Happy New Year and welcome to 2024! January is a great time to start planning your learning initiatives for the year and we have you covered. Check out our new 2024 12 Months of Learning Calendar to build a learning program that will keep your employees engaged all year round. Plus, we'll take you through the best new and returning content providers on Go1 in January. 

What content providers should you check out this month?

Topic coverage: Sexual Harassment, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), Belonging, Trust, Social Justice, Equal Employment, Unconscious Bias, HR Compliance, Health and Safety, People and Communication Skills

110+ courses in Premium ranging from 2-120 minutes in duration

Emtrain courses are available in 35+ languages (machine translated), with voice narration provided for 20 languages

Top courses: Preventing Workplace Harassment Unconscious Bias; Diversity and Inclusion; Global Data Privacy; Equal Employment Opportunity

Topic coverage: Leadership & Management, Personal Development, Diversity & Inclusion, Hybrid Teams, Problem Solving, Creativity, Innovation, Communication Skills, Managing Change, Influencing Skills, Finance, Performance Management

135+ courses in Premium, with a duration of 5-215 minutes

Top courses: Finance for non-finance managers- management accounting fluidbook, Diversity and inclusion fluidbook, Storytelling with data – Infographic, Managing v Leading fluidbook 

Topic coverage: Business Skills, Sales, Leadership, Teamwork, Software, Sustainability, DEI

1500+ courses in Premium, ranging from 20-70 minutes in duration

Top courses: Critical thinking; think harder and you'll get it right, Cultural Awareness: How to develop your cultural awareness and sensitivity, Gain customer loyalty by demonstrating excellence, How to make AI work for you: Write prompts that generate results 

What new content providers have been added to the Content Hub?

Topic coverage: Sexual Harassment, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI), Belonging, Unconscious Bias, HR Compliance, Health and Safety, People and Communication Skills

9 courses in Premium ranging from 30-120 minutes in duration

Top courses: Anti-Racism & Unconscious Bias for Workplaces, Eliminating Sexual Harassment: It’s Everyone’s Business, Eliminating Sexual Harassment: It’s Everyone’s Business (for California Supervisors), Eliminating Sexual Harassment: It’s Everyone’s Business (for California Employees), Eliminating Sexual Harassment: It’s Everyone’s Business (SHRM-CPD)

What great new content have our current content providers added to the Content Hub?

Packt added courses in English on topics such as Python, AWS, Machine Learning, Power BI, Blockchain, and more!

UL Solutions provided us with courses on Health and Safety and Industrial Skills in Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Korean, and Portuguese

Zenva added courses and videos in English on Web Development & Design, Data Scraping & Web Parsing, AI & Machine Learning, and Python Programming

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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January is a great time to plan your learning initiatives! So, check out our new 2024 12 Months of Learning Calendar to build a learning program that will keep your employees engaged year-round. 

The Go1 Content Insider - January 2024 Edition

To say AI is a hot topic would be an understatement. No longer consigned to the margins of Sci-Fi, generative AI is now a reality, with many of us using tools like ChatGPT and Bard regularly. To contextualise AI’s rise, LinkedIn posts about generative AI have skyrocketed by 33x over the past year. Additionally, the Global Generative AI Market will grow 26x larger over the coming decade, reaching an estimated value of $1.3 trillion by 2032. 

Put simply, artificial intelligence has arrived. However, as technology evolves, AI’s influence will grow, forcing many businesses to adapt and evolve. The L&D industry is no exception. It’s no longer a question of whether AI will influence L&D, but how these influences manifest. 

So, what’s next? How will AI influence the future of L&D? To answer these questions, we’ll analyse the state of AI, before examining the benefits of AI for L&D and outlining Go1’s future AI plans.

After years of speculation featuring flying cars and robot apocalypses, the rise of generative AI was swift. It took ChatGPT just five days to clock one million users. AI is here and here to stay. So, let’s set the scene. 

A recent survey found that 48% of businesses have adopted “at least one AI-backed function or machine learning system.” More specifically, well over half of HR & L&D teams use AI for: 

Payroll processing & benefits administration

This is only the beginning, as surveys show almost all HR leaders intend to increase their AI usage within two years to avoid lagging behind competitors. 

