The concept of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is one of those ideas that can change your life when learned. It is simple, and some people might even call it cheesy. But it is highly relevant to success, being applicable not only in leadership but in life in general, and the results are fascinating.

But first, let's understand what a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is. In his 1948 article "Self-Fulfilling Prophecy", Robert K. Merton, the person who is credited with coining the term, defines it as:

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true.

In one of his books (Social Theory and Social Structure), Merton exemplifies this concept with a fictitious story of a Bank. Initially well managed and in a healthy financial situation, this Bank, like all banks, has some liquid assets (cash), but most of its assets are invested in various ventures. At a point in time, an unusual amount of customers, by chance, come to withdraw large amounts of their money. Some other customers, seeing this, begin to worry.

False rumours spread that something is wrong with the bank and more customers, hearing that, rush to the bank to try to get some of their money out while they still can. The number of customers at the bank increases, as does their annoyance and excitement, which in turn fuels the false rumours of the bank's insolvency and upcoming bankruptcy, causing more customers to come and try to withdraw their money. At the beginning of the day, the bank was not insolvent. But the rumour of insolvency caused a sudden demand for withdrawal by too many customers, which could not be answered in that short notice, causing the bank to become insolvent and declare bankruptcy.

In the story above, the rumours of the bank possibly going into insolvency (the "prophecy") actually caused itself to come true. If there were no rumours, there wouldn't be any insolvency.

Another example of a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is the Pygmalion Effect (the phenomenon whereby higher expectations lead to an increase in performance). A well-known study conducted by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson demonstrated that teachers expectations of students actually affect their learning outcomes. In that study, students from a school were initially tested but their test results were kept in secret from teachers. The teachers were told that a group of those students were high potential individuals and they would outperform the rest of the students by end of year.

As a consequence, the attention and behaviour of the teachers towards those students changed, their expectations increased, and by end of the year, those students did outperform the rest. However, that ‘special’ group had actually been randomly selected and there had been no indication from the initial test that those students were better or worse than the others. The teachers’ expectations and behaviours towards the students actually caused the students to become and perform better.

Self-fulfilling prophecies work not only socially, such as with your team or individual people, but also affect your own self. Being an optimist or pessimist is also a form of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Just think about it. As humans, we are equipped with selective attention. So, if you start your Monday with a firm belief that it will be a good day, it is more likely that you will pay more attention and put more weight on the positive things that happen on that day (or give them a positive spin), making it a nice day.

Conversely, if you start your Monday thinking that Mondays are always terrible, you will more likely pay more attention and put more weight on the negative things that happen on that day (or put a negative spin on them), making it terrible, no matter that a lot of positive and negative things happen on any given day.

There are countless studies that indicate that optimists live longer, are healthier, more resilient, more successful, richer, happier and probably have better sex lives. It makes sense. If you are generally a happier, positive person, more people will want to stay around you, chat with you and like you in general. This gives openings for more relationships and opportunities, giving you more chances to achieve your objectives and desires.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is a phenomenon that can generate wanted or unwanted consequences. As we mentioned, the prophecy itself might be detrimental to people or organisations, and when left unchecked can cause its self-fulfilment.

However, great leaders know how to use the Self-fulfilling Prophecy for the creation and achievement of great things. Steve Jobs was a man known for his "reality distortion field" (an unrealistic view of situations coupled with excellent persuasion skills, causing many people to believe in his vision, which in turn enabled it to become a reality).

If it wasn't his crazy "prophecy" that Apple would create a completely user-friendly full touch-screen smartphone with an app store, the iPhone wouldn't have happened. Elon Musk's vision of creating reusable rockets, significantly cutting costs of space travel, trumping giants in the aerospace industry, and landing them upright was initially considered completely insane, until enough of the right people believed in him, put money in the idea, and started to work for him. The "prophecy" became reality in 2015 when SpaceX rocket first landed upright. This, in itself, is part of an even bigger Self-Fulfilling Prophecy from Musk, one still to be realised.

We can probably say that all great things have been created or achieved in part by the use of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. Just think about it. To create a building, or a company, or to win a competition, people can only achieve it if they go through a lot of obstacles, if they have the energy and determination to follow through, and if they gather the help of enough of the right people working towards the same objective. All this can only be achieved if these people believe that that vision can be achieved. When you establish a compelling vision and communicate it properly, it has a great potential to become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy.

