We now understand that gamification is more than throwing points, badges, and leaderboards at a program. And we’ve also peeked into the full potential of gamification with hundreds of possible mechanics, not to mention all the dynamics and other considerations that go into successful gamification. So where do we start? What do we have to have to create quality gamified programs, and what are the things we can add in later? This eBook provides some of the fundamental questions to inspire creative gamification design. It includes questions to ask yourself before you begin the gamification process, as well as questions to ask yourself continually throughout the process. Keep in mind, these questions will not apply to every situation and should be taken in context to what you are gamifying. Also, constant monitoring of feedback and metrics will be required as you slowly make incremental improvements, add new game features, and utilize new game mechanics.

Organizations that have successful learning programs are  very often ones that start learning right away — during  the onboarding phase. Having a fully integrated onboarding process and fully  integrated technology allows organizations to treat onboarding  as part of a holistic process designed to show value to new  employees (or employees in new roles), which has an impact on  organizational culture, employee resilience and business metrics such as customer satisfaction and even revenue.   Explore these concepts further in OpenSesame's newest eBook, "Onboarding in 2022 - What Has Changed and What Remains Critically Important."

Your organization’s approach to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion matters, and has for a long time. In recent months, contributing to an employee’s sense of Belonging is proving to be massively important. Belonging is one of the fastest growing influences on how your employees and prospective employees, customers, partners, and others view the organization. This plays an increasingly large role in their decision to pursue a role with the organization or to leave. This eBook provides guidance on how learning and development can and should play a role to influence how employees experience an organization’s DEI&B. This eBook makes a case for how and why learning and development can be an agent for shaping the culture of an organization. Learning can contribute to a sense of employee belonging by creating a culture of engagement, opportunity within the organization, and productivity. Ultimately, supporting employee belonging can make great strides toward employee retention. In this eBook, we focus on a few key issues around Belonging: Tying Belonging to Strategic Talent Outcomes A Belonging self-assessment guide Opportunity checklist for ways to improve Community building Creating space to respond to changes

According to a recent study by the Brandon Hall Group, most L&D leaders say their technology ecosystem is falling short - but why? Cultural changes including a remote/hybrid workplace, the new "metaverse," and the expectation of knowledge on-demand are forcing learning strategies to adapt. Innovations including virtual reality, augmented reality, microlearning, video-based practice, and machine learning are getting better results, so how do you prepare? If you haven’t already been asked already to implement these newer strategies, expect it. Get a jumpstart on building your next-generation learning technology ecosystem with this eBook.

For many companies, Learning & Development has taken center stage. In fact, 72% of executives agree that L&D has become a more strategic function in their organization. And among employees, 70% say they would leave their current company for one that invests in employee L&D. With heightened demand for Learning & Development opportunities, many companies are looking for ways to implement a simplified yet effective L&D strategy. Designed for HR professionals, this essential infographic outlines how to make your L&D strategy a seamless part of your organization, motivate your teams, and drive sustainable growth for your company.  It will help you:  Understand what’s valuable to both your employees and customers  Get to the L&D finish line as quickly as possible  Ensure what you are building results in something your employees and customers actually want

The "Great Resignation," "Turnover Tsunami" or the "Big Quit," whatever you choose to call it, the trend of job departures in the last few years has been unnerving for organizations. The workforce is taking stock of their careers and reevaluating their priorities. In 2020 alone, 40% of U.S. workers have changed jobs, managers, or roles. Employees are craving new opportunities for personal growth and learning to help them sharpen or build skills. If your people don’t believe those opportunities exist at your organization, they will look elsewhere. To stem the turnover tide, organizations must connect their people to more personalized learning, critical skills development, and give employees control over their career paths and opportunities for growth. Workers who can see what internal growth opportunities are available within the organization are more likely to stay, as they can chart and track their progress towards the career path they desire. Exposing your people to a wide variety of roles will help them gain a greater range of skills, be more collaborative across business areas and be more productive. And you’ll experience a massive increase in time-to-productivity as your "new" hires will already have most or all of their corporate onboarding done before even assuming the new role. Using your own people as a talent pool for filling job requisitions has a ton of great benefits. Use this checklist as a reference guide to ensure your organization has the tools it needs to plan, facilitate and execute a great internal talent mobility program.

It’s hard to find the perfect vendor in the oversaturated learning technology market (700+ LMS vendors alone). How do you know they’ll be the perfect fit without trying a demo? Who has the time to try hundreds of demos? What’s a Chief Learning Officer (CLO) to do? You need a cheat sheet. This guide will help you narrow down the musthave learning technology features to drive business growth. At the end of the day, you don’t need the perfect piece of learning technology, you need the right fit for your business. Unfortunately, learning technology traditionally focused on only one business segment—employee education. But today, companies use education to build their brands, foster communities, or generate revenue. That’s where traditional learning technologies fall short: they won’t deliver results for these new business models. There are three broad categories for education in the corporate learning space: Training companies and associations sell education programs to individuals or businesses to help them master professional skills, sometimes demonstrating mastery through a certification or credential. Extended enterprise is your network of learners who are not employees but require training on your products or services to be successful. This includes customers, channel partners, contractors, or franchisees. Employee education programs train the employees working for your business. This may include internally developed or off-the-shelf courses (or both). With this guide, you’ll be able to identify the non-negotiable features your business needs to be successful.