In the immediate future, estimates suggest that 47% of LMS tools will be enabled by AI capabilities by the end of 2024. It’s no wonder industry expert Josh Bersin predicts that “AI (and generative AI in particular) is going to radically change the HR Tech landscape.”

To learn more, check out our blog on whether AI is really coming for your job. 

The benefits of AI for learning and development 

Whether you’re using AI to create content, engage employees, or automate tasks, there are many ways to leverage AI for learning and development. 

Forbes summarises potential uses for an AI-powered LMS, stating, “[It] can use learning algorithms to gather data and personalize the learning experience for users. AI can test a learner’s existing knowledge and adapt the learning journey to fit their individual needs. The pace, depth, and breadth of the content the learner consumes can be adjusted to their unique requirements. An AI-powered LMS can harvest data from all the learners using the system and then make the learning experience adaptive.”

Similarly, a survey of L&D professionals who have implemented AI tools found they were saving time and money, improving efficiency, personalising learning experiences faster than ever, and making more data-informed decisions. The benefits of AI adoption are driving business leaders to invest further in tooling, and we believe L&D professionals at all levels should do the same. Here’s why. 

AI tools can reduce the average time to produce an L&D training video by 62% — from 12.9 days to just 4.9 days. That’s right, AI can decrease video production time by more than a week! Saving time doesn’t mean compromising on quality, as 57% of teams also saw a positive impact on course completion rates.

If you’re creating a large volume of training videos, imagine how quickly those time savings would add up and what you can achieve with your extra free time. 

What’s better than saving time? Saving enough money that budget holders will thank you. Luckily, AI can save your business significantly when deployed correctly. On average, AI reduces hiring costs by 30% and increases revenue per employee by 4%. 

Further, organisations with AI-powered learning can expect to see a 10% increase in employee productivity and a 5% decrease in training costs. 

Improve efficiency, safety, and productivity

Speaking of productivity, artificial intelligence is known for its process-forward efficiency, and the numbers confirm it. Research shows that early adopters of AI technology in L&D have enjoyed an array of benefits, including: 

These numbers will likely increase over time as the technology evolves and companies optimise their AI usage.

AI is a game-changer for employee engagement, with research showing that AI-powered L&D can increase engagement by 20% and knowledge retention by 15%. This increase is significant, as knowledge retention is an ongoing dilemma. Our memories are unreliable, as is our ability to retain knowledge.

The Forgetting Curve (studied since 1885) suggests that learners forget approximately 50% of the information they’re shown within an hour, 70% within 24 hours, and 90% within a week. Therefore, a 15% boost in knowledge retention is massive, leading to better learning outcomes and more knowledgeable employees. After all, if you go through the effort of sourcing and sharing L&D content, you want employees to retain as much information as possible.

While these benefits are extensive, some workers still have reservations. After all, 87% of L&D professionals want the L&D content they consume to be created by a subject matter expert, whereas only 12% want it to be created by AI. 

These statistics send a clear message: most people want their training content to be created and presented by a human. Learners want AI to complement and enhance human L&D efforts, not replace them. 

As Training Magazine notes, “respondents are not opposed to L&D practitioners using AI technology to improve their efforts, but they still want humans to create, plan, and direct the activities.” 

Accordingly, AI can be highly beneficial throughout the content creation process — from summarising transcripts to tagging content and even creating images. However, most learners want AI to supplement, not supersede, human learning.

Ultimately, AI has many uses to complement and enhance L&D efforts, taking learning to the next level. 

Despite these benefits, cases of technological bias and inaccurate AI datasets are still common. That’s why at Go1, we firmly believe AI is only as good as the data it’s fed. So, what’s feeding our AI ambitions? We utilise data from 156 million yearly course completions, encompassing over 130,000 data points from 250+ content providers, to create personalised learning pathways. 

Go1 owns the world’s largest learning library. So, by leveraging data from our content and learners, we strive to enable best-in-class content-to-learner matching; consistently surfacing meaningful, accurate, and trustworthy results. 

