… there’s no time for zen. Just get the job done and get it done on time, I hear you say. The Busy Fool Enjoys Manual Labour If you’re still squinting over spreadsheets and spending hours manually updating data, we have news for you… You’re using software from 1985. The only people excited to use this are probably still in shoulder pads and slacks re-watching their MacGyver video collection. There is no menial task that a little technology upgrade can’t help with. Yes, it might cost you a small yearly fee, but imagine the man hours you could save by integrating clever software into your business. You can use software to build customer lists, schedule your social media posts, report on the successes and failures of your campaigns and even manage your staff development. What’s more, it’ll never call in sick, go on holiday, or leave you for a more appealing organisation. Sometimes you can’t see the wood for the trees So many of us branch into things that aren’t even a part of our job role. Before you know it, you’re dipping in and out of so many projects that you lose sight of why you’re there in the first place. Yes, you’re just skating on the surface of your day, you busy fool. What you need to remember are your objectives, both daily, monthly and even yearly. But you’re probably, already doing that. This is where we see the problem Objectives and KPI’s are usually set at the beginning of each year, or worse simply stated in your contract with limited scope to adapt them as circumstances change. With the Performance Centre KPI’s and objectives can be modified whenever you like. Employees can also log in to see the exact correlation between their tasks and the impact they’re having on the company’s wider strategy. You can also schedule reviews, monitor your to-do lists, and access specific training directly from the platform, in a multitude of fun formats. This is what can change No longer will you have to sit through those dreaded annual performance reviews. Instead you’ll create a dynamic process of monitoring each staff member through a simple (but powerful) online portal. No longer will you fear your impact, worth or need in a job. Instead you’re exposed to the intricacies of your company’s strategies and goals and how you fit into this puzzle. This will also reduce the need for lengthy staff inductions and constant meetings. By bringing staff development and talent management together on one platform you are boosting internal connectivity, fostering an open, productive culture and giving yourself full transparency of your business activities. That’s the glory of technology. It makes us more connected in a world that was unnecessarily fragmented by people with too much time on their hands.   Stop being a busy fool and take matters into your own hands, take a tour of the performance centre now for free!  The post Don’t Be a Busy Fool: Learn to Prioritise using a Performance Management System appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’ve spoken ad nauseam about Gamification in the past. Seriously. We have many, many blogs on the topic and we’ve got a few in depth white papers, as well. We consider ourselves to be experts on the topic and we love to spread our knowledge around. But this week, we’ve decided to dig a little deeper. This time around, we’ll be sharing some expert level tips for getting more out of the game mechanics on your learning platform. Like Luke receiving his Jedi Training from Yoda on Dagobah, you’ll soon feel like a master of your craft. Think of us as Sir Alex Ferguson, Richard Williams and Sir Clive Woodward, all rolled into one super-coach/next level drill instructor, ready to train you in the dark arts of gamification. When you’re ready to begin, put on your fluorescent pink spandex training suit and we’ll see you at step one. STEP 1: Escape the Badge Buffet with Premium Badges: Most Learning Management Systems will include some kind of badging system. In other words, when a learner completes a piece of content, they’ll be given a certain virtual trinket. Whilst all badges have some degree of motivational power, some badges are more powerful than others. Not all badges are created equal. The harder it is to earn a badge, or the rarer it is, the more your learners will crave it. It’s the difference between eating at the buffet table and being treated to a hand-cooked meal. If you create special ‘one-off’ badges your learners will lust after the virtual reward like Gollum after the ring. You could, for instance, create a badge for being the first learner to complete a piece of content. On Growth Engineering’s Academy LMS, Managers are even able to offer personalised ‘Praise Badges’, whenever one of their charges has done a good job. They can upload images (or use one of the badges already available on the platform) and include a message for the receiver. This way each individual learner can feel like the beautiful and unique snowflake that they really are. STEP 2: Forget the Stick, Offer a Better Kind of Carrot: What’s more effective, the carrot or the stick? How about a delicious, jewel-encrusted, chocolate carrot? Experience Points and virtual Badges can be powerful tools for driving activity,but nothing spurs a learner into life quite like a tangible real-world reward. They’re like friendly learning cattle prods, jolting your learners onto bigger and better things. The completion of some tasks (like staying at the top of the Academy leaderboards for a month, for example), deserves more than a mere pat on the back. But that begs the question: what kind of real world rewards should you be offering? Anything, really. Concert Tickets, Shopping Vouchers, Personal Days and days out for your team. You could even take things to the next level by tying the rewards to your training and development programme. One of our clients, Steinhoff Retail, have a safari animal theme across their Academy LMS, where learners progress from a lowly ‘Spring Hare’ into a mighty ‘Lion’. As part of the programme, learners can earn prizes, like the opportunity to feed lemurs or to be a lion-keeper for the day. If you’re sitting there kicking yourself for failing to wrap your LMS around an awesome theme, then don’t fall into a sinkhole of despair. You can still link your real-world rewards to your content. Why not offer one-on-one sessions with experts from throughout your organisation (and beyond)? STEP 3: The Never-Ending Learning Story: This is a big one. Most learning platforms will let you create courses or curricula, where you can bundle individual learning assets (videos, documents, eLearning units, etc.) into learning packages. This is neat, but as a solution it doesn’t go deep enough. After all, what happens when the learner has sifted through the content and reached the end of the course? Did Alexander not weep when he realised that there were no kingdoms left to conquer? What you (and your learners) really need is the ability to create continuous learning pathways. This can be achieved by using a ‘Levels’ tool on your platform. You’ll need to make a list of the content that’s available on your system and map it onto a series of levels (on the Academy LMS, you can even set ‘required’ and ‘optional’ content). The learner will start at ‘Level One’ (which could be the ‘induction’ level) and will have access to a certain set of content. Once they’ve completed all the tasks required of them, they’ll ‘Level Up’, earning access to all the great new content available to them at ‘Level Two’. You can create as many levels as you like (if you have enough content to do so), so that the fun never needs to stop. The benefits of this approach are clear. Firstly, it eases the pressure on your over-taxed Admins (i.e. the people in charge of maintaining your learning portal), by automating the learning process (as much as such a thing is possible). Secondly, it means your learners will never be left wanting. They’ll always have access to a slew of content that perfectly maps on to their current level of understanding. What’s more, by releasing content in dribs and drabs (rather than making it all available at once), you can create a sense of mystery about the content that’s hidden in the level above them. It’s like the search for the ‘Holy Grail’. You’re never quite sure what you’ll stumble upon next and your quest will never end. It’s not like your learners will ever get to a stage where they ‘know too much’. If you’ve got the structure in place already, then fire away with your content cannon. So there we have it. Three next-level tips for getting more out of your gaming mechanics. Let us know what you think in the comments section. If you want to continue learning, then why not download our white paper on ‘The Business Case for Gamification’. Or, if you’re ready to take a tour of the world’s best Gamified Learning Management System, then please get in touch here, and we’ll make it happen!  