The most critical of you might be saying "ok, but a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy can only be called that at the end, once it is actually fulfilled, and not all missions, visions or objectives become reality”. Yes, you are correct, but practically all successful achievements started somehow as ‘prophecies’. They all needed to be believed in to become true. They are all results of people's perceptions, actions and behaviours towards that vision. Consequently, creating a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, and believing in it and communicating it, is a necessary step in achieving success.

So, when you see a leader in your organisation saying "our product will be the most used product in the world", do not discard it. If you do so, you will be contributing to its demise. If you and enough of the right people believe in it, and act towards it, only then it has a real chance of becoming reality.

If you are a leader, use this concept in your favour. Create worthy Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and believe in them. Communicate them properly and frequently to your team. Make them believe in them and get allies to believe in them too. The greater number of people believing in your vision, the greater the possibility of it to become a reality. The belief, coupled with the right attitude and hard work that comes with it, causes the vision to become true.

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

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The concept of the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy is one of those ideas that can change your life when learned. Learn how to apply it to your work-life.

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and leadership

Creating online course materials for your staff or students? You might want to invest some time in improving your writing skills, to make sure you’re communicating and engaging well with your audience.

Well-written content is critical to the success of any eLearning project. No matter how fancy or cool your graphics are, without clear, concise content you’ll struggle to connect with an audience.

When writing the content for your online courses, you’ll need to use language that conveys clear messages to your learners and encourages them to engage with the materials. If your target audience can’t connect with the words on screen, you’ll lose them. In fact, you might not even reel them in to begin with.

Here are some tips to help you improve your writing skills for eLearning courses. You'll find yourself creating online courses that are far more effective and successful in no time.

Pam Jones, Director of Eight Interactive, has been creating global eLearning content for over sixteen years and believes “words are the best thing we have to make eLearning that bit more excellent.”

“By its very nature, eLearning and its design is centered around technology. It’s technology that makes it possible after all. But it’s easy to get carried away with whizz bang graphics and forget the power of words to get an eLearning message across,” explains Jones.

She recommends first taking the time to come up with a good title for your online course, as this is an important step in having learners connect and engage with your content. Titles should speak directly to the learner about what your course will offer or how it will improve a particular aspect of their lives.

Give your course a title that solves your target audience’s immediate pain point. Jones suggests “How To Create Attention Grabbing eLearning Course Titles” as an example of a course title that identifies a need. Think about the need your learners have – what do they want to learn today. Then turn that need into a clear title.

Break Your Content Down into Smaller Chunks

When writing content for your eLearning course, you want to break the information down into easily digestible chunks for your learners.

A study found that 79% of people reading online will merely scan or skim content looking for particular phrases or words. Only 16% read every word. Presenting your content in big long slabs of text will only turn learners away, so make sure your learning materials can be easily skim read on the screen.

To do this, divide your content into independent topics and sections, allowing your audience to find relevant information quickly – even if they are skimming over pages.

Deliver your content in small, bite-sized chunks, with a maximum of five bullet points per page. Use short, concise sentences – long sentences force students to slow down and focus their attention on wording, versus learning. So try to keep your sentences to around 20-30 words for online course materials.

It’s not just your course title that needs to be clear and direct. You want to keep this running through the entire course, with language that’s clear, simple and easy to read. This will help learners focus on the content, absorbing and retaining knowledge quickly and easily.

As we said above, no matter how fancy or cool your graphics are, they can’t hide or make up for poorly written content. Words are our most powerful tool - so we should learn how to use them well. Write your content as though you’re sitting down with each learner and talking directly to them. Flowery, overly-embellished writing and academic tones don’t translate well to eLearning materials.

Once you’ve finished writing, check and re-check your content. Are your course materials free of spelling mistakes, typos and grammatical errors? Is your language clear and concise? Have you written your content in a consistent and appropriate tone for your audience?

While you’re working on improving your writing skills, have someone else look over your course content before publishing. Ask them for feedback on the flow of your language and the clarity of your content. They may also pick up on any outstanding typos and errors that you’ve overlooked.

Like most professions, the learning industry is full of jargon and buzzwords. We love our microlearning, mLearning, and blended learning. Not to mention all the acronyms – LMS, MOOCs, APIs, SCORM, BYOD… you get the picture!

