Increasing Learning Uptake Using a Learning Management Platform

The self-paced learning market is predicted to decline by $33.5 billion by 2021 according to the eLearning Industry. That is a particularly unexpected statistic given the flexibility self-paced learning offers, which is a perfect fit for working professionals. However, motivation has been a challenge. Learners do start on courses but leave midway through unless there is a compliance requirement, or the training is mandatory for their employment. Even then, it is a task for the L&D teams to get employees to actually engage with their learning content, which is intended to enhance their performance.

 

This is a dire situation as seven out of ten companies reported talent shortages in 2019 (ManpowerGroup, 2019). Reportedly, 82% of them are prepared to hire and train employees lacking the required skills (Robert Half, 2019). Although the World Economic Forum has been predicting talent shortages and suggesting enterprise upskilling efforts for some time now, the disruptive technology adoption during the pandemic period made people look at the issue with more seriousness.

 

According to LinkedIn Learning, from 2019 to 2020, the number of enterprise learners more than doubled, and the amount of learning has also increased by 58% more hours per learner. This number contradicts the statistic shared above about self-paced learning losing popularity. Analysts are of the opinion that the problem is not lack of curiosity or willingness to learn. The problem is lack of visibility of a growth path linked with the learning.

 

Individuals are interested in growing in their careers and for that they are willing to put in the extra effort. But the learning initiatives taken by organizations fail to integrate these programs with the career goals of their employees. If the employee realizes the importance of the program to their individual performance and career, this will drive them to engage with the course and complete the learning exercises that they started.

 

Another challenge for corporate learning is the learning platform. A professional with 16+ years of industry experience, Nikhil Kumar, AVP, Learning Technologies, G-Cube says “If you’re wondering why your LMS is facing issues with uptake among the learners, here’s an honest fact for you—they don’t have enough reasons to come back. To truly engage a learner with the system, they need to find reasons to come back asking for more.”

 

While there can be many strategies to increase learning uptake, I would like to suggest some ideas to increase learner engagement and learning uptake by using a learning management platform effectively.

 

Enable Individual Career Advancement

 

Getting a disenchanted employee to focus on their learning requires showing them a value in that learning. Employees are now in charge of their careers and expect not only flexibility but autonomy. Providing a learning infrastructure that not only assigns training but makes interest-based learning available and accessible attracts the employee. The Learning Experience Platform can deliver learning based on the employee’s choice and need. A channel-based user interface segregates content into assigned learning, interest, peer choice based etc, which helps the learner choose their learning journey and improve their KSA – knowledge, skill, attitude.

 

Map Learning to Organizational Growth

 

Creating a learning program that will help your employees meet their KRAs is not enough. What needs to happen is that a learning environment is created where they feel the urge to perform better. Integrate your learning strategy with your overall business goal, while aligning individual journeys to the same goal. A learning performance platform can integrate with your business tools and processes to identify gaps and deliver relevant learning to the groups and individuals who are critical. This will make the employees understand their roles in the bigger picture and give them the opportunity to contribute directly to the growth of the organization.

 

Build a Community of Learners

 

LinkedIn has again reported that “In spite of the shift toward hybrid workplaces, employees still desire a sense of community and belonging at work.” Learning can provide that community feeling and an enterprise learning management system can be the perfect platform for this community to engage. Through social learning features on the LMS, the employees can come together on forums to discuss work-related issues or achievements, seek guidance from the seniors and feel connected to the work environment even in a remote or hybrid work setting. According to the popular 70-20-10 theory of learning, it is said that peer-to-peer learning contributes 20% of all corporate learning. Being able to replicate this model on a digital platform will give organizations the result they desire from their learning programs.

 

To conclude, L&D leaders have to provide three Ps to the learners to increase learning uptake—Path, Purpose and Peer—and G-Cube has the right combination of learning management platforms to make this happen. Talk to our learning consultant today.

Post-Pandemic, Business Continuance in Airline Sector means Upskilling with Corporate eLearning Solutions

 

I run the risk of stating the obvious when I say, along with tourism, aviation industry is one of the most severely impacted industries in 2020. The global bodies of the industry IATA, ACI and ICAO, all agree that it is not going to go back to 2019 level, any time before 2024 and holds true for both business travel and leisurely trips.