AI is top of mind for Go1, and we look forward to delivering more on this topic very soon. We can’t wait to bring our customers and partners with us on this innovation journey, so stay tuned for what’s coming — maybe as soon as the end of the month!

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 discover how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs. 

How will AI influence the future of L&D? To answer this question, we’ll analyse the state of AI, before examining the benefits of AI for L&D.

How will AI influence the future of L&D?

Employee engagement and business growth go hand in hand. After all, engaged employees are more productive and profitable. Specifically, 21% more productive and 23% more profitable.

Inversely, disengaged employees are 18% less productive and 15% less profitable. These expenses add up quickly, particularly if employees are disengaged en masse.

So, the question becomes: how do you set employee engagement goals that lead to sustainable business growth? We’ll answer this question and others, analysing the relationship between engagement and growth, before offering three tips on setting engagement goals. 

The relationship between engagement and business growth

Employee engagement and business growth are fundamentally intertwined. Without one, it’s almost impossible for the other to thrive. To demonstrate this, 71% of executives say employee engagement is critical to their company’s success. 

Unfortunately, we can’t talk about engagement without talking about disengagement. According to Gallup's 2023 State of the Workplace report, disengagement is at a 9-year high: "[2022 showed] the lowest ratio of engaged-to-actively disengaged employees in the U.S. since 2013.”

Additionally, disengagement costs the economy $8.8 trillion — 9% of global GDP. Given this, it should be concerning that just 15% of the global workforce is actively engaged — a staggeringly low figure.

Thankfully, there’s good news too: engagement, profitability, and retention are strongly linked. By increasing engagement, you’re more likely to retain top employees and boost revenue, thereby driving business growth. 

For example, increasing engagement by just 10% can boost profits by $2,400 per employee. 

In part, this profitability boost is because businesses save on recruitment fees. On average, it costs $4,700 to hire new talent and $986 to onboard a new hire, meaning you lose almost $6,000 whenever an employee quits. These costs add up fast if you consistently lose employees due to disengagement. 

On the other hand, employees are 87% less likely to quit a job if they’re engaged. Employees are practically crying out for more engagement opportunities, as both Gen Z (71%) and Millennial (86%) workers would accept a pay cut to do more meaningful work or secure their ideal job. These statistics show salary isn’t the be-all and end-all. Rather, engagement and company culture are vital, especially for younger job-seekers. 

Increasing engagement can save you a lot long term, particularly on hiring and recruitment costs. These savings allow you to attract and retain employees, build a tight-knit team without constant hiring disruptions, and, ultimately, grow your business. 

For a deeper dive into this topic, check out our whitepaper on Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs.

Setting engagement goals that lead to business growth 

Engagement is inextricably linked with business growth. Knowing this is one thing, but taking advantage of it is another. So, how do you set engagement goals that actually drive growth?

At Go1, we’re all about alignment. Remember: 94% of high-impact learning cultures say their L&D activity is fully aligned with their organisational goals. Among ‘average’ teams, this figure is less than half (49%). 

However, alignment is always worth revisiting — especially for goal-setting. Goal alignment is essential to create an engaging company culture where everyone has a sense of purpose and works towards the same outcomes.

Align Today elaborates, outlining the pillars of goal alignment: “Goal alignment involves the marriage of three pillars – organisational goals, team goals, and individual goals.” To break this down further: 

Organisational goals are the overarching objectives of your business and its stakeholders.

Team goals are specific objectives assigned to different departments (i.e. Marketing Goals, Sales Goals).  

Individual goals are assigned to each employee based on their roles within a team.

Individual goals should feed into team goals, which should feed into organisational goals. For instance, your graphic designer may have a goal of creating ten social media infographics per month. This goal feeds into one of your team goals: grow your LinkedIn following by 5%. In turn, this feeds into organisational goals of increasing brand awareness and market share. Thus, goal alignment means aligning organisational, team, and individual goals so they complement one another.

But what are the benefits? According to Gartner, when employee goals align with organisational goals, performance increases by 22%, while 75% of companies meet or exceed their revenue targets. 