When you’re inside the eLearning bubble, it can be easy to forget that other people don’t necessarily use or come across these words in their everyday language. But these people are your audience. Your learners. So it’s important to tone down the jargon and buzzwords if you want to connect and engage with them.

Subject matter experts often present information in a way that’s too technical for a general audience. When writing your content, keep a constant check on using technical language and try to use ‘plain English’ terms as much as possible.

As you continue to improve your writing skills, you'll find that your eLearning courses become more effective and engaging with learners.


Want more tips for creating online courses?

Our handy eLearning course design checklist will help you feel more confident in your design process, with plenty of useful information on graphics, multimedia, accessibility and fonts.

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How to improve your writing skills for eLearning courses

Every business owner wants to see their business grow. It’s exciting to get more customers, hire employees, and increase sales. It’s also important to have a stable business. Growth isn’t worthwhile if its effects don’t last and create a better business.

Here are five things that will help your business grow and give it a foundation to last a long time.

You need to have a vision for your business. You must have plans and dreams for what you want to do with your business. Without a vision, your business lacks direction. A lack of direction can shutter growth.

Create a mission statement for your business. The mission statement should explain your business’s goals and values, all within a few sentences. Writing your mission statement can help you focus what your business is really about.

When you create a mission statement for your business, be honest. Think about what your business is really about. Focus on what your business does well. Don’t go too broad to encompass every current offering and future dream. At the same time, don’t go too narrow and limit yourself.

You don’t have to plaster your mission statement on your website and marketing materials; you can keep it private for internal use and direction. It’s also OK to change your mission statement. As your business grows and develops, your goals and vision might change. As your business changes, so should your mission statement to keep you on track.

As your business grows, you’ll need more employees to handle new tasks.

Good recruiting is the key to hiring good employees. Do you wonder where to find employees? Use local and big name job boards. Ask for recommendations. Attend networking events. If you have trouble finding employees, you can also hire a third-party recruiter.

When you find a candidate you like, be sure to thoroughly interview them. While asking them about their skills and experience are important, you should also ask behavioral interview questions.

Once you find and hire the best candidate, it’s time for onboarding. Your onboarding program should teach your new employee about your business and their new job. When employees better understand your business and their jobs, they can better serve your business. You should have a training component to help the employee adjust to their job and start performing quickly.

You can use a learning management system to help onboard your employee. You can create informational courses about your business and the employee’s specific job. The system will track employee progress through the courses. You can even create assessments to see how well your new employee is transitioning.

Customers are vital to your business. Without customers, you don’t have revenue.

You need to know who your customers are. Do a market analysis to determine your target customers. These are your ideal customers who are most likely to buy from you. Find out where they live and work. Learn their interests. Collect demographic information. Think about who your current customers are and who else you might want to attract.

Once you know your target customers, you can cater to them. You can market to them where they’re at. You can offer products or services that meet their needs. You might also develop branding that matches their interests.

The goal is to get repeat customers who love your business. Repeat customers mean you make more sales, and you do so consistently. And, customers who love your business will share your business with others. Your customers will promote you by word of mouth, which will hopefully result in even more customers.

You must market your business. Marketing will draw in more customers.

Design your marketing for your target customers. Use messaging that appeals to them. And, put your marketing where your ideal customers will see it. Marketing to people beyond your target customers is futile and will rarely produce results. Use information from your market analysis to determine where to put your marketing efforts.

You should also market to existing customers. You already know these people will buy from you. Convince them to buy from you again.

Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. You can use low-cost or free marketing methods. For example, you might use social media or email marketing.

Without good finances, your business will struggle. You must make sure you aren’t spending too much or bringing in too little.

Creating a budget is important. The budget will help you manage your spending. You can create a business budget by estimating your revenue and expenses.

You need to be able to read your financial statements. Your statements include line-by-line items of your income and expenses, along with totals. Reports you might use include the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement.

You should also know how to use financial ratios. These ratios help you make sense of your accounting information. They synthesize your data so you can see what’s working and what’s not. For example, you can use the inventory turnover ratio to learn how quickly you turn inventory into sales.

Kaylee Riley is a writer for Patriot Software, LLC and Top Echelon, LLC. Kaylee writes about payroll, accounting, software for recruiters, and other small business topics.

5 components of growing a business that lasts

Have you ever watched a YouTube video to learn how to do something new?

