Personalized Learning Is the Only Way to Learner Engagement

Personalization is everywhere - be it an eCommerce website recommending a product based on a customer's shopping behavior or an OTT platform recommending a new series based on the customer's past viewing data. The objective is to engage and retain the customers and prevent them from leaving the platform.

Now, imagine applying the same strategy to engaging employee training. Yes, it's certainly possible. Companies can personalize learning to improve learning outcomes and motivate employees to upskill themselves.

But what is personalized learning, and how does it work?

Here's how the U.S. Department of Education defines personalized learning: "Personalized learning refers to instruction in which the pace of learning and the instructional approach are optimized for the needs of each learner." The department further outlines that the "learning objectives, instructional approaches, and instructional content" vary as per learners' needs, thus paving the way for meaningful, relevant, and interest-driven learning activities.

There are various types of personalized learning, such as individualized learning (where the learning is tailored for individual employees) and competency-based learning (where the learning pathway is designed based on the employee's competency and skills). Companies can decide which approach to use based on the objectives they wish to accomplish.

How Does Personalized Learning Improve Learner Engagement?

Last year, companies were hit by the great resignation. Over 4.5 million workers quit the workforce in March alone. Those who haven't been able to resign are resorting to "quiet quitting," which means doing the bare minimum at work. Employee engagement, as it stands, is at an all-time low, and companies are worried about the repercussions on business.

Hiring and training new employees can certainly be time-consuming, especially when companies are hard-pressed for time and resources. High employee churn can slow down their business growth and give an advantage to competitors. While there are various ways to engage employees, personalized learning can significantly keep employees motivated. Here's how it improves learner engagement:

1. Tailored Learning

Unlike earlier, employees have access to a vast library of resources and courses. There are also special communities for different professions where the members can exchange knowledge easily. So, a one-size-fits-all learning strategy will not work in the current landscape.

A company is also a place where multiple people with different levels of knowledge and skills work together. For example, an executive with 20 years of experience may not find a particular course as relevant as a fresher with six months of experience.

Personalized training takes into consideration the varied skill sets and experiences of different employees and tailors the learning objectives and learning path to make them relevant to them. This motivates the employees to invest time and effort into learning.

Learning goals are set for each employee, and an ideal learning path is recommended to guide them throughout the learning journey. Personalized learning allows the trainers to monitor the progress and nudge the employees to stay on track.

2. Flexible Learning

Gone are the days when employees had to attend mandatory, time-bound in-class training. Now they can access their course from anywhere, anytime, as most personalized learning largely happens online. This gives the employees the much-needed flexibility to take up the course at their convenience and consume the lessons at their pace. It brings an uptick in course completion.

Let's look at the example of Nationwide insurance. As a part of the five-year commitment to up-skilling and re-skilling their employees, Nationwide insurance gave employees eight hours annually to up-skill themselves. They also took into consideration how and when the employees are likely to learn and integrated it into the employees' workflow. The efforts paid off as 98.75% of all employees completed their learning goal and even went beyond the stipulated eight hours of learning.

3. Align Learning with Learner's Objectives

Learning and development are often seen as a way to meet the company's goals. However, according to Leena Nair, the CHRO at Unilever, it is also about understanding the passion and professional ambitions of the employees.

However, aligning learning with the employees' objectives is not always easy. According to LinkedIn's Workplace Learning findings, 78% of respondents need personalized recommendations based on their skills and career goals. That's where Personalized learning helps. It enables companies to understand the employees' needs, interests, and skills and align learning with them. This gives employees a clear learning roadmap and improves the learning outcome.

4. Foster a Learning Culture

Employees always look for new opportunities to learn and grow in their careers. Companies must foster a culture of continuous learning if they want to retain talent. LinkedIn's Workplace Learning Report has shown that 73% of employees are willing to spend time learning if it aids them in performing well in their current role.

Personalized learning helps design a customized learning path for every employee and ensures they are future-ready. This encourages employees to stay invested in learning and contribute to the company's growth.

Conclusion

70% of executives want their employees to be upskilled. To achieve that goal, companies must ensure that the courses don't push but pull their employees into the learning mode. That's possible only when the employees' skills and experiences are considered while setting learning objectives and outcomes.

Personalized learning helps make learning more interesting and intuitive for employees. But it's noteworthy that creating individualized or competency-based courses and tracking progress can be cumbersome. That's where Gyrus can help.

Gyrus provides a platform called GyrusAim that allows companies to build individual development plans and offer courses to employees in different formats, like webinars, learning videos, and documents. The courses can be accessed on all devices.

From onboarding to leadership development and other types of training, GyrusAim helps companies build customized experiences and programs to improve learner engagement. It also allows companies to monitor and create progress reports of all employees.

Want to know more? Schedule a demo right away!