When should learning start for a new employee? Unless you have a thing for watching employees sit around being unproductive (and bored), the correct answer is as soon as humanly possible.

Traditionally, this is usually done from Day 1, because you've got to organise a sit-down course, rope in an instructor, book a place to run the course, prepare assessments to make sure that the material has sunk in and at the end of it all, get some feedback on how your new hire found the whole ordeal.

Luckily, you don't have to be traditional any more. You're the modern HR pro, and you have access to technology.

Here's why you absolutely need to use some form of learning technology in your onboarding process.

No more preparation time or paperwork filing

For those who don't know HROnboard, we're the employee onboarding software guys & gals. Our customers commonly use us to kill their reliance on manually preparing job offers, contracts and policies in the offer process, which saves a bunch of time, reduces the chance of manual errors and makes the whole process much faster and more transparent.

By including learning in the employee onboarding process, you can similarly remove all the learning documents, paperwork and filing by placing it online. By using a tool like Go1, you'll always have access to all records and courses online, which is much easier to manage and maintain.

Forget the instructors, forget the paperwork, and forget the traditional, boring office education environment.
By giving employees access to their courses online, you no longer need them to be with you to complete their training courses.

Not only is this great for you (new employees will already be ready to get stuck into work on Day 1), but it also gives new employees the flexibility to complete courses at their own pace, on their own device, in a more comfortable environment.

Create, update and improve your courses on the fly

Need to add in a few new bits of information to your course? Instead of re-drafting, printing and distributing courses, you can make a few clicks online and be done with it.

One effective way to manage your courses is to develop basic programs, then add additional elements or courses for specific roles and departments. That way, setting up courses will just involve selecting the role type and automatically sending the correct, up-to-date course materials for each new hire to complete.

Online courses are always much more engaging. You can make them fun, entertaining and a direct reflection of who you are as an employer.

Even if you don't have a dedicated course creator in your team, you can still configure an online course to match your branding, include all of your content in a dynamic and modern way and make the learning experience a positive one for each new hire.

Setting up your own employee onboarding & learning technology

You don't necessarily need to overhaul your entire onboarding process to get started. Start small - one or two courses, setup some links throughout your current onboarding process and get a feel for what you need.

Once you've made the switch, you'll never look back. Having a faster time to productivity and more engaged employees will be all the incentive you need to keep building and expanding your learning programs into the future!

HROnboard is cloud based employee onboarding software that helps organizations manage the job offer and new hire process. We now integrate with Go1 to provide an even more comprehensive employee onboarding experience, covering everything from learning to offer acceptance to tax forms.

Anne van der Wal is a HR Technology & Employee Onboarding Specialist at HROnboard

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Why learning technology should be a part of employee onboarding

Selecting the right learning management system for your business isn't a decision that should be taken lightly. At Go1 we want to make sure our system meets all of your needs before you sign up. By creating an easy to use platform that integrates with all of your favorite programs, and having inline editing to make course creation simple, we have all of your learning bases covered!

Go1 is software that allows you to train your staff and customers. You can quickly create your own customizable courses, or use one our pre made courses in our growing marketplace of over 100,000+ courses to make learning easy. Whether it’s onboarding, compliance or selling courses, Go1 makes your training easy!

The most important eLearning tool that you can have is an LMS that meets your needs. Within our LMS Software we have a range of tools to enhance the learning experience including video, audio, text and interactive assessments so you can tailor your course to your staff.

Why not try Go1 Learning Management System?

Is your Learning & Development team working to up-skill your team members? If they are not, you are at risk of losing them! With more than half of the workforce stating that professional development contributes to their job satisfaction and can be a leading cause of work place stress, now is the time to invest in training your team.

Employees who derive meaning and significance from their work are more than 3 times as likely to stay with their organizations creating a more skilled and productive team, as well as developing a culture of learning in the workplace.

To find out more and sign up head to www.go1.com

Are you cultivating a learning culture in your workplace?

There are tools out there that let you build websites with simple drag and drop functionality, so why can't you do the same thing with creating online courses? Now you can with Go1 inline editing!

The latest update on the Go1 platform has made creating your own customized courses even easier by allowing administrators and creators to watch their course come to life as they are adding element. Similar to the tools that you are already familiar with on website building platforms like Squarespace, you can now use inline editing to add videos, documents, update text, images and more all within the same display view that your learner will be seeing.

