In our last post, I talked about the benefits attached to adopting the social learning approach in corporate learning and development. First, I mentioned that social learning helps to improve collaboration between employees.

Apart from that, the learning approach also helps employees to achieve effective communication. Another benefit of social learning, as mentioned in the post, is that it helps to improve employee engagement levels.

Since that’s the case, the burning question is how does social learning help an organization to achieve improved employee engagement? Well, you need not worry too much about this question.

That’s because I’ll be sharing with you, in this post, a few ways to enhance your employee engagement in your workplace by adopting social learning.

What is employee engagement and why does it matter?

According to Engage For Success, the platform defines employee engagement as a workplace approach, which offers every employee the right conditions to perform at their very best.

Furthermore, according to a 2017 SHRM employee job satisfaction and engagement report, engagement serves as a reciprocal relationship between the employer and the employee.

It helps to improve performance and strengthen the connection between the relationships. Also, research has it that 59% of engaged employees believe that their jobs bring out their most creative ideas.

Furthermore, studies also show that 74% of these employees usually share new ideas with customers. With that, you’ll surely agree with me that employee engagement is very important in an organization.

But here’s another burning question, how does employee engagement help to drive results? The answer to this question is pretty simple. Here are a few ways that employee engagement can help you to achieve a better result in your organization.

• Higher profits
• A positive work environment
• Reduction in dysfunctional turnover rate
• More productive employees
• A work environment with less risk

That said, it’s also worth knowing that there are lots of factors that drive employee engagement. Some of them include the relationship with colleagues, self-direction, and ownership of the employee, and belief in the company and peers to take risks.

Another factor that helps to drive engagement in a workplace is showing recognition and reward for excellence. Furthermore, allowing employees to grow and develop can also help an organization to drive engagement.

How to use social learning to improve your employee engagement

No doubt, an organization will encounter a lot of challenges if it fails to use the right approach when engaging its employees. Of course, there exist several strategies that you can use to improve employee engagement in your workplace.

However, none is as effective as utilizing the social learning approach. Furthermore, this technique doesn’t only help to enhance the engagement level of your worker.

Rather, alongside that, it also helps to reshape the organization’s holistic employee experience. That said, let’s take a look at how you can go about using social learning to improve your employee engagement below.

1- Turn managers into role models

Since that’s the case, you should turn your company’s head of departments or managers into role models.

However, before doing that, ensure that they consistently possess the behavior, necessary to help the employees become very productive for your organization.

2- Set up new social learning workshops

Another way to improve your employee engagement using social learning is by setting up new social learning workshops. However, while doing that, you must set up the workshops in a way that’s specific to different skill areas – general to all business functions in your organization.

Group each of the employees, according to their departments. Then, call on the first department to perform an aspect of their job functions. During that period, the second group must pay attention and retain knowledge from the first group.

Next, you have to call on the second group to demonstrate the knowledge that they were able to retain. You can perform this process over and over again – probably quarterly or annually.

And at the end of the year, let it add up to their annual performance review. Furthermore, you can also motivate them by rewarding people that apply the acquired skills to their day-to-day work functions.

3- Use LMS with social functionality

You’ll surely agree with me that it can sometimes be very boring to sit in front of a PC to learn. However, you can address this issue by opting for an LMS system with a bit of social functionality.

Some basic social learning LMS features that you should look for include billboards and news, email and text notifications, question and answer tools, discussion boards, threaded discussion, forums, and best practice centers.

For instance, by creating a discussion forum, your employees can easily post questions regarding any issues bothering them and receive answers.