Why a culture of learning makes for happy productive employees

There’s plenty of evidence showing that internal learning cultures drive organizations’ productivity and talent retention. Organizations with strong learning cultures are 92% more likely to develop innovative products and processes, and their employee retention rates are as much as 50% higher, according to Deloitte. 

Creating an effective learning culture is simple with the right tools and resources—whether you’re building courses for online learning, in-person learning, or both. Start strengthening the learning culture in your organization with these ideas.

Kick-off your learning culture from onboarding

A strong onboarding process can improve new hire retention by 82%, according to Brandon Hall Group. Effective onboarding gives newcomers the tools to build their confidence and integrate quickly and seamlessly into productive teams and workflows, deepening their commitment to your organization.

When onboarding is intensive (and it usually is), media-rich, interactive courses will help sustain learners’ attention. Delivering these kinds of courses is easy and fast when you use expertly designed, ready-to-go content, such as the 1,000+ prebuilt lessons, courses, and templates in Rise. If the content suits your needs, don’t reinvent the wheel—use it as is. Or you can easily customize content for your organization.

Circulate updated messaging or brand guidelines

Everyone in your organization needs to understand and absorb messaging and brand guidelines. When you think about it, everyone’s a salesperson—so they should be current on what your organization’s all about. Employees who better understand your mission make better decisions, which can lead to better work quality and higher productivity. When they recognize their own role in the organization’s mission and success, they’re more likely to emotionally invest and stay on the job. 

Highly engaging and interactive learning content will help learners retain information, even as it frequently changes. Short multiple-choice knowledge checks are a great quick way to reinforce knowledge, and fill-in-the-blank quizzes take it a step further by asking learners to recall information on their own. At the end of the day, it’s important to track employee progress, and Rise makes it effortless to see who’s learning what in which courses, and analyze course engagement overall.

Share knowledge and build community with town hall meetings

While it’s not easy to get increasingly disparate workforces in the same room for a conversation with leadership—it’s vital for morale and productivity. Employees appreciate being able to “see and hear” company leadership telling them about the state of the organization, helping them understand their roles in the year’s initiatives, and providing updates on new products or services. These learning events sharpen focus and bring clarity, which increases productivity. They also provide human connection with leadership and teammates, which helps deepen employees’ investment in the organization as a whole. 

Whether a town hall is in person, remote, or a mix of both, structuring the content in a way that drives home the key takeaways goes a long way toward supporting a culture of learning. Adding multimedia such as images and videos can bring seemingly routine announcements to life—and help learners absorb content—and it’s easy to do with Rise. Plus, any content you create with Rise automatically adapts to all devices so employees can stay connected to your messages wherever they are, on whatever device they choose.

Inspire sales teams to study up on new products and strategies

New playbooks show up regularly in sales, creating the need for sales leaders to effectively share strategies with the rest of the team. Online courses are a snap to create, update, and deliver to keep teams current on product line developments and updated selling points. And you can grow skills like objection handling and negotiating customer pain points by adding role-playing scenarios so learners can encounter challenges, practice skills, make decisions, and experience consequences risk-free.

Sales teams love using Rise scenario blocks to create real-world situations that deepen learner engagement, sharpen skills, and build confidence—all of which lead to higher sales numbers and keep employees happier on the job.

Build, build, build those skills

Skills development is an important tool for employee productivity and retention. Employees want to sharpen and grow their skills: 86% of respondents to a recent UiPath survey said they wished their employer offered opportunities to acquire new skills, while 83% said they wished their employer gave them more opportunities to enhance their current skills. 

When people learn fresh skills, they’re eager to try them out—and boost their ability to contribute to the company. Online learning is a great way for employees to learn wherever they are, when they want. And the more engaging the content, the more they’ll be looking out for the next course you drop.

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