The post Become a Gamification Guru: 3 Expert Tips for Getting More out of Your Gaming Mechanics appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Guys, you wouldn’t be here if you weren’t looking for some way to get the best ROI from your training programme, right? Well, the bad news is that the perfect L&D strategy isn’t going to flutter off of a rainbow and land in your lap. Don’t lose hope though - the good news is that your friends over here at GEHQ are more than happy to point you in the right direction! Before you make the first mark on your training outline, there’s one colossally huge step that you need to take first. If you skip it, you might as well complete the rest of your programme with a blindfold on. We’re talking about Training Needs Analysis. Training Needs Analysis does what it says on the label - it’s a process of analysing every aspect of your business and identifying the areas that are in most need of a robust training programme. To get your project off to the best start, here are a few handy tips and pointers: Figure out the big picture The first thing you need to do is to identify what your company is trying to achieve. Let’s say your organisation is a marketing agency that provides several services. It’s possible that their video production service costs the business too much money and time, and they’d prefer to focus on web design. If you don’t know this from the outset, you could waste a lot of time plotting a training programme that’s wholly irrelevant to the company’s chosen direction. History is a great teacher Before you go off making a bunch of mistakes, review your company’s previous approach to training. Here’s a whole repository of lessons that can shape your own training program. You can also discover what has produced great results in the past; then you can steal these ideas and claim them as your own! What problems can you solve? Nobody’s perfect, and any company will have a giant wish-list of needs that cover all aspects of the business. You need to know which of these needs can, and should, be addressed by the training. If ancient IT equipment and clunky processes are making things difficult, it’s not your job to fix them. Always ensure that you’re creating a training program that’s appropriate for the company you have - not the one you wish you had. Keep your finger on the pulse We’ve all been there, right? You spend weeks creating some training for an IT system only to discover that, whoops - that system is due to be replaced any day now. That’s not only frustrating - it’s a complete waste of your time, time you could be spending creating an awesome training programme that actually works. If your training content is going to get the best return on investment, you need to make sure that you know about any recent or upcoming changes in processes or procedures. Know your toolkit inside-out It’d be great to have access to a neural reprogramming ray that can instantly zap any information into your learners’ grey matter. Unfortunately, such a device doesn’t exist…yet (we’re working on it). To get the most out of your training, you need to make the best use of the tools you have at your disposal. Maybe that defunct video department can be turned into an in-house training machine. You might not have a learning management system, but perhaps your intranet could be a way of delivering your content. The effectiveness of your training might just hinge on how well you utilise your existing resources. Analysing your training needs is the first rung on a very tall ladder, but it is the step on which all of the others rest. Get this part right and you’ll have the best foundation for success that you could wish for and you’ll be turning your learners into superheroes without the need for brain-altering ray guns! Once you’ve established your needs, you’re going to want a way to solve all of your issues and make your training and development dreams come true. To do this you’ll need some awesome content that engages your learners and makes them actually want to learn. Well, guys - wake up and stop dreaming, because Genie is here to help! Genie is a game-based authoring tool that lets you collaborate with your whole team and easily create learning games that capture your learners’ imagination. Visit unleashthegenie.com now to start your free demo and join the learning revolution! Check out 5 More Steps to Training Needs Analysis Heaven for even more TNA pointers!  The post 5 steps to Training Needs Analysis heaven appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Games are for kids, right? There’s no way you’d catch a self-respecting adult playing Monopoly or Call of Duty. Adults are too busy opening savings accounts, returning library books, drinking coffee and indulging in other adult-like behaviour. But wait, what’s that you say? According to the Entertainment Software Association, the average game player is 35 years old. In fact, only 26% of gamers are under 18. Well, that blows the stereotypical view of the gamer as a spotty, socially-awkward teenage boy out of the water. Gaming culture is now inescapable. Check out what Michael D. Gallagher, the president of the Entertainment Software Association has to say: "Video games are ingrained in our culture. Driven by some of the most innovative minds in the tech sector, our industry’s unprecedented leaps in software and hardware engages and inspires [a] diverse global audience." As Gallagher notes, it’s all about engagement. Game mechanics engage a wide variety of demographics. With the rise of Gen Y, this situation isn’t going to change any time soon. To ignore this fact when it comes to designing your Learning & Development programme would be foolish indeed. Let’s stick to the facts. According to a study from the University of Colorado, simulations and games have a huge effect on end learners. In fact, those who took game-based learning (rather than your typical, workaday learning content), scored 14% higher in their assessments and registered a 9% increase in their retention rate. So game-based learning works. But that doesn’t mean it’s something that learners want. Surely your learners will want to stick to tried and tested instructional methods? What learner doesn’t jump up and down at the thought of blowing the dust off of an old textbook and leafing through hundreds of pages? Ah, but wait. A survey from TalentLMS reveals that 79% of learners believe that their motivation would be boosted if their learning environment was more like a game. This shouldn’t be surprising. The benefits of ‘play’ are numerous. It reduces stress, stimulates the mind and improves brain function. As George Bernard Shaw once said, "We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing". News just in: It’s not just kids who like to have fun. Whatever age we are, we all get a kick out of a healthy dopamine spike. We can’t turn off the pleasure receptors in our brain. Why would we want to? With that in mind, maybe it’s time that we stop thinking of games as a mere distraction. The old guard would have you think that they’re a distraction, or an indulgence. But times are changing. The use of game mechanics within learning content grows more sophisticated by the day. It’s now easier than ever to create your own learning games. That leaves us with one final question. Do you want to adapt to this changing landscape or do you want to stick to your fusty training manuals and outdated slideshows? That’s our opinion. But why not find out for yourselves? Using the Genie Content Authoring Tool, you can create fully-formed learning games for your team. Sign up for a free 30-day demo here!  The post Do Learning Games Work in an Adult Learning Context? