5 ways HowNow helps you learn in the flow of work

How much do you get done in just 1% of your average working week? Probably not that much, right? Maybe a bit of prep work or catching up on a few emails, but nothing major. Well, research shows the average person slows down to learn for less than 25 minutes per week, which is that (not so) magic 1%. And that’s not long enough to learn much at all, that single block is hardly going to teach you a new skill.

The reality is that people are time-poor, and they don’t really want to learn in that traditional way anymore! How about some more hard-hitting numbers? As you can see below, people like to learn at work, on their terms and find information when they need it. And that’s why it’s so important for them to learn in the flow of work!

Source: LinkedIn Learning

Helping them do it doesn’t happen by accident, and it’s why so many companies are turning to intelligent learning platforms like HowNow. So, we thought we’d take the time to share all the ways we’re helping people to learn in their workflow. They’re all interconnected, so hopefully, this blog post has a pretty good flow of its own…

Everything’s just a search away

Numbers, numbers, numbers – this post’s full of them, but they’re our tool to convince you why this is all-important. Right now, your employees are probably spending an average 25% of their time searching for information! And that’s a 100% eye-watering waste of time and productivity.

The reason is that most businesses have their resources scattered all over the place, so people are shunted from pillar to post to peer as they try to get their hands on whatever information they need. HowNow brings all your scattered knowledge together, creating one front door for all learning. And it’s one everybody has the keys for! They can head in and find things for themselves, save their own insights and resources for everybody else and do it all whenever they please.

And all of that is why knowledge bases and learning platforms can reduce search time by up to 35%.

Integrations with your favourite apps, tools and platforms

You name it, we’ve probably got an integration for it! Why? Because we believe that if someone’s in the place they spend most of their workday, they shouldn’t have to leave it to find the knowledge to perform better and faster. For example, if your sales team manage customers in a particular platform, it’s more useful for them to find product knowledge or pricing right there.

One of the places this becomes most useful is in your messaging apps, like Slack and Microsoft Teams. If someone asks you a question, you can search for, surface and share the resources that answer it directly within the app. Better yet, if someone thinks there’s already something in HowNow that will help them, they can just do it themselves.

So, what about when there is no resource? Well, no need to panic, alert the L&D team and wait weeks for them create something. Just ask the right colleague for their expertise, save their answer as a Nugget and cut down on the number of repeat questions. Nobody likes repeating themselves, especially if it means a mini-essay in Slack, and even more so when the tech is there so save one response, just one time.

The HowNow Browser Extension

One last statistic for old time’s sake? There’s 3.5 billion Google searches every single day, it’s the learning habit of the real world – the one outside of work! When we don’t know how to do something, we turn to our search engines and learn it from whichever search result best solves our problem.

Your decision is whether you try to break that habit or roll with it? And if you choose the latter, we’ll help you do it in the most spectacular way possible.

Remember when all your resources came together in HowNow, well what if every Google search also surfaced all the relevant knowledge that you’ve created and curated in our platform? The flow of work exists peacefully and you’ve got peace of mind that the right knowledge is being seen when your people are searching for it.

Recommended content that’s tailored to you

If the right content found you before you even had to ask for it, that would feel like some kind of sorcery! We haven’t got a wand, so it’s AI that powers our magic to recommend relevant content based on your behaviour, goals and interests. It’s a win-win situation, because the more you use HowNow the better we get to know you, and the better the recommendations you get. It also helps us to hack away at the time you spend looking for information even further!

Highlight and annotate content as you read it

Remember the satisfaction you used to get from sliding a highlighter across a page of your notes or textbook? That colourful strip was your key to finding those little nuggets days, months or even years later. So, the dilemma is how to replicate that when websites have replaced your books and pads.

We’ve got the perfect solution! Our highlighting and annotation tool helps you flag the things you want to come back to later, helping you organise your thoughts as you go. You’re transformed from a passive consumer into an active participant, which has been shown to increase how much you learn.

Truly cementing those nuggets in your memory isn’t easy, but encountering those highlights and comments at regular intervals is an excellent tool to leave a lasting imprint. This is the concept of spaced repetition, giving your brain regular cues that a piece of information is important. We’ll take care of that by popping highlights into your email digest and making them easy to find in HowNow.

In true flow of work style, you can check out how all of this works right now, with our on-demand product demo! Your guided tour of HowNow is just a click away… Or, if you want to check out all of our features, you can read about all of them here.

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