You can find more about how inline editing works in this video.

After creating your course in the Administer dashboard, you no longer need to create any further content before clicking on the 'Learn' button and jumping straight into the learner view for your new course.

Once you have gone into your 'My Courses' tab on the left hand side LMS menu and selected your new course, you can then click on 'Review' to view and start adding/editing your content.

We can now see that there is no content in our new course yet. We can begin the editing and adding content by clicking on the 'Edit' button in the top right hand corner of the screen.

We have now enabled all of the editing featured on the page. To start we can click in the title area and begin entering a title and description for our course. We can even change the cover image for our course by clicking the area just below the header.

Below our header there is a box called '+ADD', this is where new content blocks can be added to the course.

Our first content option is text. In this block we can enter a title for the content we are about to add by simply clicking in the blank area at the top of the text box. Below that we can enter any text that we would like to include in this section as a part of the course.

The next item that we can add to our course is a document. We can still add a title and description of the document that we are adding, exactly the same way as mentioned above, but then we also have the ability to click the button below and upload a document. This could be a word doc, excel, powerpoint, etc. Once uploaded the doc will display in your course.

Our last item to add is video. Again we can add our title and description as per the text box mentioned above, but we can then click upload video to add a video resource to the course.

Any of the above blocks can be rearranged to be in your order of preference, and you can delete any blocks that you no long want to use by simply clicking on the trash can in the top right hand corner of each block.

With the addition of these tools creating and editing courses just got a whole lot easier for everyone!

If you have any problems or questions relating to your inline editing tools, please do not hesitate in contacting us at support@go1.com and we can guide you through the process.

Inline editing makes creating courses easier than ever!

Training new staff can be a costly and time consuming process, and with the way current markets are trending more companies will see more 25% staff turnover each year! Switching to a learning management system like GO1 means your onboarding costs can be reduced to a fraction of your current training expenses, and you will save weeks of training time!

To find out more and sign up for a free trial CLICK HERE

Is Staff Turnover Blowing Your Training Budget?

We have decided to trial a new release schedule. We will now we aiming for shorter release cycles every two weeks. This will enable us to get suggested improvements and updates out to users as well as release things in smaller changes.

As part of the blended learner experience in Go1, scheduled courses allow you to run a course as an event that has a specific date and location. To allow user to better find and enroll in the correct scheduled courses we have enhanced the filtering capabilities in this part of the system so users can now filter courses by start and end date as well as their location.

Project groups is a feature that allows for discussions between learners and course facilitators. Through group discussions, learners can ask questions and get help on course material. It also provides another format for administrators to assess learners understanding of the material.

In this release we added additions features to improve the ability to search and find groups as well as provide further moderation tools for administrations to manage groups.

For a full list of improvements and updates see the list below:

Improve management of archived project groups

Fix regression with course sharing not functioning correctly in v2.6.0

Show the correct currency symbol for a payment

Add ability to remove alternatives from multiple choice question

Portal admin can administer and delete custom project groups

When cloning a module, also clone the resource order so they are the same

Fix issue where the video cannot be played again after completely watching video

Add details of purchase in Stripe payment record description

Show feedback to user who has failed the quiz

Add date and location filters in Scheduled Courses page

Add ability for admin to edit tags on course

Go1 CEO Andrew Barnes was recently invited to DrupalGov Canberra 2016 where he spoke about how to use Drupal for learning management. DrupalGov is an organization promoting Drupal in the public sector, founded in 2013. They help passionate public-sector communities create opportunities for learning, networking and sharing their knowledge and experience with Drupal.

Having worked with the product since Drupal 4.6, Andrew and the Go1 team have been making some great advancements using the Drupal over many years. Throughout the presentation Andrew discusses a range of topic relating to using Drupal in Learning Management including the importance of learning, curating content, advantages of fostering a learning environment, H5P and new interactive learning experiences, assessing competency and much more.

You can watch Andrew's presentation here:

For more information and details on upcoming DrupalGov events head to http://drupalgov.org

It’s a fact of life that at some point one of your employees will share with you that they are expecting a baby. With women making up close to half of the workforce you’re sure to have an excited employee share the news that she is pregnant. It is such an exciting time of their life and you, as their employer, need to be on board for the ride.

