With the Pandemic taking its toll on the workplace environment, one of the many struggles that mid-sized companies face is trying to increase employee engagement with their asynchronous learning programs, such as LinkedIn Learning or Udemy for business. Some employees may find it difficult to adjust to the online movement, and struggle accessing the tools needed at home, compared to having all tools readily available for them in the office. This is especially hard to work around when everyone has different working schedules and are working on their own time.

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Here are some tips that can help you increase engagement in your workplace when it comes to asynchronous learning:

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Keep things Centralized 🔎

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A great way to ensure your employees can easily access all your learning materials is to keep them in one place. With employees working on their own time, locating their company’s tools in one designated file will reduce any confusion and questions. This can be done by creating separate files with online documents and organized in a variety of categories such as onboarding material, general learning material, and other catalog courses offered through asynchronous platforms. 

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Here are some online documents that can help organize your online tools!:

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• Alfresco
• Box
• Google Drive
• OneDrive

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Create Learning Channels 👩‍💻👨‍💻

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Introducing many new learning programs to your employees may seem cluttered and make them feel overwhelmed. A great way to approach fear is to create a learning channel through Slack and/or MS Teams and share around 5-6 new courses every month. This way employees are able to view these courses on their own time. With these courses, provide a short TLDR course summary and consider spotlighting an employee that recently completed one of the courses you plan to highlight.

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Here are some tips to ensure your team stays on top of moderating the channel frequently:

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• For a specific onboarding cohort, consider making a separate channel dedicated to that specific onboarding and learning materials. 

• Once everyone is familiarized with the content, archive the channel and roll employees over to a larger learning channel to keep them up to date with new material

• Create a private Learning Management System (LMS). Certain LMS’s allow private groups to work as a closed and collaborative learning forum for a smaller subsection of employees.

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Check-In with Your Employees Engagement & Opinions 💭

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A great way to determine whether or not certain learning programs are fit for your team is to take a look at their engagement and gather feedback from your employees.This can best be done during 1-on-1 sessions! Understanding their engagement levels and opinions on new learning tools can help you decide if these tools are worth keeping, if they help benefit the team, or if you should find an alternative learning tool. 

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Here are a few questions to keep in mind when evaluating your team's active engagement and thoughts:

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• What learning courses were seen to have the most engagement?
• What are some learnings your employees had from these learning programs?
• What are some new learning tools that employees are potentially interested in learning?
• How do they set time aside for these learning tools?
• What are your employees' preferred way of learning?

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Spotlight Active Learners 🏆

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Another way to increase engagement for your asynchronous learning programs is to show appreciation to those who are actively learning. A great way to do this is to provide shoutouts to your top learners through company-wide newsletters or Slack shoutouts. Provide a brief explanation of how impactful their efforts have been towards the company. This will allow other employees within the team to also acknowledge their teammates' efforts and be inclined to join!

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The transition from in-person to online learning is extremely difficult and hard to work around. But with these tips of organizing your selected learning material, understanding the different learning programs, knowing what would work best for you employees, and providing shoutouts to those who are actively learning, your team will feel more motivated to attend and feel more appreciated to join these programs.