Well, this is a form of social learning. In today’s world, learning with technology has become easier now than ever before since everyone’s tech-savvy. Just think about how many times you’ve typed a question you have into Google, looking for the answer.

We don’t realize it, but we are socially learning every single day through the Internet. Whether it’s through our favorite social media site, the news or platforms like YouTube, the idea is that we’re learning from other people and through what they’re doing.

Observing and doing the same thing as other people is a natural way for us to learn. Humans are social creatures and we take in information every day through conversations and interactions with other people, as well as online.

But, social learning isn’t a new concept. In fact, it’s been around since 1977. The Social Learning Theory was created by psychologist, Albert Bandura. His thinking was that people learn by observing others and how they behave, as well as listening to what they say.

People can take this information from their observations and can use the learned behavior in similar situations that arise in their own life. Then, once you’ve learned from someone else, you start doing it. It’s a type of environmental learning.

In a nutshell, social learning is observing the behavior of others and modeling our own behavior based on what we’ve taken from the interaction. We do it in everyday life without realizing it.

But, that’s enough about Albert Bandura. You’re here to learn about how you can incorporate social learning into your workplace and that’s how we can help.

Social learning has been around a long time, but there’s been an evolution of social learning from the Internet. Learning is now more indirect, rather than attending training events and conferences, employers are investing in online and e-learning for their employees.

This is exactly how you can use social learning to boost your employee training. You’ll be glad to hear that it’s pretty easy to get started and is going to save you money and time. Read on find out how!

It’s time to jump on the technology bandwagon. Using the Internet to your advantage is going to offer you plenty of social learning opportunities for your employee training. Plus, it’s simple to incorporate into the workplace as soon as tomorrow.

Think about it – when you’re new in the office, you often watch someone else do something so you can learn how to do it yourself. Whether it’s using a formula to work out numbers or watching how to work a computer program properly – you’re watching and learning.

So, why not offer your employees the chance to learn new skills in a similar way, but through your LMS? Social learning doesn’t mean you have to provide training days and having someone directly in front of you to learn – technology can do the same thing.

You can provide ways for employees to educate themselves on your LMS. They are free to start this whenever they want and complete training in their own time. It’s also going to save you time and money, as well as integrate elements of social learning. Everyone’s a winner!

Using technology for learning isn’t just for millennials. There’s lots of online e-learning courses that are available for all levels and you can introduce them to your employees today. This will allow them to discover new facts and skills that are beneficial for the workplace.

For example, a lot of e-learning courses use animated videos for learning. Employees watch the behaviors of the characters and also engage with the voice-over.

This is a form of social learning, as employees can take away interactions with the videos and use their new learned behaviors in the office themselves.

There’s an endless choice of e-learning courses you can choose from to suit every industry, and they use social learning to their advantage.

Including discussion boards, forums and interactive features on your LMS is a great way to incorporate social learning into employee training.

This is going to provide somewhere for everyone to share their thoughts and exchange ideas with other employees, especially about the courses they have just completed.

This way everybody can learn with each other and from each other. Of course, for this to work properly, you’ve got to encourage your employees to engage in the discussions.

But, you’ll find that providing interesting e-learning courses will make people want to have their say and take about what they’ve just seen.

You can also use online webinar software for your office and integrate it into your LMS. This is a great way to reach lots of employees at the same time with one speaker.

There’s plenty of software to choose from that has interactive features and Q&A settings that encourage collaboration and social learning.

This means that during training, employees can ask the speaker questions and exchange ideas with everyone. These kinds of features are going to get people talking – in other words, social learning.

There you have it. To summarize, social learning is learning with and from other people and the best way to integrate this concept into your office is through your LMS.

E-learning courses, discussion boards and webinar software are some of the best ways to use social learning in employee training.

So, how are you going to use social learning for your workplace?


What is social learning and how to get started implementing it

Getting ready to develop a new online course for your staff or students? It’s important to take some time to prepare before creating learning content, so you can be sure that you’re designing your course in the best way possible for your learners.

You might be tempted to just jump in and start writing your content, but the best eLearning courses always involve a good amount of preparation and planning.

We’ve put together the key steps you need to know before creating learning content.

Whether it’s your first time designing an eLearning course, or you just need a little fresh inspiration or help warming up, you’re sure to find these preparation tips helpful.

First things first, your eLearning course needs to have clear goals and objectives. You’ll want to sit down and think about your goals, well before you get started on any content or design elements.

