Disengaged learners are not necessarily unmotivated to learn, but are either:
- Under-qualified: These learners are possibly hiding learning difficulties they may be experiencing. Under-qualified learners are likely feeling an intense amount of stress while learning without extra guidance and support.
- Over-qualified: These learners are likely disengaged because they’re bored and don’t feel as though they are being challenged.
- Disconnected: These learners may generally be feeling disconnected from their co-workers, or organization as a whole. There could be external factors that also contribute to the employee’s feeling of being disconnected.
Disengaged learners can have a direct and negative impact on your company. Disengaged employees usually care less about their jobs, leading to increased turnover, increased absenteeism and an increased chance of safety incidents.
In 2018, 53% of employees in the US were found to be unengaged at work, with another 13% being actively disengaged. Only 34% of employees in the US were found to be engaged. – State of the American Workplace Report – Gallup
Not only do disengaged learners cost your organization money, but it can decrease the overall morale of the organization. This now puts the small percentage of your actively engaged learners at risk of decreased productivity. As a result, they could also eventually become disengaged employees.
The effects of disengagement don’t stop there—it trickles down to your customer base. There’s a clear correlation between excellent customer service and brand loyalty. An engaged employee will be enthusiastic and take pride in their work, which creates bonds with customers. However, customers can sense (and respond) to unhappy or disengaged employees.
So how do I reach my disengaged learners?
(The million-dollar question!)
Whilst there isn’t a single answer, there are methods of best practices to ensure the most favorable outcome for your learners.
A highly engaged workforce can lead to a 21% increase in profit The Right Culture: Not Just About Employee Satisfaction – Gallup
Firstly, ensuring the learner is the focus when designing, creating and implementing your training program is crucial for engagement. The training program should be clearly structured using methods that suit the learner’s preferences.
For example, you may have a millennial workforce that enjoys learning via their mobile devices. It may be ideal for your organization to use a mobile-optimized Learning Management System (LMS), or to deliver training where your learners live—like via social media.
Actively participating in training can be difficult as most learners are generally trying to balance work, study, and personal life. When an organization offers flexible approaches to learning, it improves their team’s ability to participate, resulting in a higher engagement rate.
Flexibility should reduce any real or perceived barriers that your learners may have. For example, by providing online training programs, your learners will be able to complete learning at a pace and time that suits them. This removes barriers like childcare costs, transport availability, and cost. It also shows your learners that you value their personal responsibilities as much as their professional ones.
A solution
Our design services team has worked with hundreds of companies to develop structured training programs to ensure that their learners achieve their learning outcomes.
The design services team loves to collaborate with their clients. The team has developed a framework that allows them to understand exactly:
- Who your organization is
- Who your learners are
- What the goal of the training program
The information from this framework will be used to develop a training program that will be clearly structured. The training content will include engaging course assets such as illustrations, infographics, animations, videos, assessments and more.
The finished product will be a visually rich, fully-branded course, that will be ready to roll out to your learners! From here, users will have the ability to make live edits and updates to the content.
You may be looking to convert an offline course to an online course, update existing eLearning resources, or even completely redesign your online training program.