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Here’s one for you gamification gurus out there! We’ve talked a lot about how important badges are in a gamified online learning solution. A virtual badge might seem like a silly little trinket, but don’t be fooled - these silly little trinkets actually affect your brain and change the way you approach a task, making you strive for awesomeness without even realising it! You can read more about how badges work here and here, but we’re not going to cover that today. Today we’re rolling up our sleeves and getting our hands dirty with some practical advice on how to make the best, most desirable badges your learners could wish for! Ready to go? Okay… Image is everything It might seem superficial and shallow, but appearances matter when it comes to badges. Your learners go through a lot to earn these awards, so they need to look like they’re worth working for. Don’t worry. You don’t need a top-notch design department to make a great badge image. With some rudimentary image editing software and a little time, you can create something truly magical. Once you’ve made your first badge, you’ll then have something that can work as a template moving forward. Here are some pointers to help you: Make sure the colours you use reflect your corporate identity. Keep your badge images around 500 X 500 pixels to avoid loss in quality. Use badge images that are relevant to the challenge at hand. Make them earn it! If you hand out badges willy-nilly for every little thing, you run the risk of devaluing them. Your badges should reflect the nature of the task, i.e. the more difficult the task, the more awesome the badge should be! Now, we’re not saying that you should hoard your badges like a white-knuckled old miser. It’s perfectly okay to award badges for minor challenges too, but these should look like minor badges. One way that you can differentiate the good badges from the awesome badges is to colour-code them. There’s this little thing called the Olympic Games - you might have heard of it. Their medals are ranked from bronze, to silver, to gold. It’s clear to everyone who takes part that silver is better than bronze and gold is better than silver. You could use a similar hierarchy with your badges and generate some Olympic-calibre competitiveness around your learning content! Get the name right What’s in a name? Well to answer that question, let’s try a little thought experiment. Let’s say you’ve worked hard for a solid hour to complete an eLearning unit about performance management for managers. You finish your training and you get a notification on your screen telling you that you’ve won the Performance Management Training Badge.   Whoo-pee.   Now, imagine a bright and shiny alternative universe where you don’t receive the Performance Management Training Badge. Instead, you get the Master Mentor badge! Not only have you earned a badge, but you feel like you actually are a master mentor. It feels good, doesn’t it!? It’s certainly a lot better than a mere functionally descriptive title. Add a winning description If your training delivery system is worth its salt, you’ll also be able to add a description to your badge. This is usually used to tell the winner why they earned it. In much the same way as the title, this is yet another opportunity for you to make the learner feel awesome. Generally speaking, you’ve only got a certain amount of space in which to fit your description. It’ll take a little word wizardry to get your message across, but your description should: Congratulate the winner Tell them why they earned the badge Tell them that they are amazing If you can fit that into a couple of lines and keep it super-enthusiastic (the more over-the-top, the better), then you’re on to a winner. Let them show off What good is a trophy if nobody but you can see it? To get the most out of your badges, you need to give the learner the opportunity to show them off! If we take the Academy LMS as an example, any time somebody earns a badge, it appears in the social feed for all to see. The Academy also features a leaderboard which ranks everyone according to how many badges they’ve earned. Of course, we use our LMS for our own internal training and it never ceases to amaze how hard people will work just to knock their co-workers off of the top spot! Even if they are virtual tokens, your learners will still be proud of every badge they earn, so you should also look for ways to let them share their badges outside of their LMS. Give them the means to share their badges on Facelink or Pinbook or whatever the kids are using these days, and they’ll be only too glad to do it! If you’re really clever, you can award badges for that as well! So look, we know you must be crazy-excited to try some of these ideas out for yourself and we’ve got the perfect playground for you! Just pop along to unleashthegenie.com, sign up for a demo (it’s totally free!), and start building a game-based eLearning unit. It’s easy as pie to upload your own badge images, create titles and descriptions, and assign them to screens. And just wait ‘til you see what happens when you actually earn a badge! We won’t spoil the surprise, but it’s awesome! Happy building!  The post Building Better Badges for your Online Learning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Many moons ago, a wise prophet stood before the earth and proclaimed ‘So come on let me entertain you. Let me-eeee entertain you’. And although no one knows the exact source of this quote, it is widely accepted as some of the wisest Western philosophy of all time (since the year 1997). However, in the (eighteen) years since, we’ve lost sight of that simple message. And what was once exciting is now dull. Ordinary. Like when all the lava in a lava lamp just subsides at the bottom of it and it becomes a bog standard lamp. A lamp which doesn’t even work very well. And it’s sitting in a cupboard gathering dust. I’m talking about you, eLearning. Look at you, you’ve let yourself go terribly. No one wants to listen to you anymore. You’re just hanging about going unnoticed. Because you’re being selfish and refusing to show consideration to the learner. Entertainment is vital. Which is why voice is so important - and by finding it you can inspire anyone to learn. Hey I don’t wanna ‘Rock DJ’ on about this (another quote from who knows where), but making this stuff entertaining again is the only way to capture the masses. The more entertaining you make things, the keener your employees will be to learn. Because if people don’t pay attention they won’t learn diddly squat. Unconvinced so far? Here’s an example. Below is some typical, boring office speak. To understand the importance of voice, try reading this to yourself. "Employees are expected to treat all information with utmost confidentiality. This applies to telephone, email and all other forms of communication blah blah blah mail merge’. Now read this passage re-written in a pirate voice. "Argh! Ye seadogs shall ne’er breath a word of this else ye fear walking the plank! Not ye scrolls, parchments or messages in ye bottles blargh! blargh! blargh! mail merge’. Notice the difference? You’ve probably learned loads more. Soon you and your office will rule the seven seas. Hooray! Think how many people thrive on entertaining themselves reading the new John Grisham or 50 Shades of Grey. Millions! Then think of how many people sit at home to read manuals about how to use a VCR. Six tops - and they’re all weird. But here’s the trick - imagine if VCR manufacturers could entertain on that level? If, somehow, E.L. James wrote an erotic thriller about how to properly set your Toshiba? Your audience would enjoy learning so much more. (Although perhaps they’d never be able to look their recording device directly in the eyes again). And not only would they enjoy learning more, they’d learn better. It’s important the reader shouldn’t feel like they’re even learning at all. The audience is engaged when the writer resists myopically focusing on the subject. They should just absorb all of this information the earth’s surface is 70% water without even noticing. See, you didn’t even notice you were learning there. Go back and read it again. You might notice a hidden fact. Voice is vital if you want to stand out. Get it right and you can really take off. Soon you’ll have ‘stars directing your fate’ (unknown, 1998). But only if you make your readers enjoy your writing so much they have no choice but to share it. Make them laugh, cry, do a somersault, just don’t bore them whatever you do. There’s enough boring things on the internet anyway, usually sites ending in .gov.uk or anything without a picture of a cat. ‘But I’m a really dull person! How can I possibly entertain anyone?’ I hear you cry.  Well, practice makes perfect. Try changing your voice in these situations to start with. Maybe sing while you pick up the phone. Or make your shopping list rhyme. It’s hard to find a supermarket that sells ‘bread’ and ‘lead’. But it’s a good start. Soon you’ll be a pro. I’ll leave you with my famed Robert de Niro impression. ‘You talkin’ to me?’ Admittedly this doesn’t work as well written down. If at all. But if you could hear it, you would agree it’s the perfect way of showing just how important voice is to entertainment. And if you don’t, then you might as well ‘be loving angels instead’ (no idea) you big, busted lava lamp. Oh, and if the whole voice thing doesn’t work, here’s the cat. Juliette Denny is the Managing Director of Growth Engineering. Her focus is on building technology solutions that engineer growth for clients, whilst making learning fun for learners. Follow her on Twitter and let her know whether you liked the article!  The post Let My (eLearning) Entertain You: Why Voice & Character is Wildly Important! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Earlier in the week, we shared three top tips to help you develop into a card carrying gamification guru. However, our gamification goblet runneth over and we’ve got yet more suggestions to serve up. If you’re ready to become the Michael Jordan of game mechanics, then read on… Remember, these pointers are aimed at those who have (at least) an intermediary level of knowledge when it comes to applying gamification. If you’re a gamification greenhorn, we recommend you start here instead. For those who are already well versed in the dark arts of gamification, let’s get started. STEP 1: Let Your Social Butterflies Take Flight: In too many cases, the virtual rewards across a learning platform focus solely on driving the completion of learning content. Whilst this is important, it’s better by far to aim at creating a cohesive learning community, where knowledge sharing and the growth of intellectual capital is encouraged (and rewarded). Throughout your team, you’ll have information-silos that are just begging to be tapped into. Without a system that gives you the tools to facilitate this process, you’ll never unlock your inner knowledge-baron. By easing the communication process, creating Insight Groups around salient subject matter and rewarding the flow of information, you’ll soon foster an organisation full of wise old sages, brainboxes and unashamed eggheads. Soon enough best practise will become every-day practise. ‘But how is this possible?’ I hear you ask. The ‘Achievements’ system on our Academy LMS, allows certain badges to be ‘triggered’ by user events. For instance, a learner can receive a badge and some experience points for commenting on a video for the 5th time, for sharing their 10th link on the dialogue stream, or for answering a learner’s question in the experts section. If you’ve spent any time with a Playstation or an Xbox in recent years, you’ll be more than aware of how effective an Achievement system can be. Either way, it’s time to stop clipping the wings of the social butterflies within your organisation and to start rewarding informal learning. STEP 2: STREAM - Status Rules Everything Around Me: Increased status sometimes acts as its own reward. If a particular learner has made a certain amount of progress, then surely these breakthroughs need to be recognised on theplatform? If a learner has earned fame for their admirable knowledge-sharing bona-fides, then surely they deserve to be positioned as some kind of ‘Expert’ on your learning platform? Some Learning Management Systems will let you build ‘Level Structures’ on your platform, so that you can provide continuous development pathways for your learners. If you’ve got a particularly swanky LMS (like ours, for instance), then it should also let you name these levels, so that learners feel a real sense of progression as they move through the content. A learner might start off as a ‘Beginner’ or a ‘Rookie’ and work their way up through the ‘Intermediary’ levels before earning their status as a ‘Master’ or ‘Veteran’. This is all well and good, but this is an area where we recommend that you have some fun (whilst trying to draw from your existing brand values). Why not build a level structure based around superheroes (Vigilante, Sidekick, Speedster, Shapeshifter, Mentalist, etc.) or cats - everybody loves cats (how about: Kitten, Wildcat, Panther, Leopard, Tiger, Lion?) and design the imagery used around your platform with this theme in mind? On the Academy LMS, you’re also able to label certain learners as ‘Experts’. The effect of this is two-fold. Firstly, you’ll give your newly-formed experts warm fuzzy feelings. Secondly, these experts will now be accessible through the ‘Experts Area’, where they can be asked questions and help to create a smarter, better informed, learning community. STEP 3: Your Mission, If You Choose to Accept It… Verily, brave learning warrior, arise, conquer your training goals and claim your booty! But take heed. There be many a strange adventure ahead that will befall you in your valorous quest. King Arthur could have picked no better champion. Now, valiant knight, go forth and vanquish this Health & Safety training, post-haste! If appropriate, why not add a narrative to your learning? The fine folks at Buffer have already noted that storytelling is an amazingly effective way of activating all the key areas of our brain. The radio receiver that is your brain is never more receptive than when it’s tuned into a storytelling station. From a learner’s perspective, it breaks up their training content and throws them straight into the learning experience. We’re not suggesting that you need to transform your training course into the next great work of literature. In fact, we recommend that you keep it simple. One of our customers has had great success by using a ‘Mission’ structure, where every course has a clearly defined beginning, middle and end. The beginning sets up the rest of the course, the middle is where most of the learning happens and the end is where the learner receives an award for completing the mission. This can be in the form of a shopping voucher, a day out or a team meal. This loose story-based structure ties neatly onto the gaming mechanics available on the platform. You can tie mission progress to ‘Level’ progress and create special ‘Badges’ and images that reflect the story being told. Soon enough you’ll have created a paradigm shift within your learners’ minds. Learning will no longer be viewed as a chore. Phew! You made it to the end… You know what that means, right? You’re now a legitimate Gamification Guru. When you’re finished running laps around the room, let us know how you feel in the comments section. If you’d like to continue learning, then why not check out our somewhat brilliant white paper, ‘The Business Case for Gamification’. Alternatively, if you’d like to see the world’s best Gamified Learning Management System in action, then sign-up for a tour here!  The post 3 More Expert Tips for Unlocking Your Inner Gamification Guru: appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Over millions of years, the natural world has evolved so we can adapt perfectly to our surroundings. First man could crawl, then stand, then text while walking. In the animal world, evolution peaked at the chameleon - a miracle of nature that can blend in anywhere simply by changing the colour of its skin, allowing it to go completely unnoticed. Then, in about 1982, the flamingo came along and wrecked all of that. Nature has never offered a reasonable explanation for why a metre-tall, shocking pink bird exists. But who cares? The flamingo doesn’t even try to fit in. He knows he’s a big deal and flaunts his feathers about like a beaked Kardashian. We can all learn from this. Everyone likes to look at beautiful things like Mr Flamingo. They make our brains react positively, which in turn makes the brain work better. This is why glossy magazines put attractive people on the cover. Their dazzling looks reel us in so we buy the magazine. Or at the very least take it from a dental surgery. Dentists aside, to really capture the public’s imagination, you should be doing the same with your eLearning’s aesthetics. Which brings us to our fun flamingo fact number one… Flamingo Fact 1: Flamingos are not an endangered species. In fact their numbers are remarkably stable. Yep, flamingos are doing great by standing out from the crowd. But you know what’s dying out? A third of the world’s chameleon species, that’s right. Just like these magic lizards think they can do the bare minimum and look exactly the same as everything else, eLearning punishes unoriginality in the same way. If you’re boring and just ‘fit in’ what’s the point? No one will take notice of you and you’ll eventually disappear. Every serious business with eLearning to roll out, should make their user interface a thing of beauty. Think Michelangelo meets Steve Jobs. Because aesthetics evoke positive emotions. And these emotions make users more motivated, less frustrated and help them enjoy learning more. That way, all learners will get the best possible results. Done! Easy. Wait, wait, wait. This doesn’t mean you just create any old nonsense. Yes, if your interface were to look like some tie-dye, dadaist monstrosity even Lady Gaga would be embarrassed by, then sure it would stand out. But not in a good way. The flamingo may be startling, but at the end of the day, it’s still a bird. So there’s a few constraints to bear in mind. Firstly, the brain loves symmetry, so it can go into autopilot and process other information. If there’s no pattern, your brain will treat the interface as a distracting puzzle and, instead of absorbing the important learning material, will just give up. I want to get to the juicy stuff, not navigate my way through a magic eye puzzle (all that work just to see a floating dolphin? If I wanted to see a dolphin that much, I’d google it). Secondly, you might think font size, typography and other words from the Microsoft Office glossary are fairly unimportant. But they’re not! 45% of consumers make judgements about a site’s credibility based on these variables. And in just 3.2 seconds. They’ll either be hooked or zone out before you can say ‘I wonder if the dental receptionist noticed the magazines under my arm?’ Users can tell who hasn’t bothered to make their content look good. So why should they waste their time on it? Worried it’s too late to do anything about your brand’s appearance? Time for flamingo fact number two… Flamingo Fact 2: Flamingo chicks are born grey with white feathers. They don’t turn pink for a year or two. So fear not, you too can become a beautiful pink flamingo soon. It’s never too late to create your brand’s look, but the sooner you begin, the sooner you’ll reap the rewards. You wouldn’t go out in stinky clothes or with lipstick streaked over your forehead. It would reflect badly on you. In the same way, the uglier your content is, the uglier your brand looks. Makeover time! As well as being beautiful, all content should fit your brand in a way which is distinctive and reflective of company values. If done right, people will be able to recognise it without even seeing your name. Looking good! You’ve still got lipstick on your head though. Sit still, I’ll get it… So make sure your site is attractive. Make sure your LMS looks good. Unique. Symmetrical. Shiny. A good question to ask before you finish with the aesthetics of your content is ‘would a magpie steal this?’ If the answer is no, then why not? You give that magpie no chance but to rob you blind. Think that’s the end of the facts or the bird stuff? Hey, one more for good measure. Flamingo Fact 3: After mating, the male and female flamingo build a nest together and take it in turns to sit on the egg … Actually, no, that one’s not really relevant. The important thing is, when it comes to your business’s aesthetics - be a flamingo, not a chameleon. And soon enough, thousands will flock to look at you. Juliette Denny is the Managing Director of Growth Engineering. Her focus is on building technology solutions that engineer growth for clients, whilst making learning fun for learners. Follow her on Twitter and let her know whether you liked the article!  The post 3 Undeniable Facts About Aesthetics in eLearning (& Flamingos) appeared first on Growth Engineering.

It’s Monday morning. You arrive at work after a relaxing weekend with your batteries fully charged and a look of sheer determination in your eyes. "This week," you say to yourself, "I’m going to make a real difference to some lucky learners." But once you sit down at your desk and look at your to-do list, the volume of work in front of you is dauntingly huge. How can you change your learners’ lives if you just don’t have the time or the tools? Don’t panic guys! There’s a solution to every problem, and the challenge of producing eLearning on time is no different. Before diving head-first into your huge workload, take five minutes to read our top tips for speeding up your eLearning production! Collaborate It’s great that you want to change your learners’ lives and give them an experience that engages them, but you can’t expect to do it all by yourself! Every superhero finds themselves working with others to bring down the forces of darkness, no matter how reluctantly. Maybe you’re another lone ranger, a renegade on the fringes - but think about how much easier it would be to enlist the help of other experts. Collaboration in eLearning is essential to delivering your projects on time. You could have the most advanced eLearning in the world and a budget the size of a small country, but it’ll count for nothing if nobody on the team knows what anybody else is doing. With the rise in cloud-based applications, there’s never been a better choice of collaboration tools. Whether you create a notebook in Evernote, or make use of Trello’s Kanban boards, your team should agree on an online project management solution that works for everyone. If you’re still at a loss on what to do next, follow the link for a few winning tips to boost collaboration in your eLearning production! Why not let your imagination off the leash completely? What if your eLearning production tool had a built-in project management capability? Hold that thought… Use templates Whenever a car manufacturer designs a new car, they don’t first sit down to design a wheel. We’ve had wheels for a long time. When it comes to wheels, we’re good. The traditional car template has four wheels and that’s worked pretty well up until now. It’s the same for eLearning. Through trial and error and decades of successes and failures, we know what works well and what doesn’t. From experience, we’ve collected a library of features that good eLearning should have, from the individual screen-types down to the overall UI. With an eLearning template, you don’t have to expend development resources and valuable time on building every unit from the ground up. All you need to do is populate that template with the relevant information and you have an ace piece of eLearning in a fraction of the time! Still, there’s always room for improvement. You should always be looking for new ways to engage your learners. Maybe they’d much rather be playing a game than taking a HR Policy quiz. Who says they can’t do both? More on that later! Keep organised Even with an online project management tool and a killer eLearning template, there’s no excuse for sloppiness. Think for a moment - how many hours of your time have been lost because someone misplaced some essential assets? When you’re looking for ways to improve the efficiency of your eLearning production, it’s not enough to find tools that make the individual processes faster. You need to examine what you’re doing right now and to look for the cracks in the floorboards. Asset management is just as important as project management. One way to avoid unforeseen delays is to keep your images, videos and audio files in the same location. Make sure everybody knows where this location is and they have the required permissions to update the files. In conclusion, you need a project management tool, a tool for building engaging eLearning from templates and an asset management tool. On top of that, all of these tools have to be 100% collaborative so that your team members have full visibility over the project. In a perfect world, you would just have one tool that does all of these things, but surely that’s just wishful thinking… Not at all! Genie is a game-based eLearning authoring tool that’s built on collaboration. With Genie, you can manage your whole team and choose from a library of awesome games to create your eLearning around. With this powerful tool at your fingertips, the learner engagement that you dream of on Monday morning will be a reality by Friday. Give it a shot for yourself and start your free 30-day demo today!  