In the first blog post dedicated to introducing our new ebook Solve the Learning Engagement Problem - and power bigger impact for business - we talked about some of the key ways to build and maintain an army of engaged learners.

Today, we’re digging deeper and looking further not just from an maintenance point of view, but also from the point of view of actively growing learning engagement over time. Unfortunately and understandably, many companies manage some of the first steps in creating a successful learning culture only to find it has not become entrenched across the enterprise, and therefore diminishes in effectiveness over time. But it doesn’t have to be this way. 

Growing engagement requires recognition in various forms. Leaders will need to recognise the different learning requirements of different roles in order to create ongoing, continuous learning that benefits the organisation. 

They will also need to recognise the success of learners, and communicate the benefits. Read on for our advice on some of the fundamentals of engaged learning, as well as an explanation on how bragging rights may be key in making sure your engaged learners stay well and truly engaged for the long term.

Make Learning a Lifelong Habit 

In simple terms, the one of the best ways to create continuous engagement when it comes to learning or anything else for that matter, is to make new learning available frequently. If people are enjoying the creative, compelling content that is being created, and if they feel it offers them value, why wouldn’t they come back for more? 

At Fuse, our content strategy enabling engagement has a few major focuses. Firstly, we believe in a ‘little and often’ approach to learning that is realistic amongst the demands of busy users. It’s about thinking and designing content that takes minutes, hours or a few days to create - not content that takes so long to produce that it’s out of date by the time it’s released. 

What does this content look like? Frequently, these are short animated videos, or short subject matter led tutorials. The key word is ‘short.’ When learning only takes a few minutes of your time daily, it’s more likely to become a lifelong habit. 

Secondly, we believe in providing people what they need, where they need it. When people seek out learning opportunities, it is often because they are looking to solve a problem. So why not make learning content available on mobile devices, designed with excellent search facilities so that they can easily find what they need in that very moment? 

We also need to get more granular when it comes to considering engagement in L&D, and to consider how different roles build habits. 

For example, we might want to build the habit amongst engineers to search for and find performance support resources at the point of need when they are fixing a new product. 

Think about how different this habit building may be to the engagement required by a new line manager for example, who may be searching for resources on how to best manage their team. The engineer requires immediate action, while the other requires ongoing support and practice. The point is, companies need to ensure that the content delivered is in line with performance requirements of a given role, especially if we want learning to become a habit.

Shout it Out: Show Them How L&D is Affecting the Bottom Line

Undoubtedly one of the best ways to build, maintain and grow engagement is to show your teams what a difference it’s making. Who doesn’t like a positive result, particularly when you had a hand in its making? 

If you haven’t had long enough to generate your own L&D success stories, check these out for size:

• When Avon’s beauty reps increased their visits to their Fuse platform from 1 to 2 visits per month to 3 to 4 visits per month, there was an impressive +320% increase in aggregate sales over a 6 month period! 
• When Panasonic implemented the Fuse platform and got its Customer Care agents on board with engaged learning, it quickly saw 33% Net Promoter Score points (a customer service metric that tracks customer loyalty to a specific brand or service) as well as an increase in staff retention amongst those Customer Care agents by 26%.
• Vodafone is also rocking learning and development with Fuse and management is leading the way. Those Vodafone retail sales teams whose managers were actively engaged performed on average 10% better on key store performance metrics than those teams whose manager was not actively engaged with their own learning.

When business leaders and influencers speak out on the strategic importance of engaged learning and link this with results, the combination is truly powerful, and the impact it has on growing a dedicated learning culture is demonstrable. 

These are only two of five points in our new ebook Solve the Learning Engagement Problem - and power bigger impact for business dedicated to growing learning engagement. To see the other three recommendations in this section, click here to download the ebook today.