Securing great return on investment is an essential—but often seemingly unachievable—goal of a learning and development (L&D) strategy. I often speak to heads of L&D, HR personnel, and company directors who had great expectations of their learning management system (LMS) but just haven’t seen the traffic they were promised. Why is this? In almost every scenario I’ve come across, the problem has been that the LMS wasn’t built to engage its learners.
So what’s the solution? How can you encourage learners in your organization to log on and learn to the best of their ability? There are three ways:
- The stick: Like the fabled donkey, you can either reward with a carrot or beat with a stick. This option would involve an announcement such as, “Any employees who have not completed Health and Safety 101 on the MyCompany LMS by 01/16/15 will face disciplinary actions.” Motivating? Sure. But perhaps not the best way to boost morale!
- The carrot: You can use internal marketing to get your employees excited and logging on. Get an LMS representative in each department to talk about how valuable the e-learning content is, how much they’ve learned, how useful it is, and how it has helped them develop and progress in their career. But, of course, this tactic only works if it is true…the LMS itself has to back up these employees’ claims, so if other learners log on expecting Excitement City but are faced with Dullsville, word will get around and traffic will fall to zilch. Not exactly a good outcome for anyone—learners and L&D departments included.
- The game: From our experience—and statistics all over the L&D sphere—it’s clear that gamification is a way to engineer this elusive engagement. Gamification is the process of applying gaming elements to non-game scenarios. Basically, it means adding functionality typically found in engagement-grabbing games to your LMS. Think: badges, points, “leveling up,” ongoing leaderboards, and collaborative learning. Companies that employ gamification features on their LMS see an average increase in engagement—measured in the time learners spend logged on, how often and how many times they return, and viral distribution—of 30 percent (Gabe Zichermann, 2013).
It’s ultimately about getting your learners engaged, so whatever technique you use, you have to make sure it achieves this level of engagement. The take-away is this: To deliver great ROI, you need to get the footfall on your LMS. To get the footfall, your learners need to enjoy using their LMS and need to be motivated to go there. The way to engineer this traffic and enjoyment is to boost engagement on your LMS. You have a few ways of doing this. Could you use the stick or the carrot? Maybe, but do you really think of your employees as donkeys?
Juliette Denny is managing director of Growth Engineering, a learning technologies company that wages war on dull online learning. For more information, visit www.growthengineering.co.uk @growthengineer