The post 3 ways to speed up eLearning production appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Awards season might be dying down, but we’re not ready to slow down any time soon! We’ve just been named as a finalist in this year’s AITD Excellence Awards! Since 2002, the Australian Institute of Training and Development (AITD) has used these awards to recognise outstanding achievement in learning and development and in organisational development. That’s right, these awards are actually based in the Land Down Under. Not bad going for our UK-based company! But we can’t take all the credit, because this has only been made possible through a close and fruitful partnership with one of our Australian clients, Holcim Australia. They licensed our gamified, social Academy LMS and used it to build their very own Holcim Australia Sales Academy. We managed to calm down Juliette Denny, our Managing Director, just long enough to get a few words from her: "I feel like running all the way around the globe to celebrate with our Holcim friends in person! The fact that we’re making such big waves on the opposite side of the planet proves just how much impact we’re making internationally!" The category we’re up for is ‘Best Implementation of a Blended Learning Solution’. But what went into getting shortlisted? Holcim’s blended learning solution Holcim haven’t just licensed our Academy LMS, they’ve also licensed our high-impact interactive sales training content, which is all accredited by the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management. They based their learning programme around this content, and turned it into a robust five-stage blended learning solution: Online learning - Learners complete an online unit which gives them a full overview of the topic. Applying learning on-the-job - Leaners apply their new-found knowledge back in the real world (Just because we love online learning doesn’t mean we forget that this place exists!). Their experiences are recorded as case studies to see how they’re getting on. Face-to-face workshop - Learners prepare work for highly-interactive workshops. Rather than traditional classroom spoon-feeding, these are super-engaging and make sure that everyone gets involved! Written assignment - Learners go away and spend some time putting together a report to demonstrate their understanding of the topic. Writing something like this for the first time since school might seem scary, but with all the training to this point writing it ends up being a breeze. Accreditation - All of the learner’s hard work pays off, as they end up earning an internationally recognised qualification from the ISMM! Though a lot of this learning takes place offline, it’s all managed through the online LMS. Convenient, eh? Holcim’s results But what has this robust learning programme actually achieved? Well, since launching the programme, Holcim has seen its sales performance accelerating all across the business. The learners have also shown enormous levels of engagement with their training. To put this into perspective, the average learner is logging into Holcim Australia Sales Academy a staggering 46 times! Finally, the chance to earn real internationally recognised qualifications has been a huge morale boost. After the first round of qualifications was awarded, participation rates in the face-to-face workshops jumped from 87% to 94%. This is fantastic, given that Holcim’s workforce is spread all across Australia, so getting to the workshops is a genuine challenge for some! So what next? The AITD Excellence Awards winners will be announced on November 27 at a swanky gala dinner in Sydney. We can’t wait! If you fancy finding out more about Holcim’s fantastic learning programme, check out their case study! And if you want to see what our Academy LMS could do for you, why not take a free tour?  The post We’re a finalist in the AITD Excellence Awards! appeared first on Growth Engineering.

Last week, we looked at Training Needs Analysis and we were even generous enough to give you 5 handy tips to help you get the most out of it. We’re nice like that! But just when you thought you’d found the limits of our benevolence, we’re back again to give you 5 more pointers to help make sure your TNA process is as smooth as Carlos Santana drinking a pint of Guinness in a silk onesie! So, we highlighted the importance of knowing your company’s aims, knowing their training history and figuring out what resources you have available to you. What’s next? 1. Who needs the training the most? As you gather your data and get closer to defining where your training needs lie, you’ll start to notice particular groups and departments that are in greater need of training than others. There’s no single reason why these training gaps open up and your circumstances will likely be unique to your company. Some examples of reasons might include: Rapid business growth An ever-changing product list Previous reluctance to provide training Lack of employee engagement Only you can tell why this need for training has grown, but the important thing is that you’ve defined who the struggling employees are. Now all you need to do is focus your efforts in these areas and ensure that those with the greatest need get the help they deserve. 2. Who are your subject matter experts? So, where are you going to find the information that your learners need to succeed in their jobs? You could Google it, I guess, but there is a more efficient way to harvest expertise and it’s right there on your doorstep. You need to discover who the subject matter experts are within your organisation. They don’t just know their topic inside-out, but they know what it means within the context of the company. Generally speaking, the SME’s input to the training will be an additional duty on top of their already-busy working day. You’ll need to consider how much time each potential SME can commit to the project. You may find that the person with the most expertise has the least amount of time. The savviest SME in the world is useless to you if they can’t get around to answering their emails! 3. How will you deliver the training? What form is your training going to take? There are a lot of options available to you ranging from classroom sessions, to manager-led, face-to-face training, to online training solutions. What you choose will largely be dictated by budget and time constraints but the big question you need to ask yourself is which method will deliver the best return on your investment. For example, classroom training may be easy to arrange and relatively uncomplicated, but with the additional costs that surround it (venue booking, travel & lunch expenses, etc.), the total investment can become substantial. The effectiveness of this type of training can also be difficult to measure, which can make calculating the return on investment quite tricky. An online training solution requires more forethought and planning which can delay your training programme. Once this solution has been implemented, however, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how effective each piece of learning collateral is. This also opens the door for a blended training solution that lets you plan and manage classroom training within your online learning platform. As an online training company, our opinion might be a little biased, but that’s only because we’ve seen at first-hand the effect online learning can have on your ROI. You can check out our white paper here. 4. Review roles and competencies Your business is like a big machine - a machine with a lot of moving parts. Take some time to look at the various roles in your organisation and how these roles interact with one another. Many of your day-to-day processes rely on a chain of different roles working towards the same goal. If one link in that chain is a little weaker, it has an effect on all of the others. If, for example, your TNA process has illustrated a widespread lack of knowledge at an associate level, you might discover that this is the result of poor communication at a management level. This essential competency must be addressed as a matter of priority since its impact is so large. Then again, you might find that these failings are systemic and stem from outdated processes and inefficient communication systems. In this case, there isn’t much that you, as a training manager, can do to fix the problem, but that doesn’t mean that it’s out of your hands. Perhaps you can consider training that focuses on making the most out of the systems that are in place, no matter how clunky they might be! 5. What form will your content take? "Pole Position" on the Genie Authoring Tool Finally, you need to get down to the content of your training programme. By now, you know where the gaps are and where your efforts should be focused. If your learners are lacking in product knowledge, for example, you need to find the most effective way of giving them that knowledge so that it is absorbed and retained. Here, we’re hitting on the biggest challenge that training professionals face today - engaging their learners. It’s quick and easy to put a document or a slideshow together, but learners today demand something more interactive. There isn’t a training manager alive who wouldn’t want to pour time and thought into training content that’s both informative and engaging for the learner, but deadlines and budget constraints usually get in the way. An online authoring tool could be the ideal solution. With the right tool, you can quickly build eLearning without the need for an eLearning developer. Genie is an authoring tool with a difference. It’s an entirely collaborative platform that lets you and your team create game-based eLearning units quickly and easily. The result is a training asset that conveys all of the relevant information, but that behaves more like a game. If that doesn’t win your learners’ hearts and turn your training programme into a roaring success, nothing will! Want to try it for yourself? Pop over to unleashthegenie.com now and sign up for a free demo.  