A global survey conducted by Gartner, Inc. found that 88% of business organization all over the world mandated or encouraged all their employees to work from home as the virus started to spread at exponential rates. Furthermore, about 97% of the organizations immediately canceled all work-related travel. Tourism, though opening up in pockets, is yet to revive full scale. The fear of contagion on a flight is higher among masses as there is hardly another industry which offers services that involves intermingling with so much and so many strangers.

With the pandemic passing over, there is a new situation where airlines have restructured themselves to operate under heavier umbrella of regulations and survive the bad time with as less employees as possible. This changed environment obviously needs the associates and employees to develop new skills, inculcate new habits and be ready for multi-tasking. So, organizations will have to not only transfer new knowledge but also help their employees to change themselves and respond to the new situation with the same ease and effectiveness. And obviously this will not be possible without an equally effective corporate eLearning solution. In the current situation there are three things that can help the aviation industry meet the business challenges.

Prepare Employees for Multi-Tasking

Job role specific trainings are already there but when your cabin crew has to manage certain duties of the ground staff, then they will need extensive training and concurrent training compliance management or the same. Managing training for the airline employees who do not usually work from a ‘office’ as such and are at times traveling across the globe is a complicated task in general. A learning management system can integrate with the roster management system and pull data on an individual’s schedules and job role. Based on the same, training can be assigned through automated workflows making the process system based leaving the administrators free for more important tasks.

Expedite Digital Proficiency among Crew

Industry experts all over the world have suggested and the aviation industry has also accepted that heavy digitalization is key to safe and efficient business for the airlines. The operating model has been largely modified. Today we have touchless check-ins, RFID bag-tags, contactless and paper-less immigration, and boarding processes. This has rendered the need for large passenger concourses and check-in areas redundant and released more monetizable commercial spaces.

However, this also means high level of digital proficiency among the ground staff. Though using a smartphone is normal for most, learning to use technology for a job they have been doing manually, all of a sudden, is not easy. A scenario-based learning program deployed through a compatible learning platform will help them learn faster, retain the information longer and also use the knowledge effectively.

Reducing Training Non-Compliance

Aviation is largely a regulated sector and post-Covid the rules have increased manifold. Other than regulations issued by global health organizations like WHO, ICAO has its own separate guidelines for airport, aircraft, crew and even cargo. Add to this the government issued mandates in each different country.

Thus, managing the training compliance requirement of current times, needs intelligent & automated solution. A Learning Management System with an authorization feature can help manage the complete process of compliance. Starting from identifying the required compliance or certification for a job role through machine learning technology, the system shall track the progress, status and notify as and when required. This reduces the scope of manual error while managing this complicated process on excel sheets or via emails.

Though the pandemic is the biggest disaster for the Aviation industry, but they have proved their resilience time and again before during 9/11 and other global tragedies. However, revival of the aviation industry is also a must for the global economy to revive. If you are looking to find out more about the benefits of eLearning solutions and technology for the industry, you may visit our repository. To talk to a learning consultant at G-Cube, please write to us and surely we shall use our 21 years of experience to build the best solutions for you. 

Teach Your Retail Employees to Draw Customers Back with Enterprise Learning Management System

While technology dependency has been growing in all industries for years now, the face of retail industry changed after Amazon started its multilevel eCommerce business surpassing Walmart. By 2015, consumers had become so internet friendly that brick and mortar stores were facing a crisis quite unknown to their business till date. However, they were still popular because it is intrinsic to human nature to trust their tactile experience more than just audio-visual while making a purchase. Also, buying from a store was always faster than ordering online. But the pandemic changed it all. 85% Americans have said that Covid-19 impacted their shopping habits in some way, including reduced overall spending, increased online shopping, and increased use of delivery services, reported by Statista.

 

But things are taking a brighter turn. While a recent McKinsey reports, 60-70% adults are now omnichannel consumer with both sales in brick and mortar stores and eCommerce growing, an eMarketer survey projects that 81% customers are willing to go back to the store.