Still, goal alignment is tricky. 40% of managers say failure to align is the greatest challenge to executing company goals. Further, only 51% of companies even attempt to develop aligned goals. On the bright side, just by reading this article, you already have a competitive advantage over the 49% of companies that never even try to align their goals! 

Luckily, goal alignment doesn’t have to be a headache. While the particulars will vary from team to team based on your industry, company size, and specific needs, we recommend following these basic steps: 

Audit your current goal-setting process to find areas of misalignment. Check out our Needs Analysis Tool for help with this step. 

Ask your senior executives to define clear, overarching organisational goals. All other goals should work towards these. 

Share your organisational goals with relevant stakeholders for feedback, then make any necessary adjustments. 

Once your organisational goals have been finalised, share them with the wider company. Ensure everyone receives, reads, and understands these goals. You could do this during regular departmental meetings, using this as a springboard to brainstorm team goals. 

Ask departmental leaders to finalise their team goals.

Once you have finalised your organisational & team goals, organise times for 1:1 meetings between all managers and employees. Use this time to brainstorm individual goals. 

Schedule follow-up meetings to finalise all individual goals. 

Once all goals are finalised, disseminate your organisational goals company-wide and team goals to the relevant departments. Communication is vital for alignment, ensuring everyone is informed and working towards the same outcomes. 

Keep clear records of all organisational, team, and individual goals to refer back to. Keeping records will help you measure the success of these goals later. 

Finally, refine and optimise this process by seeking employee feedback to see what you can do better next time. 

Remember, there will likely be teething problems during your first attempt. Don’t be discouraged. This is normal and the rewards are worth it!

You’d assume that in our modern, ultra-technological age, using technology to drive and measure engagement would be standard practice. Unfortunately, you’d be incorrect. Just 16% of employers use technology to monitor employee engagement. 

This statistic represents a massive missed opportunity, showing that most businesses measure employee engagement with one hand effectively tied behind their back. Worse still, only 22% of companies understand what drives employee disengagement. This is another worryingly low figure. After all, it’s almost impossible to engage employees if you don’t understand what causes them to disengage. How can you fix a problem you don’t understand? 

Even when teams use engagement technologies, the process tends to be clunky and disruptive. Only 35% of employees were consulted when their workplace introduced new engagement technologies. Yet, when employees are consulted, 70% feel positive about the impact on their jobs. These findings provide a valuable lesson for managers about the power of communication and consulting employees.

Further, employees with access to work management software are 85% more likely to be happy. So, don’t be afraid to seek a helping hand from technology when setting and monitoring engagement goals. The benefits are immense — just remember to consult your employees!

Finally, communication is vital to setting engagement goals, as effective internal communications motivate 85% of employees to engage. 

Naturally, this impacts productivity. Improved internal communication can boost organisational productivity by 25%. Therefore, to boost engagement, communicate with your employees clearly, openly, and often. 

Of course, it’s rarely that simple. 74% of employees believe they’re missing out on workplace news and information, which 86% blame on poor communication. 

The CIPD explains that workplace communication is crucial but rarely as effective as possible, stating: “Many employees feel they receive limited or very little information and there are challenges to effective communication at all levels of the organisation.” These findings paint a damning picture of the state of internal workplace communications, leaving employees largely uninformed. Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder many employees disengage.

More specifically, The Institute of Internal Communications (ICOC) identified five topics that negatively impact engagement when communication is unsatisfactory. These are: 

Career & personal development opportunities (38% of employees receive too little communication on this topic) 

Organisational strategy & direction (33% of employees receive too little communication on this topic) 

Guidance to help me do my job (33% of employees receive too little communication on this topic) 

Wellbeing information (30% of employees receive too little communication on this topic)  

Organisational values & culture (20% of employees receive too little communication on this topic) 

As a result, ICOC reached a simple conclusion: “Engagement is higher when communications are clear.” Organisations must remember this advice when setting engagement goals. More broadly, extra communication is always beneficial to engage employees —  in this case, you can’t have too much of a good thing!  

Ready to start boosting engagement? Download our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs, to get started! Or, you can book a demo to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

How do you set employee engagement goals that lead to sustainable business growth? We’ll analyse the relationship between engagement and growth, before offering three tips on setting engagement goals.