The post 5 More Steps to Training Needs Analysis Heaven appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We often talk about how we use our unique Discovery Method to bring the personal touch to the online learning journey. It sounds great doesn’t it? But what exactly is the Discovery Method? The problem When we entered the world of online learning (a long time ago now!), we found that it wasn’t anywhere near as engaging as it should have been. We’ve written endlessly about how we use gamification and social learning to engineer enormous levels of engagement, but there was still more that could be done. The problem with a lot of online learning is that it’s often built to be ‘one-size-fits-all’. Since anyone could be having access to the content at any time, it is generally designed to deliver all of the information in a way which anyone could understand. But this means that the training isn’t speaking directly to that particular learner. In a face-to-face classroom environment, a teacher can get to know each individual and relate the content to them. But this personalised learning journey seemed to be missing online. We decided that things didn’t have to be like this! So the Discovery Method was designed with this problem in mind. Discovery Method step-by-step So how exactly does the Discovery Method solve this problem? Well, it’s a method we use to create content, which enables the learner to ‘Discover’ the expertise through reflecting on their own experiences. What this boils down to is allowing a learner to plug information into the online learning unit. The unit is then clever enough to recall this information later on, letting them think about what they’ve just learned in context. Let’s make things easier by putting this into context. In this example, a learner is finding out about how to manage customer expectations: The learner will input their name and the names of their colleagues at the start of the unit. From this point on, the eLearning will refer to the learner by their name (e.g. ‘Hello John Smith!’). It can also take the names of the learner’s colleagues and use them to populate the scenarios dotted throughout the eLearning content. It’s a quick and easy way to breathe a little life into the training material. The learner now takes a quick quiz to see how much they understand the topic at this point. They’re given immediate feedback so that they can see where their knowledge gaps are, letting them focus on filling them. The learner is now asked to think of two customers they had problems with in the past. They input their names and the reason for their dissatisfaction. Next the learner works their way through some training, which again uses the personalised names they entered at the start. Now that they have this training under their belt, the unit recalls the two dissatisfied customers they thought about in step 3. They’re now asked to think about exactly what went wrong and how it could have been avoided, in the context of the training they’ve just completed. At the end of the topic the learner will take another quiz to check their understanding. This helps them to see how much they have progressed over the unit, and lets them know if there are still areas they need to brush up on. Finally, the learner is given a downloadable PDF. This is a personal document which records all of the information they inputted throughout the unit. So they can clearly see how their thinking might have changed between steps 3 and 5. Steps 3 to 5 can take place multiple times throughout a unit, allowing every area of the topic to be placed into context. By getting the learner to keep reflecting back, the training is much easier to take in. And having already thought about everything in context, our learner will be far more likely to recall the information the next time they find themselves in a similar situation in the real world! You can do it too! You might think that the Discovery Method is tricky to implement into your content. But actually, we’ve turned it into a simple process by building it into Genie, our game-based content authoring tool! Genie is designed to be as user-friendly as possible, so it made sense to make it simple to incorporate the Discovery Method as well. When building a screen, you just have to add a Discovery Method question. When the learner gets to it, they’ll be prompted to fill in their answers: Then when building the screen you want to recall the information, you use an easy drop-down menu to select the question you want to use. When the learner goes through the unit, at this point it will bring up whatever they wrote in the previous section: How you use this is entirely up to you!   If you’d like to play around with the Discovery Method for yourself, why not sign up for a free 30-day trial of Genie?    The post What is the Discovery Method of learning? appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re all about gamifying online learning here at Growth Engineering. Gamification is the magic ingredient we add to all of our learning technologies to get learners engaged and make them actually want to take the content. The tools in our gamification-kit are called game mechanics and today we’re going to look at one of the most powerful game mechanics - Levels. So, what are levels? The concept of levels was born in the early days of video gaming. When someone starts playing a game for the first time, they need time to adapt to the controls and the game-play. Because they’re an inexperienced newbie, the first level is generally quite easy. As they progress through the game, from second to third level and beyond, the challenges get more difficult - which is great, because the player is becoming more skilled. In essence, levels let the player measure their proficiency in that particular game and the bite-sized, incremental challenges keep the player hooked. But what’s that got to do with online learning? Levels can be used in much the same way to secure learners engagement on your LMS. Let’s take a look at Growth Engineering’s very own internal Academy. There’s no point having a great level structure if nobody can see it! As you can see here, the level details are front-and-centre on the main dashboard of the LMS. The learner can see at a glance which level they are on and how far they need to go to complete it. So, let’s take a closer look at this level. Here, the learner can get a clearer look at the level. On the left, there’s a summary of the level completion and the experience points earned so far. On the right, we’ve got a list of content. As you can see, each item in the list has a number of experience points attached. These points contribute to the total score for the level. If the learner doesn’t complete the content, they won’t earn the required number of points to pass to the next level. What’s going on here then? The secret science behind levels is pretty straight-forward. Humans have a natural urge to complete things. By splitting your content into levels, you create a sequence of mini-victories. In this way, an end is always in sight, and the learner doesn’t feel as though they’re tackling some impossibly huge task. If you want to read more about how UX designers exploit your obsessive-compulsive tendencies, check out our article on progress bars - the hidden menace… Like most things, when it comes to gamification, levels let you hack your learners’ brains and hijack their most basic urges to get the most out of them. Besides this, they also help you to create a logical pathway throughout the learning, forcing you to think of the best way to present the information to your learners. By creating a continuous development programme in this way, you are effectively automating the learning process. Your learners progress through the levels at a pace that suits their competencies reducing the need for regular training interventions. This takes a huge workload off of the L&D department leaving you to pursue more ways to make the training more effective! If you want to leverage some gamification superpowers in your online learning, download our white paper below. It’s full of fact, tips and other fun stuff that’s guaranteed to turn you into a gamification wizard in no time.  The post Learn to Love Levels in Online Learning appeared first on Growth Engineering.