 

Growth Market specialist, Bharat Jain at G-Cube suggests, ‘The trends are positive and retail owners should jump to the occasion. Training plays a very important role in this phase of adaptation which will enable the employees to keep up and draw the customers back to the stores.’

 

 

Promoting Your Employees as Brand Ambassadors

 

While the willingness to return to stores is increasing, the affinity towards online shopping is not reducing. Retailers have to step up to encourage the willing customer to take an action and that is possible only by giving them a great experience. As your in-store employees are in charge of the customer experience, this is where your employees can become the true ‘brand ambassadors’.

 

 

Train to be an Expert than a Sales Support

 

A very important part of the online shopping experience is the abundance of information about the product, usage and also comparison charts which is completely unavailable at the stores. Retailers have to fill up this gap by training their employees to become product experts. Providing a continuous learning environment with small nuggets of information based on the category of product they are handling through an automated workflow on the mobile LMS shall help the employees retain knowledge better. The information is also available to them at the point-of-sale where they can not only provide demo of a particular item but compare the features while giving sales advice to the customer.

 

 

In-person Search Optimization

 

While looking for an item on the shopping app, a customer gets choice of both browsing and searching. So basically, they have the option to look through a lot of items and also search for anything specific they want. In a store this search engine is your employee who is helping the customer find the right product. At times, they cannot find the right items while searching manually and this leads to higher waiting time and dissatisfied customer. Integrating your retail management system with your LMS can bring all the information regarding the shelf, storage, and product details in one place which the employees can access with simple keyword search which is far more efficient. This reduces customer’s wait time replicating the online shopping experience helping your retail employees give a great experience to the buyer.

 

 

Keep Your Employees Motivated

 

According to National Retail Federation, the attrition rate in retail in USA is just above 60%, which is very high considering the overall average of 19%. Therefore, keeping your employees motivated to put in the extra effort is essential. An enterprise LMS provides you the opportunity to gamify the learning strategy for your retail employees. With easy integration with multiple business systems, you can give redeemable points to the employees based on their real-time KPI data, create leaderboards, and track the star performers. Getting recognized for one’s effort always makes them put in some extra.

To ensure the above you will have to invest significantly in developing and delivering training programs that can inculcate these habits and behaviours. However, that is not the final step, as the learning content has to be distributed along with follow-up trainings. Assessments and post-training support has to be delivered as well. To manage such a mammoth operation a learning management system which is equally effective on all the devices and is configurable to adapt to your organization’s culture is necessary.

 

 

G-Cube Learning Management Suite is being used by top retail industry players with positive results. To know more about the implementation strategies, write to us at info@gc-solutions.net and talk to a learning consultant.

‘Channelize’ your eLearning Strategy

 

According to Statista, Youtube has 2.1 billion users in 2021 and according to the company, their users spend an average of 1 hour on the platform daily. Netflix on the other hand has 203 million+ paid subscribers and the company has seen 21.9% growth over last 12 months. eMarketer estimates that Netflix accounts for 25.7% of daily digital video time among US adults. This means that the average US adult spends 30 minutes a day watching Netflix.

 

 

These overwhelming numbers, do make us question the strategy behind such extraordinary user engagement? Is it just good content that keeps their audience glued or makes them come back for more or is it something else? Experts are of the opinion, that it is the suggestion engine that is driving the numbers, along with the presentation of that suggestion.

 

 

Youtube and Netflix are not just video streaming platforms anymore. They have now become content suggestion engines with the radical advancement in machine learning and artificial intelligence. These platforms are analyzing the user’s interaction with the content on the platform to suggest relevant content as per the user’s preference. The suggested content is further segregated into various categories based on the user’s past views on the platforms, their choice of language, geographical positioning, peer’s choice and so on. The user’s visit is incentivized by this service the platform is providing and their engagement with the platform increases with the sense of hyper-personalization. Netflix rakes in USD 1 billion each year by ensuring strong customer retention with the use of recommender engines, or the channel approach.