"The customer is always right." For a long time, this slogan was the shorthand for good customer service and relationships. And many businesses put it at the center of their strategy for growing a loyal base of happy, repeat customers. It is more important than ever to provide quality customer care in today's competitive market. More than half of all customers find they’ve gotten nothing from their customer service interactions. Consumers are more likely to take their business elsewhere if they don't receive the level of customer service they expect. The numbers are telling, as 40% of customers in 2020 stopped doing business with a company because of poor customer service. While offering a top-notch product or service may be enough to inspire an initial purchase, quality alone is not what keeps a customer buying from a brand for life. Brand loyalty is, and it’s at the core of quality customer relationships, which is in partnership with customer service. For the purpose of this article, we are combining customer service and customer relationships and calling it "Customer Care".

Why should you invest in online employee training? That’s the question on every leader’s mind. Well, 61% of adults in the U.S. seek career development opportunities when considering job opportunities, so it can help with hiring and retention. Also, 89% of employees want training available anywhere and anytime they need to do their job, so it’s what employees want. From upskilling to reskilling to building an attractive and engaging culture, training has the potential to be a catalyst for change for organizations. This ebook can provide HR & L&D professionals with:  More statistics in favor of investing in employee training  Tips on how to bring leadership into the fold and buy into the idea of training  Strategies to make sure your training program is successful and shows ROI

The workplace in 2022 is at a turning point. Employee burnout is at an all-time high; employees are switching jobs (and even careers); and employees are seeking work cultures that promote flexibility and well-being. As a result, business managers are trying to improve employee satisfaction among the people they manage through new initiatives that improve retention, like offering new workplace learning opportunities to employees. Qstream fielded a survey of 534 U.S. business managers across organizations in the financial services, technology, healthcare, manufacturing and life sciences industries in the United States to discover: How effective workplace learning programs are currently—and where more work must be done to make them effective and efficient How important workplace learning initiatives are to counter workforce burnout and attract and retain talent If organizations are effectively measuring the impact or effectiveness of their employee learning programs

Engaging learners is a difficult task for L&D professionals. In the corporate environment, developing a training program that everyone can participate in and follow to improve their skills is critical. Learn more about increasing learner engagement in online training courses by reading this brochure. What you will learn from this brochure: Understand the learner’s needs and skills Create personalized learning experiences Make content mobile-friendly Multi-source learning Collaborative knowledge and skill development Gamified learning

Learn how successful organisations worldwide use skills to ensure they and their people are thriving post-pandemic and how your organisation can do it too.   Download this eBook to learn: How high-performing organisations are leading with skills The employer vs employee confidence gap The current state of skills development around the world Practical tactics from leading with skills and becoming an HPO

Building the organizational culture now appears to be part of the mandate for Learning and Development (L&D) professionals, as how employees feel about working for an organization is perhaps just as valued as improving their knowledge base—particularly as the "Great Resignation" continues to roil the workforce. This white paper looks at the challenges Training Hall of Fame companies are experiencing and the strategies they are developing to design training and development programs and foster the culture that learners, managers, and senior leadership need in order to thrive, regardless of whether they work virtually, in-person, or in a hybrid environment. Having come from the pre-pandemic landscape where options typically were in-person or virtual and talent management, culture building, and L&D were separate functions, we now appear to be in the land of "and" when it comes to the role L&D is expected to play in employee training, development, and engagement.  

Are you considering working with a custom content development shop to help frame your learning strategy, create a curriculum, convert existing training, or simply give you a hand?  Working with the right vendor can deliver extraordinary results—ones that engage learners, drive behavior change and foster a culture of learning in your organization—IF you choose the right partner. Download this free eBook and learn 7 best practices that will help you build a successful partnership and deliver better learning experiences. 

Engaging and managing teams and team members spread across the nation (or even globally) is sure to present some challenges. That’s why it’s important to understand those challenges and know how to tackle them. From communication to training, there needs to be a plan in place.  In this infographic, you’ll learn: How overcommunicating is beneficial, and the best ways to do so How to best use and lay out meeting times The best ways to deliver employee trainings

Hybrid learning presents many opportunities for students and educators, alike. However, is your current web conferencing tool up to the task? Are you able to provide accessible, engaging, and personalized learning experiences for all? This ultimate guide for educators is designed to help you overcome common hybrid learning challenges and find the best platform for your organization. We’ll also explore how top-tier learning solutions stand apart from the rest and do away with traditional tools’ limitations.