An employee will share their news with you orally during the first trimester so generally you should have between 4 and 6 months to prepare for a smooth transition. This seems like a lot of time but in reality this is a very quick process. This is the time where you and your employee will set in place a checklist of items you both need to adhere to in order for the transition to run smoothly. As their manager it is important that you have up to date information at all times so you can actively manage the next chapter of the employee’s life.

To help make this process easier, we have designed a course to take you through the steps in order to seamlessly manage a very exciting time in someone’s life. Managing an expecting employee involves a range of necessary checklists and paperwork. From establishing their due date, to making sure all paperwork is in order and effectively replacing them in the workplace with minimal disruption can be tricky. It’s important to get systems in place so that both employer and employee know what to expect from maternity leave.

This course will also help guide you through the steps and best practices to ensure the employees health and wellbeing is being looked after. It’s a very strenuous time in a woman’s life, so assisting in making your employee’s professional life as easy as possible will alleviate some of the stress of the overall pregnancy process. Together, you and your employee should be working towards a clearly defined (for both parties) and openly communicative working relationship in the days and months leading into the arrival of their child.

In addition to be providing your employee with a safe, comfortable and supportive work environment (before, during and after their pregnancy), it’s crucial that you are fully across the businesses own parental leave policies and procedures. Ensuring that your employee is satisfied with the working environment that they have been provided is important, however it’s equally important to accurately represent your organization, thus making sure that you have not promised something to your staff member that is outside of yours and the businesses reach.

During the maternity leave process it is imperative to have an open line of communication. So many unexpected things can arise in a women’s pregnancy that you will need to have flexibility and the ability to adapt to these situations. It may be health issues, to unexpected appointments, to extreme morning sickness, so having a flexible workforce planning strategy in place can assist both you and your employee. Being aware of this, whilst forecasting your staffing requirements will help you to avoid breakdowns in resourcing and service levels.

Having been through the maternity leave process twice myself, it was incredibly important to have a smooth transition. Knowing where I stood and what was expected of me in the workplace helped me to transition into motherhood seamlessly, without the stress of not knowing what was happening next. I was able to discuss matters with my employer and feel comfortable in the workplace. My health and safety was a top priority as I was one of those unfortunate women who’s pregnancy weren’t so smooth, but my employer always made it very clear that my health and my babies health was incredibly important to the organization.
I have recently entered the workforce again after having my second child and it was managed exceptionally well. The lines of communication were open and my employer was respectful of my needs, not only as an employee, but also as a mother of two small children.

This course is critical to organizations of all sizes, as the maternity leave process is one that needs to be well navigated. There is a lot of information out there for women who are expecting, but sometimes not enough is provided for the employer. It is important to remember that every situation is different and you, as the employer, need to have the knowledge in how to manage the process well. By doing this, you will be cultivating a supportive and hospitable workplace culture, one that will assist in staff retention and the reduction of attrition, which, as we know, is a win for all successful business.

Having an open dialogue with your employee will mean you will both know what to expect (when they are expecting) throughout the process, and may be more willing to negotiate coming back to the workplace. 

Why managers need training around maternity leave

Here at Go1 we love learning (like, we really love it) and we are passionate about ensuring inclusive and quality education for all. Access to education has increased for both everyone worldwide – something we should take time to be proud of. But we are far from parity.

The number of young women completing a secondary education is substantially less than their male counterparts, especially in developing regions. School fees, strong cultural norms, inadequate sanitation and negative classroom environments, along with complex familial and societal expectations, all lead to a reduced number of girls completing formal education.

That’s not nice to hear. But here’s some good news.

In communities where girls and women are supported and encouraged to extend their education and training, the economic and social benefits have been incredible. When a girl is supported to complete one extra year of schooling, her wages increase by 10-20%, which is on average 5% more than the increase we see in their male counterparts

Women who extend their education are more likely to delay childbearing, reducing the number of women and children we see dying in childbirth. And mothers with higher levels of education are more informed to make better decisions about their own and their children’s health and join in civic participation within their communities.

These findings are exciting and at Go1 we are encouraged to think about the ways we can increase the ability of young women to access education and learning. We see technology playing an important role in how to deliver and engage young people in their both formal and informal education. That is why we are constantly searching for and supporting programs that leverage the mobility of technology to reach isolated and often disadvantaged communities.

