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As organisations compete to attract and retain great staff, People teams are busy running employee engagement initiatives to keep teams moving and the business competitive.
Yet, when you are going to introduce something that’s going to impact a business’ culture, there are going to be challenges to maintaining this momentum.
Take on-demand learning. It can be seen by some as a disruption: giving employees the agency to conduct learning at the point of pain seems alien to some.
This means People teams inevitably spend a lot of time finding new ways to break through the ‘permafreeze’ of attitudes and speed up adoption.
Here are effective ways to help speed up the adoption by getting buy-in.
1. Give examples of what ‘good engagement’ looks like
Success means different things to different people. It’s all well and good telling a line manager that on-demand learning is going to help support long term objectives; the pain they’ll experience when accommodating this change will be very immediate and real.
Run a session or two with managers - in a way they want to receive information - to signpost what ‘good’ looks like. Give them actual examples they can use!
For example:
Are staff accessing the content to watch the courses you’ve suggested?
Is there a reduction in questions being posed to the People function?
Is Rex suddenly a little more confident and putting his hand up in meetings?
2. Consider your audiences before launching
Launching a new learning approach needs careful planning; you need to understand who is going to support you and who is going to take their time.
The technology adoption curve is a great way to understand how people embrace new change and how each segment needs its own way of communicating to.
Innovators are those in your business who love change and are open to new technologies. Early adopters are the ones who will follow the innovators but need to learn a little more and watch it bed in.
The tough bit is engaging the late adopters and laggards. This is the point where your project needs to engage the early adopters and work out any teething issues that may stop the momentum of the campaign to then roll out to the rest of your workforce.
Sadly, you are not going to know who these all are, they don’t walk around with a sign above their head. What you can do is look at their past performance or signals that indicate where they fit.
3. Make friends with marketing
Their input is invaluable. They possess knowledge of how to communicate with audiences through psychology and have the tools to raise awareness.
Here’s a few ways some People & marketing can market a launch:
Internal comms:
offsite training days to iron out any questions before launch
share launch via company briefings, posters in the staff room, on the back of a toilet door!
Keep the interest alive:
- market specific courses via a mental health initiative, an internal pitching competition or learning at work week
Arrange viewing sessions based on career paths / learning areas:
- how to become a great presenter or how to support the work experience person