The most important part of this step is defining the learning objectives for your target audience. This means establishing exactly what you want your learners to take away from your eLearning course. This will serve as a guide throughout the eLearning course design process – you can keep coming back to these objectives, to make sure you’re meeting your learner’s needs.

You should also take this time to establish goals for the eLearning project itself. What do you want to achieve from this project? What timeframe do you need to complete the course design? It’s a good idea to give yourself mini deadlines, with set dates for completing certain chunks of learning content. This will help you stick to your project schedule, keeping you on track and able to meet your deadline.

Before building a house, you need to figure out what tools and resources you need for the job. And building an eLearning course is just the same.

At this step, think about the eLearning resources you have at your disposal, to allow you to create the best possible online course for your staff or students.

What authoring tool will you be using to create your eLearning course? What LMS and apps will you be working with? Are there certain subject matter experts you can get on board? And will you be using a project management platform, to assign tasks and deliverables to team members?

Christoforos Pappas, from eLearning Industry, agrees that “gathering your tools” is an essential step of the eLearning course preparation process. You’ll want to figure out exactly which stage of the process requires which tools, before you need them.

For example, “if you are going to be using a new video creation tool, make sure that you have gained an in depth understanding of how to use it properly and that you are aware of its features before the video creation stage rolls around,” Pappas recommends.

We’ve talked before about the importance of storyboarding for eLearning development. And this is certainly a key step in your course design preparation.

As we said then, good eLearning courses have one thing in common – they all use effective storyboarding in the development phase. In fact, many eLearning professionals consider storyboards to be the most important element of online course creation.

Your storyboard can be thought of as the very foundation of your eLearning course. It’s like a map that clearly outlines all the visual, text and audio elements of every single screen that makes up an eLearning course.

And because storyboards are like blueprints of your course materials, it makes it super easy to update learning content at any time.

Head over to our previous article to find out how to get started on creating a storyboard.

It’s also very important to make sure that the design elements of your online course are consistent. You might think this isn’t as important as the written content of your course, but aesthetics will play a large role in how successful your eLearning course is.

Karla Gutierrez, from Shift Disruptive eLearning, considers consistent graphic design to be a crucial step in online course design preparation.

“The consistency of a course reduces the cognitive load of learners focusing on unnecessary features of the course. If every screen of the course has different color schemas and fonts, it does not foster a continuous learning experience,” Gutierrez explains.

So make sure you give thought to this when reviewing your storyboard.

Keen for some more tips to help you prepare before creating learning content?

Check out our eLearning course design checklist, to learn more about important aspects of eLearning design such as graphics, fonts, multimedia, and accessibility.

You might also like to view what makes a good online course design to gain more understanding and insight into the science behind the online course design process.

How to prepare before creating learning content

Do you know what’s involved in conducting a successful project close?

When you’ve worked hard for months on a project and it’s finally come together, it can feel like an achievement and even a relief. Your sponsor has approved and all the work is in place. You think you can finally move on to the next project.

But, you’re not finished there. There’s something missing.

A lot of people are too busy rushing onto the next task to realize how important closing the project is. This is a vital stage for success and it’s a sign of good project management.

Just like you have to plan your project at the beginning, you’ve got to reflect and analyze the facts at the end.

Closing your project is not just a milestone on your business calendar, it’s a process that is going to be vital for future success, as well as rounding up your current project.

That’s why it’s important for all organizations to teach their employees about how to conduct successful project close now, rather than later.

The project close is a key learning experience, one you don’t want to walk away from. There’s a lot of lessons you can take forward with you into future projects to ensure they run better.

Your project close is going to outline what you’ve done in the project and what you have learned during the process. This is key to understanding any problems that you’ve had and finding a solution, so they aren’t repeated in the future.

After all, nobody’s got time to waste in business – you don’t need to make mistakes twice.

Alternatively, you can highlight what your team has done well. You want to find out how you’ve done that aspect of the task, so you can carry on doing this in future projects. It’s all about reflection, analysis and learning from the situation.

It’s just like a game of football. The team spends time training and talking tactics before playing the game. After it’s finished, the team will look back at their performance.

They’ll analyze their play and evaluate their actions. Coaches and players will highlight the good and point out the bad. It’s all about learning for the future so you can improve.

In the same way as football, project close is how you can learn and improve in business.


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.

