How Self-Directed Learning Can Boost the Employee Experience

Approximately 80% of employees would stay longer if their organization invested in their professional development, according to eLearning Industry. Today’s employees are continually seeking ways to prepare themselves for their next role and acquire new skills.

A self-directed learning program is no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity. For organizations to remain employers of choice, investing in employee development is critical. This investment is vital to building a strong learning culture, boosting retention, and enhancing the overall employee experience. Microlearning, a learning approach that delivers short and focused content to learners, offers modern on-demand learning opportunities desired by today’s workforce.

What’s the True Role of Your L&D Team?

The impact of L&D on your employees cannot be understated. The L&D team is your organization’s biggest ally in creating an environment of growth and professional development for your teams. They’re a vital part of company culture and ensure that your organizational objectives are supported through targeted, curated learning for your people. By soliciting feedback from employees to determine skill gaps and from executive leadership on what skills your organization needs for future growth and recruitment, they can help pinpoint the learning opportunities that will best help you meet your goals.

How Can Organizations Close Their Skill Gaps?

The benefits of supporting employee growth have global impacts—the World Economic Forum concluded that a widespread investment in upskilling could boost gross domestic product (GDP) to $6.5 trillion by 2030. Companies need to start curating learning immediately to stay ahead of the curve.

How can companies determine a path forward? One of the best ways to create consistency throughout the organization is to build learning journeys for your people. Learning journeys allow companies and L&D leaders to develop content around the topics that your employees need the most. You can align learning with organizational objectives, company values, and other skill topics that are vital to your operations and your employees’ career goals.

L&D teams can build these learning journeys and push them out to your employees utilizing your internal online platforms, such as a learning management system (LMS) or learning experience platform (LXP), social and instant messaging channels, or Intranet—any part of your ecosystem where your people “hang out” the most—at a cadence that works best for your environment.

Depending on the size of your L&D team, this could mean hours on their end are spent sourcing content or developing materials to keep learning ongoing. To help alleviate some of this work for your team members, having a learning partner on board can fulfill your needs for content and give your L&D team more time to focus on other initiatives.

What Makes Effective Learning Journeys?

For organizations new to providing internal professional development, finding the right mix of learning that is impactful and accessible for your employees can be a challenge. According to Harvard Business Review, effective learning journeys include these key components:

• Detailed instructions on the purpose of the learning journey and its intended audience
• A logical order that sets up the learning in building blocks
• Buy-in from senior leaders

An additional component of effective learning journeys easy access to content. Utilizing microlearning is a great way to ensure that your teams get the content they need in an easy-to-digest format whenever they have pockets of time in their day. HSI’s just-in-time content allows employees to upskill in the areas that matter in today’s work environment—leadership development, inclusion and belonging, soft skills training, and more – completing each lesson in the journey in typically just 10 minutes.

How Can Organizations Make Learning Part of the Employee Experience?

Employees are looking to work for organizations that provide opportunities for advancement and learning new skills. The following best practices should be first and foremost in your L&D strategy:

• Stand out from your competition by boosting employee engagement through a solid, effective professional development program, so your employees feel confident in their ability to level up.
• Show that your organization sincerely cares about your employees’ well-being by including content on psychological safety, work-life balance and emotional intelligence. This helps give your employees well-rounded learning experiences.
• Make learning fun and easy! Create a culture of self-directed microlearning where employees take charge of their learning journey and ongoing development.
• Provide a supportive environment by making training part of the everyday workday.

Many corporate training programs leverage microlearning because it provides:

1. Speed, ease, and convenience

Microlearning’s bite-sized design allows your employees to make self-paced learning an ongoing part of their experience by easily fitting into their schedule without having to block off days at a time for classroom-style training.

2. Consistency company-wide

Microlearning helps organizations scale their training to ensure that all employees have access simultaneously. It helps you easily track who has completed learning and prevents delays in employees accessing the content.

3. Modern and relevant content

Today’s workforce is constantly evolving, and the training you offer your teams should reflect that. Microlearning’s flexible format allows learning to be cutting-edge and served up through multiple modalities. For example, HSI’s content incorporates articles, short videos, knowledge checks, and brain games to reinforce the topics and keep self-directed learners engaged. Leaders can also push out lessons to their team members for group discussions or one-on-ones, creating buy-in and holding employees accountable for investing in their development.

4. Seamless training and increased engagement

Recognizing the time demands that today’s work brings, the additional space your employees have in their day outside their responsibilities is limited. Utilizing microlearning allows your people to learn new skills at their own pace, at a time that works best for them.

Building a Culture of Personal Growth and Development

To remain competitive in today’s job market, companies must invest in their people. The benefits of self-directed learning are impressive. It allows your employees to focus on the professional development topics that matter to them most—at a time that works best for them. Investing in employee professional development provides an invaluable return on the employee experience.

By building a culture of personal growth and development, employees get a well-rounded work environment, and the organization stays ahead of the curve and becomes an industry change-maker.

HSI Can Help

In a sea of competition, picking a learning partner like HSI ensures that you are a people-first organization and will continue to retain and attract the right employees to further your mission.

Ready to learn more about our self-directed learning program? Start by checking out some HSI microlearning lessons! We’ve unlocked six free online courses on popular topics. Start today!

HSI offers a comprehensive online learning experience that caters to diverse learning styles and preferences. We offer a multi-modal approach for all self-directed learners. Our video-based microlearning provides engaging visual content that captures attention and facilitates comprehension. Alternatively, we also offer bite-sized, interactive lessons reinforcing key concepts and promoting long-term retention. Together, these approaches create a synergy that maximizes culture change and empowers employees to achieve their professional development goals in the flow of work. Our learning management system delivers, manages, and tracks training.

We welcome the opportunity to partner with your organization to help create a culture of continuous learning and higher job satisfaction. Request a consultation today!

Additional Resources

• A Whole-Person Approach to Training
• A Guide to Creating an Employee Training and Development Program
• The Power of Microlearning: A Proven Learning Strategy for Workplaces