3 Things Guaranteed To Improve Your L&D Impact (According To Data)

We analysed HowNow’s top 50 customers with the highest engagement to identify how elite L&D teams drive impact. Check out what we learned.

Why aren’t people engaging with our L&D efforts? 😤

Nobody’s logging into the platform. And our content’s going down like a lead balloon because hardly anyone’s looking at it!

😱 And if they’re not engaged, we can’t help them or the business achieve their goals.

We’ll stand little chance of making a big impact.

So we can kiss goodbye to the budget and buy-in we need for L&D to work.

It’s a tale as old as the learning management system (LMS) – which has really struggled to get people on board for years, let’s be honest.

But engagement is the primary requirement for L&D to work, so how can we get it?

Here are three things high-performing teams do, based on data from real HowNow customers.

Who the heck are HowNow?

We’re the learning experience platform (LXP) making learning a part of everyday work, nice to meet you 👋

And we know a thing or two about engagement too! Our LXP gets 5x more of the stuff than a traditional LMS.

You can learn more about HowNow here.

Lesson 1: High-performing L&D teams keep content relevant and up to date

We’ve all been there! Searching through the learning equivalent of a landfill site and sifting through loads of resources helpfully-named:

Pricing, New Pricing, Updated Pricing, Pricing 2022…

We’re looking for an up-to-date needle in an outdated haystack.

🦸 Not in high-performing teams!

They ensure their content is regularly checked, updated and removed where appropriate.

On average, HowNow customers with the highest engagement boast 80% content verification – meaning it has been reviewed for relevance and continues to add value, solve challenges and develop people.

And this means that when people encounter challenges in their moments of need, they are more likely to find content that helps them solve that problem!

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“The fear that their learning space will become a mess is a big fear that stops L&D teams from crowdsourcing content. And we get it, people are busy, they might not always remember to revisit and update resources.

“That’s why we enable HowNow customers to set verification intervals for each piece of content. An automated reminder to check it’s all still relevant and updated, allowing customers to refresh and remove content as needed.

“For things that are going to change often (like processes) shorter verification intervals allow you to edit and delete before employees access inaccurate information. Longer verification intervals help you with that much-needed spring cleaning for content, to ensure your ecosystem adds value.”

— Lulu Dermeche, Head of Customer Success at HowNow.

Lesson 2: Elite L&D teams empower their internal experts to create content

Have you got a Leaky Bucket when it comes to knowledge?

This is when we fail to capture the knowledge that’s either shared each day or lives in one person’s head. It drips through the holes daily and comes spilling out when someone leaves the company.

That’s why knowledge capture and tapping into internal experts are so crucial, and it’s something all high-performing teams do 👇

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✍️ 40% of their content is created by people outside the L&D team.

🤝 The average number of collaborators across Courses is 6, while for HowNow Nuggets (informal ways to capture microlearning-style content) it’s four.

As Kasper Spiro, Easygenerator Co-Founder explains:

“If somebody in your company has a question, somebody else probably has the answer. And if somebody has a problem, somebody else probably has the solution. And that’s what you want to achieve.”

This helps you build a bank of relevant and contextual content that only solves business challenges, it can be understood and applied in the flow of work and those moments of need.

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Lesson 3: Top L&D teams create content that can be consumed in the flow of work

We already mentioned Nuggets, but it’s important to understand what these are before we dive into the numbers.

From a learner perspective, they’re informal, accessible, micro-learning-style resources that help people learn and apply information when they encounter problems and moments of need.

For your L&D team and internal experts, they’re a frictionless, simple way to capture and scale content creation. They look like this 👇

🙌 More than a third (38%) of content created by high-performing L&D teams comes in the form a Nugget 🙌

That means internal experts, sharing knowledge on solving business problems in a format that allows others to tackle similar issues as they happen. Problem solved! ✅

By tapping into Nuggets and internal experts, these companies are creating content that’s relevant to and can be applied in the context of work!

People who’ve solved business problems are sharing their wisdom with others in a format that allows them to apply it when they encounter it themselves.

And this is reinforced by the average time spent on SCORM & Courses (46 minutes) and Nuggets (17 minutes).

Free Checklist For High-Impact L&D

Analysis of HowNow’s 50-most engaged customer (based on monthly active users over 6 months from 1 August 2022 to 31 January 2023).

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