How can L&D professionals optimally strategize effective learning initiatives? Stay ahead of the game - know what L&D trends to follow in 2022, and which are over and done with.  This report created by L&D expert, Chairman of the Learning and Performance Institute Donald H. Taylor, takes a deep dive into the results of this year’s Global Sentiment Survey and answers the question: "What will be hot in workplace learning in 2022?" This year’s L&D Global Sentiment Survey, the ninth, shows L&D at a turning point, as the result of two forces. One is the demands of organizations, as they emerge from the pandemic, for more training delivery, very often with unchanged or reduced resources for L&D. The other is the need to deal with the emergency measures put in place in 2020 to mitigate the immediate impact of COVID-19.Taylor's report identifies the top digital learning trends of 2022 and what they mean for the future of workplace learning. He explains how these trends differ from region to region, which "hot topics" from the 2021 are cooling down, and how the pandemic has impacted the trends we see within the L&D industry.  More about the Global Sentiment Survey:  The L&D Global Sentiment Survey takes the pulse of the L&D community world-wide, annually. The one-minute online poll asks L&D professionals internationally what they think will be hot in the following year. The question is always the same format: "What will be hot in workplace L&D in [this year]?" Participants are asked to choose what they think will be hot, not what should be hot. Each person votes for 3 of 15 options, presented in random order. There is, in addition, an ‘Other’ option. Aggregated, and examined over time, these answers provide a fascinating look at trends in what people in L&D are thinking. The survey is published each year in February. The annual L&D Global Sentiment Survey, now in its ninth year, attracts responses from thousands of respondents in over 80 countries. More about Donald H. Taylor: Donald H Taylor is a veteran in the fields of learning and development and learning technologies, with experience at every level from design and delivery to chairman of the board.  A recognized commentator and thinker in the fields of workplace learning and supporting technologies, Donald is committed to helping develop the learning and development profession. From 2010 to 2021, he chaired the Learning and Performance Institute, where he continues to head the Advisory Board and Learning Professionals Network. His work over more than 30 years in L&D ranges from training delivery to director and vice-president positions in software companies. Donald has been a company director and shareholder for three companies through start up, growth and acquisition. He now advises a number of EdTech start-ups, and works with Emerge Education, a European seed fund focused on start-ups in this field. He is a graduate of Oxford University and in 2016 was awarded an honorary doctorate by Middlesex University in recognition of his work developing the L&D profession.

Finding New Ways To Connect Learners The workforce is still adjusting to the new reality of a changing workplace. Many employees continue to work remotely, or on a hybrid schedule. This further complicates employee collaboration, especially as it relates to learning and development. No matter where an employee starts or ends their workday, the ongoing need for person-to-person collaboration is essential for the organization’s success. Adapting learning and development programs to serve this new workforce is not without its challenges. The creation of engaging learning experiences is no longer a top-down structure, as many employees are choosing to have a say in the process. Individual learners are increasingly creating their own learning content to offer their personal knowledge and experience on how to be successful in their respective roles. Leveraging peer-to-peer learning for all employees requires a modern learning solution that can connect learners despite distance and can accommodate custom content that is highly personalized to the organization. Helping learners find the help they need quickly and contribute to the conversation is an excellent way to boost collaborative learning efforts within the organization. In this eBook, we focus on a few ways to boost collaborative learning programs. Topics include: Responding to Workplace Culture Changes Connecting Mentors to Learners Peer-to-Peer Learning Real-time Collaboration Learning Tech Flexibility in Teams

Today’s business climate presents challenges both new and old. The world of business has truly turned to operating globally around the clock. The velocity of technical innovation is increasing, and businesses struggle to keep up. In this environment, it has become more important for businesses to keep pace with the needs of the customer and be ready to deliver to meet ever-changing requirements. Download this White paper to learn how customer education can help achieve these goals.

In the business world, data analytics is the new superpower that can be wielded to achieve impressive results. It allows companies to do things that were never possible before, like predict customer satisfaction, analyze competitor information and identify fraud. For these reasons it is predicted that by 2023 over 33% of large organizations will utilize data analysts to unlock business intelligence, including decision modeling. 

The Great Resignation is real! Nearly 70% of organizations expect employee turnover to increase over the next 12 months, with only 1% expecting it to decrease. This is despite widespread support for a hybrid work model wherein some employees work on-site and others, remotely. Focusing on upskilling and reskilling the workforce helps address this challenge. By linking skills to business outcomes, it is no longer just Learning & Development pushing for learning programs. These links will drive leadership buy-in that gets the concept of skills pushed throughout the company to support business goals. Explore these concepts further in our newest eBook, "Reskilling and Upskilling to Stop The Great Resignation"

From intake to learning solution delivery and analysis, there are many aspects of the learning operations process you can improve to use your time better and deliver stronger training.   But where should you start? And what will the impact of your efforts be? An L&D (learning and development) audit can reveal the answers when done effectively. You’ll get the following in this toolkit from Cognota (formerly Synapse): A guide about the most impactful aspects of L&D to audit Best practices for making your audit a success An audit planner and progress tracker Templates for final reports, to share your findings

Did you know that VR is getting better results than traditional eLearning for several organizations? From higher retention to improved muscle memory, there are dozens of reasons to embrace VR and there are ways to make it easy! If you are ready to give it a try but unsure how to get started, this eBook guides you through key elements to get your immersive learning project up and running. Highlights include: Where to find inspiration and a strategy for your next project How to get management on board with it How to film and photograph scenes effectively  Lessons learned, mistakes to avoid, common myths, best practices, and MORE!

Virtual Training Results Based on POVs (Points of View) Ray Jimenez