15 quick Ideas on how to engage your teams in online learning

It’s easy to get busy and potentially miss the real value from online learning. Just because you have a system it doesn’t mean people will use it without encouragement or reminders. This article has been designed to act as a reminder on some of the many ways you can get the most benefit for you and your teams from your online learning system. These tips have been tried and proven as ways to help increase your awareness and engagement of your online learning presence within your organisation.

1. Create a visual wall competition as a road map and move people along the journey as a motivator to see how they are tracking with the rest of the team when they complete certain learning tasks or modules

2. Assign a team member to share a learning outcome in a team meeting and explain how they have used or could use the technique in day to day scenarios that others can relate to

3. Play a video or walk through a learning module in a coaching session to help show the team member how to do a specific soft skills technique and where to find it in future

4. Assign a learning topic to a staff member and ask them to complete the topic and share the outcomes with you on a specific date. This pin point coaching rather than a vague conversation

5. Start the day or shift by showing and discussing a topic in a daily huddle, ask reflective questions and discuss how the team could use the technique that day. If you know there are specific areas such as a price rise that might lead to upset customers cover those topics

6. Put up a poster in the lunchroom and other common areas to remind people that they have access to online learning and what the login details are. Remember just because you have it, it doesn't mean they will remember use it.  

7. Print out the posters from the learning outcomes and place them around the office to remind people of the techniques you would like them to use. Focus on specific topics for the week or month, remember once and done does not work we need constant reminders.

8. Discuss the online system as a group to see if there are features you haven’t used lately, if not why?

9. Use topics from your online system to support your induction program for new hires. Take the pressure off trainers and show new hires what they can continue to use when in the role, cement the learning culture early on

10. Email new hires a login before they start (called pre induction) and ask them to complete specific topics ready for their first induction day, this creates an amazing presence for your organisation and speeds up time to competency

11. Take 10 minutes in a team meeting and play a video or discuss a topic as part of ongoing training which may be related to particular issues in the market or business. Give your teams the relevant tools to do their daily job

12. Encourage team members to study in downtime to do some personal development. Online means 24x7 encourage team members to just do a few minutes each instead of scrolling through social media

13. Invite team members to plan their own self development by choosing areas to work on. Have them schedule to complete topics by specific dates, then discuss their outcomes and responses when completed

14. Use the results from call evaluations or catch up review sessions to then assign specific topics or modules to be completed as part of ongoing development and personal growth

15. Use learning pathways and have the team work together towards completing them over a set period of time or as individual personal goals they can tick off.