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2016, we are excited to announce the launch of our partnership with Code4Rights, a project aimed at promoting women’s rights through technology education. By increasing women’s access to technological resources and knowledge Code4Rights empowers women all over the world to build the technology they need in their communities. Go1 shares Code4Rights vision that all girls and boys who love technology should be given the opportunity and support to pursue that passion, and use their knowledge to create meaningful progress within their communities and countries.

Organisations like Code4Rights are leading the charge to capitalise on technology and its immeasurable capabilities. Never before have we been able to increase access to education on a scale like we can today. Mobile technologies mean the most isolated, distant and disadvantaged communities can reach out and tap in to knowledge that creates lasting, meaningful change in their lives.

To support the work of Code4Rights head over to their website and subscribe to their mailing list

Let’s celebrate the women in your lives today – and celebrate those around the globe who are working hard to create a world where every child not only loves to learn but is given the opportunity to learn

Find out more about Sustainable Development Goals

Happy International Women's Day! Let's celebrate!

There has been a growing discussion about gamification and how it is changing the way that the world learns. Yes, it’s true that gamification is making a serious impact on the learning industry at the moment, but why is this happening?

Gamification may seem like a relatively new concept, but it’s really an old idea: Creating feedback mechanisms that can motivate and stimulate interest.

Creating feedback loops and mechanisms to motivate people is not new. Biologically we have been hard wired to respond to the world around us, and modern technology is now putting these age old behaviors to use.

The typical examples given for the genesis of gamification is the rise of digital games over the last few decades. Most people reading this article have probably used a Nintendo, Playstation, or Xbox console, or even just Solitaire or Minesweeper on a Mac or PC. And, more broadly, whether it was board games or console games, everyone grew up playing games. And games are becoming more and more pervasive. You can walk down the street, or go online without having the latest ad for Game or War, or Clash of Clans shoved in your face from every direction.

But I would argue that gamification in learning is more than just creating a fictional façade of achievement. There are many examples of digital rewards and notifications that apply to productivity applications rather than just gaming applications. In fact our modern lives are filled with notifications and alerts.

With that, the next logical step in education was to incorporate these dual concepts into our learning processes. In 2016 notifications are a part of everyday life. From the second we wake up in the morning the first thing most of us do is look at our phone, where we can find a screen full of notifications prompting us to look at things, or respond to people. This a normal part of everyday life, so why don’t we start using notifications and badges in our learning processes? Well we are!

Interactive notifications can spur all sorts of new behaviors. 

Some of these can be simple like sending a message or enrolling in a new course, but they can be a powerful tool to keep learners engaged and wanting to learn more! Think about all the ways that we experience notifications on a day to day basis. We get a notification that we have just received a new email or SMS – or perhaps an alert from Facebook or some other app on our phone. What do we do? Of course we open up the app or game straight away and interact with it! We have become trained to follow the notifications.

Let’s have a look at how this works with online learning.

Let’s imagine Jane is doing an online course to learn how to manage conflict resolution in the workplace. After enrolling into the course, Jane has a notification appear on her screen to let her know that she has just earned a new badge for enrolling in a new course. Jane continues working through her course, and after passing the exam on her first module with a perfect score, she receives another notification including a badge featuring a gold dog letting her know that she has just received the “Top Dog” badge for getting the top score on her exam. All of this praise has got Jane excited about her next module, and she wants to work extra hard to make sure she gets another “Top Dog” badge.

We might not think much of them, but interactive notifications can have a dramatic effect on our learners. 

The badges or rewards don’t need to be something big or over the top, even the smallest piece of encouragement is enough to push a student to remain in the top of their course results, or tell their friends about how much fun they are having with their course. After a few days of working through their program, users begin to want to collect more badges, and not only that, they want to collect the best badges.

This is sounds nice and simple, but it’s not that straightforward.

We need to create an experience to match the badges.

If a user spends 2 hours read through a wall of text and then receives a badge, is that really going to encourage them to come back for more? Make your content fun and engaging, and tie the content to your badges. Make the most of being able to include mixed media in your learning. Video as a form of learning is much more likely to keep the learner engaged, while a recent study has shown that even the slightest improvements in the production quality of the video can have a dramatic impact on the user.

It’s important to match your notifications setup to the needs of our target user base.

If we are teaching children, obviously we will be setting up our notifications in a very different way to that of corporate learners, and if we don’t tailor to our target audience, engagement is going to suffer.

Originally published on eLearningindustry.com

How to use interactive notifications to take your learning experiences to the next level

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