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.”

“Whether it’s driven by vision, pragmatism, changing business requirements or financial reasons, user-generated learning is all about sharing knowledge without the need for central supervision and guidance. When implemented correctly, it can be an extremely powerful extra asset to your company,” Spiro says.

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.


Create a culture of learning with user-created content

Even though we all know how important it is to provide training for staff, some companies still fall behind when it comes to investing in employee development.

Particularly when budgets are tight, corporate training can often take a backseat in favour of more ‘essential’ spending. But there are many reasons why staff training should always be considered an essential.

Here are some of the reasons why employee training is so important for any company – whether you’re a large corporate organisation, medium-sized business or small startup.

By investing in proper training for all employees, you can expect to see big improvements in the work performance and productivity of your staff.

Learning and development is crucial to ensure that each person has the skills and knowledge they need to do their job. By making sure managers are taking the time to create professional development programs for each team member, staff will feel a lot more valued, and you’ll soon see higher job satisfaction and a positive work culture overall.

It’s very important that staff training is continual and ongoing, with adjustments being made so that new targets and areas of development are continually identified and addressed. Corporate training should never be just something that you tick off once a year to satisfy your boss or HR department – it requires ongoing investment of your time, focus and energy, to get the best results.

Training Bridges the Skills Gap for Staff

Training will also help bridge the skills gap in your organisation, reducing any mismatch that exists between the skills that you need for your business, and the skills that your employees actually have.

Proper training for staff isn’t just about making sure they can do the job at hand. It’s also an important part of keeping employees up-to-date with any changes in technology and their industry. This is a win-win situation, as you’ll be helping them to continually improve their skill set, while they’ll be bringing back relevant industry knowledge and new skills to the company.

In doing this, you’ll also have a better chance of attracting and retaining other high caliber employees, as these days people want to work for employers who are committed to investing in professional development.

Training Keeps Your Organisation Compliant

Corporate training is also critical for keeping your staff up-to-date with workplace compliance requirements.

We’re seeing that businesses are currently operating in an increasingly complex risk and compliance landscape. Failing to meet state and federal compliance requirements can result in huge fines, legal proceedings and a loss of reputation for your company. Not to mention profits. By having staff participate in compulsory compliance training, you’ll have peace of mind that you’re meeting necessary business requirements.

Through compliance training, staff will be able to recognise and respond to important issues such as workplace safety, harassment, bullying, data management and IT security. This will help minimise risks for your company, making training a very wise investment indeed.

That’s right – if you’re keen to learn more about why training is so important for staff, check out this practical online course.

A short eLearning course, The Importance of Training is particularly great for managers and team leaders who want to dedicate time and effort to develop the members of their team. It’ll help you further understand why it’s worth investing time and money into training, while helping you build a solid training development plan for your team.

Importance of Training - Trailer

The course begins with the well-known story about two managers discussing training options:

One manager asks, “what happens if we invest in our people and then they leave us?” 

To which the other replies, “what happens if we don’t and they stay?”

The course is presented in an entertaining and easy-to-understand format, through the use of animation and ‘spot the learning style’ activities to test your knowledge.

That’s not to say the course materials are at all lightweight. While certainly entertaining, the online course covers some serious and worthwhile topics.

You’ll look at the theory behind how people learn and how you can take that theory into the real work environment to shape training development plans. And explore the Kolb learning cycle – named after its creator David Kolb. If you haven’t heard of this before, it’s a really good way to think about learning and development.

Kolb suggests that there are four main stages of learning which most employees go through in order to learn effectively. Gaining an understanding of these stages, and how they flow into each other, can help you create better training programs for your team.

This eLearning course will also help you in developing better training programs, or plans, for your team.

The instructor explains how you need to start by identifying the needs of an employee, through questioning and assessment. This will help you to establish if any knowledge or skill gaps exist, that can then be addressed.

The skill gaps you identify will form the basis of the employee’s professional development program, or learning plan, as this course refers to it. Learn about ‘smart targets’ and ‘stretch learning goals’ – after taking this course, you’ll have a whole new vocabulary when it comes to learning!

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

Why you need to provide training for your staff

Let’s face it, nobody enjoys seminars or training where people just talk at you.

Traditional forms of training are slowly being phased out of the workplace. Not only are conferences and training events time consuming and expensive, but they also aren’t as effective as they once were when it comes to learning.