 

 

Now imagine, having the same strategy implemented for your learning delivery. Given the user’s behavior on these OTT platforms, one can safely bet on the effectiveness of a similar channel-based user interface on a learning platform. In 2018, Josh Bersin said that research has found out that employees have on an average 24 minutes to dedicate to learning. Learning providers have to strategically make most of this time and also create an affinity towards learning. The Netflix-like channel-based UI on a learning platform revolutionizes the way a learner receives content and consumes it. They not only receive the most relevant content in one glance, but the admin can push the most important courses, assessments, videos etc according to priority.

 

 

Sayan Guha, Product Head – Learning Technologies, G-Cube is a big advocate of this channel-based approach and says ‘When we talk of the Learn Tech industry, the scope is unimaginable for using the channel approach for learning personalization. Based on the learners’ interest, training history, and content consumption choices, the recommender algorithm can throw in incredibly useful training suggestions which will most definitely increase engagement and effectiveness of training. Our channel-based approach is driving high learning adoption for all kinds of learners, from leadership to sales teams to customers.’

 

 

How does channel-based approach facilitate learning?

 

• It helps categorize the learning content automatically based on keywords which also helps in keyword-based content search. For example – When a learner types/search a keyword- for example, ‘mobile hardware items’ they will find, anything related to it available on the LMS, even from the ‘recently uploaded’ or ‘about to expire’ items on their channels. Having this feature helps learners save time and effort.
• The channels are rule-based which means that once a new learning content is uploaded on the platform, the content will get automatically segregated in the relevant channel.
• Learning courses, assessments, certifications which must be completed within a certain date or have to be renewed can be highlighted in separate channel with alerts to the user.
• As the channels are programmable, admin can edit the channel placement through simple drag and drop to put the channels on the top whose content needs attention from the learner.
• Learner can see the recommended content based on their job roles, KPIs, past learning records and peer activity, all segregated into separate channels. Just like Netflix, G-Cube’s LMS home page looks different for different profiles as the learner can see content relevant to their profiles and recommendations.

 

 

AI advancements has taken over all aspects of digital experience of human beings – starting from how we listen to music to how we navigate our way to work. That is the level of efficiency and comfort your learners deserve in their learning journey as well. To know more about the programmable channel-based G-Cube LMS, write to us.

Effective Online Learning Software

Measuring Training Effectiveness Using Online Learning Software

Digital transformation affects different aspects of our lives, and learning is no exception. For organizations looking to deliver practical workplace training experience, benefits e-learning solutions outweigh those of traditional classroom sessions. With technological advancement, organizations are turning towards deploying online learning software to mitigate overall costs, time, and effort. With the right blend of new-age modern Learning Management Systems (LMS) and personalized content delivery, the overall effectiveness of training can be measured.

There are various important aspects to be kept in mind while using powerful online learning software. These include:

• The ability to deliver custom training content across personalized mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The short and digestible chunks of information boost overall engagement by providing training anytime, anywhere, and even on the go.

• Online learning software supports Rapid Authoring tools to enable content repurposing and interoperability. As a result, authoring tools mitigate the overall time and effort spent to create online courses, thereby increasing workforce engagement, knowledge retention, and organizational performance.

• Best LMSs seamlessly integrate with HRMS, CRM, and other existing systems at the workplace. The robust eLearning management system fetches employee data and collates Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Based on the KPI data, the LMS creates performance metrics and automatically assigns relevant training courses tailored to specific needs.

• LMS administrators provide online assessments in the form of tests and quizzes at the end of the training program. Consequently, it helps the participants to work on their weak areas and boost overall performance at the workplace.

• Online corporate training aims to align the right kind of learning with performance goals. Formal tests in the form of True/False, Match the Following, Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs), and more also measure overall training impact.

• The robust corporate training platform also identifies the personalized learning needs of a globally dispersed audience. Online training content uploaded on the LMS is easily searchable in a way that learners can find the relevant content of their choice at the point of need.

The above-discussed aspects can undoubtedly help enterprises to invest in online learning software to increase ROIs and drive lucrative outcomes. When the new-age learners undergo training anytime and anywhere, the engagement level is multiplied across the organization, and the bottom line is impacted. Today, most organizations are leveraging the benefits of innovative technology and eLearning solutions to drive profitable outcomes. They deploy custom LMSs to boost knowledge competency of employees so that they can perform better at work and prepare themselves to face more challenges in the future.