How to set employee engagement goals that lead to business growth

Employee engagement should be a priority for every organization. As we’ve explored throughout our ongoing engagement blog series, there are many ways to improve employee engagement. If you’re not already caught up, check out the previous posts in this series: 

The role of employee engagement in a culture of learning

Top ways to improve employee engagement in learning programs

How to improve employee engagement in remote workplaces

However, the question remains: what are the best tools and software to improve employee engagement?

In this post, we’ll explore some of the best employee engagement tools and the software your business can use to increase engagement and have a more productive, efficient, and happy workforce.

For a deeper dive, check out our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs.

Types of employee engagement tools and software

From survey and communication tools to software that helps with project management and recognition, there are plenty of resources designed to boost engagement in your organization.

Below, we’ll analyze the best employee engagement software to help you get the most out of your workforce.

10 of the best employee engagement survey tools are:

Survey Monkey – Possibly the most well-known survey tool, it’s comprehensive and easy to use.

Trakstar – A great retention tool with a comprehensive employee survey feature.

Jotform – Mobile friendly, so great for hybrid or remote teams.

Lattice – Offers science-backed templates and real-time feedback.

ThriveSparrow – User-friendly with plenty of retention tools, including employee surveys.

Leapsome – Useful for linking employee development and retention, plus great survey features.

Deel – Perfect for medium and small businesses, as a free version is available for businesses with fewer than 200 employees.

Sogolytics – Comprehensive survey tool with useful analytics features.

Culture Amp – Simple to use and produces actionable insights.

Connecteam – Has a great range of features, including sending auto-reminders to employees who are yet to complete a survey.

Best employee engagement tools for project management

10 of the best employee engagement tools for project management are:

Asana – Allows for simplified workflow management and offers plenty of integrations.

Trello – Simple and stylish, using a unique sticky note interface.

ProofHub – Offers a ton of customization and is easy to navigate.

ClickUp – A place to centralize project management which is customizable and affordable.

Monday.com – Potentially the most well-known project management tool on this list, it ticks a lot of boxes a business of any size would need.

Wrike – Perfect for large organizations with plenty of functionality and features.

Podio – Super user-friendly with lots of integrations available.

Workzone – Everything is streamlined and has fantastic reporting capabilities.

Teamwork – A one-stop shop with plenty of customizations available.

MeisterTask – No-nonsense and integrates with other popular tools such as Slack.

Best employee engagement tools for recognition

10 of the best employee engagement tools for recognition are:

Bonusly – Focus on peer-to-peer recognition with useful analytics.

Blueboard – Instead of monetary rewards, employees can choose rewards from categories related to health, fitness, wellbeing, travel, and more.

Kudos – A great all-around recognition tool with fantastic analytics features.

Awardco – Affordable and easy to use, it offers an offline reward option too.

Assembly – Offers business-wide recognition and can automate special occasions like anniversaries and birthdays.

Fond – Provides a large selection of rewards to help businesses build a culture of recognition.

WorkTango – Use the platform to set goals and automatically reward employees when goals are achieved.

Nectar – Great for peer-to-peer and manager-to-peer recognition and integrates with other popular software like Slack and Microsoft Teams.

Motivosity – Provides a huge range of customizable reward options.

Reward Gateway – Offers plenty of customization and integrates with Amazon Business, which ensures a wide range of rewards.

Best employee engagement tools for communication

10 of the best employee engagement tools for communication are:

Slack – An extremely popular tool that provides one-to-one and channel-based communication as well as video and voice calls.

Zoom – Simple and reliable video conferencing.

Microsoft Teams – Offers video chat, file sharing, and instant messaging.

Tettra – A great knowledge-sharing platform with an AI feature that can help you find answers quickly.

Twist – Provides a balance between effective communication and fewer distractions.

Notion – Lots of functionality to allow for collaborative working.

SharePoint – Fantastic for working collaboratively, especially in remote or hybrid work environments.

Confluence – Useful for collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Guru – Makes collaboration and accountability simple, plus it can integrate with tools like Microsoft Teams and Slack.

