Create a culture of learning with user-created content
Have you thought about encouraging employees to create and share their own content?
User-created content is an important step towards creating a culture of learning within your organisation, helping staff to become more engaged with training and development, and bringing benefits to your business.
The fact is, people are always going to create their own content – so why not encourage them to produce the kind of content you want, with effective learning materials that can be shared across the organisation?
Promoting user-created content is also very cost-effective for your business, making it a smart choice for L&D professionals. You’ve no doubt established a library of content to help you deliver your training. Why not now build upon this collection with user-created content?
Today, we’ll look at the key benefits of user-generated content, and how you can start encouraging employees to create their own eLearning materials.
A Shift Towards User-Created Content
There are many reasons why companies are shifting toward user-created content.
Kasper Spiro, CEO of Easygenerator and an authority in learning and development, says that “the trend toward user-generated learning is undeniable.”
User-Created Content Contributes to a Learning Culture
Cultivating a culture of learning is something we talk about quite often at Go1, as it’s an essential part of developing – and retaining – skilled employees.
In today’s competitive market, every business should be focused on creating a strong learning culture, if they want to see long-term benefits from their training and development program. So how does user-created content help foster this kind of culture?
We are seeing that corporate training programs are increasingly focused on informal learning initiatives, such as social learning and workplace knowledge-sharing. Encouraging staff to create, share and contribute their own content is a great way to get them more engaged and active in learning. It gets them directly involved and invested in the L&D program, in a hands-on way.
User-created content is also an excellent way to help employees better understand training materials and topics, improving engagement levels and knowledge retention. All of these things work to foster a learning culture within the organisation, bringing positive benefits to your business.
How to Encourage Staff to Create their Own Content
For many companies, user-generated learning is part of a culture shift, and this can take time. But as with any positive change, it’s well-worth the time and effort.
Sometimes, employees like to hold onto their knowledge, keeping it to themselves to preserve their status or rank. They may think that their job is at risk if other team members know how to perform the same tasks, or become subject matter experts in the same area. But knowledge-sharing benefits everyone across the company and employees should be encouraged to share their skills and experience with their co-workers.
First, you need to find staff members who are enthusiastic about creating content and make sure you have effective methods for them to do that. For example, using a Learning Management System (LMS) will give your learners the tools they need to have discussions and share materials with one another.
You might like to invite certain subject matter experts to contribute learning content on particular topics that they are passionate about. Often, employees will continue to produce user-created content, once the ball is rolling and they’ve received positive feedback from their first contribution.
This can start a ripple effect within your company, prompting other team members to share and contribute their own knowledge and experience. Encourage staff members to use discussion groups, webinars, blog posts, forums – enabling social learning within your organisation will help you develop that strong learning community and culture.
As your learning community grows, you’ll find that employees start to create and share user-created content with each other organically.
HESTA is Fostering a Learning Culture with User-Created Content
Using Learning Management Systems, training platforms and eLearning will significantly simplify the process of knowledge-sharing, allowing employees to easily contribute, share and collaborate on training materials.
A recent case study shows how HESTA is using the Go1 platform to establish a culture of learning across their organisation.
For HESTA, Australia’s largest super fund for the health and community sector, making the decision to use the Go1 training platform not only simplified the way the learning processes is managed – it also got their employees excited about agile learning, and sharing knowledge throughout the organisation.
HESTA’s Capability Consultant, Renee McCoy, found that after partnering with Go1, more and more employees wanted to get involved in the learning process, and started thinking about learning in different ways across the business.
“What we are noticing is that we have got people in the business approaching us to say, ‘I’ve got some content, can we put that into the LMS?’ which is great to see and we are excited to be able to support and build together. A great part about Go1 is that it is so easy for anyone to add content and share with others across the organisation.
We are seeing subject matter experts from across the business now starting to use the platform to share their internal knowledge with both their direct and indirect team, which in turn helps to improve skills such as job knowledge, technology adoption, to a range of other areas.
I love the fact that in our organisation we have had people across HESTA involved and collaborating on this learning management system project right from the start, and people are already thinking about how they can get involved and use the system.”
Keen to get your employees contributing and sharing their own user-created content? Talk to Go1 about setting up a learning and training platform for your staff.