With the threat from dull online learning ever-present, the Genie Team has been working around the clock to develop new and more powerful weapons of mass instruction! Our game-based content authoring tool is growing at such an alarming rate, even we have trouble keeping up with it! In all likelihood, your hands are probably full with your own battles against the forces of boring eLearning. If you don’t have time to read the whole update, just pop over to unleashthegenie.com, sign up for a demo and see it for yourself! For the rest of you… 1. New Learning Games! There’s good news for anyone looking for new ways to engage their learners. We’ve added a whole new pack of games to Genie! The Adventure Pack includes 5 new templates which together are more fun than the entire Indiana Jones box set (the one excluding ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’)! Now your learners can explore hidden islands, scale mysterious peaks and evade bear traps in a bid to escape the catacombs! They can also dodge crocodiles in the swamp and follow an old map to find the buried treasure! ‘What is that treasure?’ I hear you ask! Why, it’s a first class ticket to Awesomeville and the key to accelerated professional development! Keep an eye on these new games - we’ll soon be adding specific badges and wild wildcards to make the learning experience even more immersive! 2. The Console Area! Now every game in Genie includes a handy new HUD (Heads-Up Display)! This feature, borrowed from the wonderful world of videogames, gives the learner a central location for all of their in-game interactions. This console features: The Briefcase Here, the learner can access any wildcards they’ve collected and view any learning collateral that has been pushed to them as the result of an incorrect answer. The Badge Cabinet As they work through each unit, the learners can view their badge cabinet. This lets them see which badges they’ve collected so far, as well as those that are still up for grabs. As always, we’ve got some more great developments in the pipeline for the console area, but they’re TOP SECRET*!   *if you want to boost your security level, sign up for a free 30-day demo and get the latest news before everybody else does! 3. Brand-new Support and Training section! We’ve made it even easier to find out all you need to know to create awesome eLearning experiences! What was once a comprehensive training manual is now a series of helpful tutorial videos! These short demos will take you through all of the main processes in Genie including: Creating Badges Building units Managing your assets And much, much more… To check them out for yourself, log in to Genie and click the Support and Training button on the main dashboard. We’ll keep adding to this repository of training material as Genie grows so be sure to keep checking back! Also, if there’s something you’re unsure of, you can always submit a support ticket through Genie, or get in touch with a member of the Genie Support Team! 4. And the rest… Aside from the major developments, we’ve improved the existing functionality in the following areas: Multiple Wild Cards can now be assigned to the same slide. The font colour for quiz questions is now 100% customisable. The text editor now has a bigger selection of font sizes. Genie’s developers are hammering out new developments on an almost-daily basis. To keep on top of all the latest Genie news, sign up for your free 30-day demo today! Besides having access to the most revolutionary authoring tool out there, you’ll also receive our newsletter and become one of the cool kids at the party! Take Genie for a test drive today and join the Learning Revolution!  The post Genie Development update - October 2015 appeared first on Growth Engineering.

We’re just going to come out and say it - Learning and performance management should go hand in hand. They should be like bread and butter, Batman and Robin, the Himalayas and goats… So why is learning management so often kept separate from performance management? It’s kind of like salt and pepper shakers. They are kept separate, but close together and they’re often combined when it comes to meal time. The management of learning and the management of performance are two distinct things, but they complement each other in obvious ways.  If you don’t have a system that brings this connection to life, then you could be missing a trick. What would life be like without salt and pepper? After all, the ultimate goal for a Learning Management System is to improve performance. As your employees work their way through training content, you’d expect to see them hitting more targets, assuming the training is good of course! Here are five very compelling reasons why bringing learning and performance management results in a happy marriage: 1. Cut costs This is sure to get everyone in your organisation smiling! Why splash the company cash on two systems when it’s likely that you’d spend less by combining them into one super, Megazord or Captain Planet-like platform? Then there are the savings you’ll make in managing the system. By having everything in the same place, and on a single database, administration time (and hence costs) is slashed! For example, one of our Academy LMS clients makes such fantastic use of the Performance Centre that they’re able to provide training and performance management to 1,000 employees all around the globe using a team of just three people! You’d struggle to get more cost-effective than that! 2. Cut confusion We guarantee that if you ask any member of staff what drew them to your company, the chance to use your performance management system won’t appear on their list. They have plenty of other things to be getting on with, so having to learn how to use multiple different systems isn’t something they’ll want to spend time doing. But by combining the two systems into one, you simplify everything and minimise any chances of confusion. Now your employees only need to add one URL to their bookmarks bar, they only need to remember one password, and they only need to set up one profile. You could even set-up a Single Sign On access to your HR System, intranet, or other business applications, so that all of your employee’s needs and wants are all housed under one glorious roof. Even the busiest of people will have time for that! 3. Boost engagement For any of us whose job it is to manage learning or performance systems, one of the biggest hurdles is always in getting people engaged and using them. But by bringing the two systems together in a single place, this actually becomes easier. Instead of trying to pull people to two separate locations, you can now focus your efforts on just one, which is a much more manageable task. There’s also the fact that someone visiting the platform for some learning will see the performance tools and take a look at them while they’re there, and vice versa. So overall usage of both systems is sure to rise! 4. Easier reporting Chances are that you face a constant struggle within your business to prove that your learning programmes are actually working and generating a real return on the investment. Well by bringing learning and performance management together this becomes easier to prove! Now you can directly compare the employees who complete the most training with their performance, to see whether they’re hitting more targets as a result. That’s sure to keep your bosses happy! 5. Intuitive Individual Development Plans Another key benefit of integrating learning and performance management is that you can easily recommend the best learning content to plug any gaps in their knowledge, which might be hindering their performance. With our Performance Centre this is literally a tick-box exercise, as a manager simply ticks which content they want to recommend to an employee. The employee then finds it in their Individual Development Plan, and can see at a glance exactly what they’ve done and what they still need to do. Want to bring these benefits to your organisation? Why not take a free tour of our Performance Centre to see how well it’s integrated into our Academy LMS?  The post 5 compelling reasons to unify learning and performance management appeared first on Growth Engineering.