As businesses increasingly align learning goals with organizational outcomes, and as this alignment continues to boost organizational success, leaders are eager to ensure that employees are equipped with the necessary capabilities, turning the volume up on their L&D and performance support initiatives. Research suggests that organizations that offer a comprehensive L&D program enjoy a 24 percent higher profit margin, so it should come as no surprise that businesses are eager to take advantage of this.
Critically, the learning must have a clear purpose which benefits and is understood by both individual and organization. In order to achieve this, employees must be: excited by learning; engaged in learning and its aims, and have the opportunity and tools to embed new behaviors. That's why our excite, engage, embed method has such success in practice.
Excite: Creating a buzz for learning
Once business leaders are excited about the potential for L&D initiatives, HR and learning professionals must ensure that employees also buy-in to the new program. This means communicating the reasons for the learning and performance support, enabling workers to understand the importance of the learning and how it will be of benefit to them. Employees will all have different experiences of workplace learning, meaning it may be a challenge to get them on board, so it is vital that they understand the purpose and value of learning.
Personalized invitations and internal communications that highlight the value of the learning and how to access it are an essential first step in creating a buzz around learning. This not only sets out the purpose, as highlighted above but makes it easy for employees to participate in the learning experiences. Following this initial stage, employees should feel engaged with the aims of the learning and ready and eager to participate in the next steps.
Engage: Impactful learning any time, anywhere, anyhow
After successfully building momentum through the “excite” stage, HR and learning professionals can build on this by offering employees blended learning experiences to engage learners to build the knowledge and skills needed to deliver the business objectives. Modern, blended programs comprised of on-demand digital content and expert-led virtual learning and coaching sessions are becoming the norm to ensure engaged learners. Critically, however, the right mix of learning approaches should be selected for the desired learning outcome.
Truly engaging learning experiences are embedded within the flow of an organization. Therefore, the mix of blended learning should create a learning journey that satisfies both the learner and the organizational need. HR and learning professionals must balance correctly curated content with engaging delivery experiences and external support to create a cohesive learning and performance support solution.
Embed: Long-lasting mindset, performance, and behavioral change
There are two vital parts to the final stage: embed. Firstly, at the micro-level, the individual must be able to use the learned skills and behaviors within their ordinary workflow. Employees must be encouraged to continue to develop the mindset and performance required by the organization.
In order to allow this, teams of people – and in some cases the entire organization – will need to change their approach to work. Deloitte reports that collaboration is becoming ever-more common as individuals step out of their narrowly defined responsibilities, meaning working together and working in similar ways will be more important than ever.
A modern blended learning program can often be a reorientation; refocusing individuals and teams to behave differently, for example as part of a digital transformation program. If these approaches, mindsets, and behaviors are embedded into the organization and team as a whole, it is much easier for the individual to understand their role and to work within the new parameters as set out by the learning experiences.
By exciting workers to learn, engaging them in learning, and encouraging them to embed the newly learned skills and behaviors, organizations will see a shift from learning as an activity that runs alongside the business, to an integral performance support solution that aids the organization in achieving its goals. HR and learning professionals must use the excite, engage, embed model to define, support, and drive learning goals.