StackOverflow – Offers a lot of functionality to make knowledge sharing and brainstorming simple.

How to choose the right employee engagement tool for your business

With more and more businesses offering employees greater flexibility, including hybrid and remote working, knowing which engagement tools are right for you can be challenging. 

The first thing you need to do is assess the areas where your employees are disengaged. To do this, you can send employees surveys and analyze data, such as by pulling a report if your business uses a learning management system. This should tell you whether tools could help increase engagement. For example, if employees say they don’t feel recognized for their achievements, you know one tool to consider would relate to recognition.

Next, outline the specific features you need from a tool. It’s vital to get input from employees and stakeholders, so you know your entire workforce will benefit from the implementation.

When browsing for tools, ensure you schedule product demos. During these, make sure you get answers to all your key questions, including those related to:

You should also utilize product trials, so you and your workforce can get hands-on with software and ensure it meets your needs. You may also gauge whether there has been an increase in engagement during that trial period.

For more information, read our blog post on why employee engagement is important for improving customer retention.

Employee engagement is critical. It can be the difference between a top-performing business and one that struggles. When employees aren’t engaged, they won’t deliver their best work. When that happens, quality will slip, meaning deadlines get missed.

While employees are partially responsible for their engagement, so are managers and senior leaders. Leaders can help by providing the right tools so employees can collaborate, be productive, and – ultimately – engage.

Inspired to boost engagement? Download our whitepaper, Employee engagement strategies to build successful L&D programs, to get started! Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

We’ll explore some of the best employee engagement tools and the software your business can use to increase engagement and have a more productive, efficient, and happy workforce.

The best tools and software for employee engagement

Employee engagement is vital. It can be the difference between a successful business and one that barely scrapes by. This is equally true for remote and hybrid workplaces, which are often overlooked in the engagement equation. After all, it can be challenging to gauge how engaged employees are when you’re not in the same room.

If any positives came out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was proving that remote and hybrid working can be positive and productive. A study by the UK government found that 78% of those who worked from home said being able to work from home gave them an improved work-life balance. Similarly, another study by Stanford University revealed that nearly 40% of respondents have been more efficient while working from home.

Accordingly, the main question is, how do you improve engagement for remote employees? We’re going to examine exactly that. We’ll look at strategies to improve remote employee engagement and offer tips and ideas to get the most out of your digital workforce.

Employee engagement is sometimes overlooked in a remote workforce. After all, if employees are meeting their targets and aren’t raising concerns, surely that means there’s nothing to worry about? Not necessarily.

Ensuring employees are engaged should be a priority for every business leader. Engaged employees are efficient, productive, proactive, and more likely to innovate. Therefore, engaged remote employees tend to produce better work on time and within budget.

It can be difficult to determine how engaged remote employees are, but it’s something business owners must be on top of. If employees aren’t engaged, they won’t be as invested in your business achieving its goals, which risks underperformance.

The benefits of remote employee engagement

When employees are engaged, it not only benefits them, but your entire organization in the following ways:

More opportunities to promote from within

These factors also contribute to cutting costs or producing consistently high-quality work, resulting in more revenue. As such, ensuring remote employees are engaged makes sense from a financial point of view.

For more information, check out our blog on building strong relationships in a remote work environment.

The challenges of maintaining remote employee engagement

Since remote teams don’t work together in the same room, measuring engagement can be tricky. It’s much harder for managers and leaders to observe when engagement levels are down, meaning potential improvements are overlooked.

However, there’s more to it than that. Below are some of the reasons it can be difficult to maintain remote employee engagement:

Limited opportunities to interact socially

For more information, read our blog post on using connection and belonging to combat loneliness in your team.

Strategies to improve remote employee engagement

The good news is that while there are challenges in maintaining engagement with remote employees, there are strategies you can implement to boost engagement. Below are just a few engagement ideas for remote workers: 

Ensure there are plenty of ways employees can communicate, which offer transparency for who is available and when

Encourage senior management to communicate with employees regularly

Be open and honest about the organization’s goals and objectives

We’ll look at strategies to improve remote employee engagement and offer tips and ideas to get the most out of your digital workforce.