Motivating Users in Your LMS
Learn how to motivate your users by offering prizes and incentives in your LMS. Regular meaningful recognition goes a long way in keeping your users engaged and bought into your learning strategy.
How do you get your employees to buy into a learning strategy? What can you do to inspire a genuine interest in learning and professional growth within your organization?
Motivating users is one of the most common and important challenges for Learning & Development professionals.
Research shows that employee motivation starts high and falls off quickly. It also shows that there are ways to continually stoke enthusiasm.
So what are some ways you can motivate users within your Learning Management System?
Prizes and Incentives
One of the simplest ways to motivate users is by offering prizes for using your LMS. You have to go beyond techy gadgets and practical prizes. However right Dumbledore was when he said, “One can never have enough socks,” wooly accessories won’t cause salaried employees to perk up and take notice.
It’s essential to make the prizes meaningful and company-related. Think along the lines of an all-expenses-paid trip to the annual company conference or a networking and idea sharing lunch with the organization’s leadership team.
Tie these incentives into the gamification pieces in your LMS. Set up a points competition with the conference or lunch as the grand prizes. Smaller ticket items like those socks or techy gadgets can be linked to lower points levels or badges.
Clarity and Buy-In
Clear expectations are key to motivating users in your LMS, especially when starting any sort of competition within the system.
For instance, required content shouldn’t count for points. Encourage users to go above and beyond to earn them, so tag additional learning and optional content with points and badges.
Let the competition run for a set amount of time, maybe three months, and reset the points afterward so all your learners have a fair chance the following quarter.
Another way to motivate users to go the extra mile in your LMS is through sharing or user upload contests. Some of our most successful clients use this kind of contest to boost engagement and create new and interesting content. Different restaurant locations or regional offices compete to have the best store tour, best representation of company culture, or employee talent competitions.
When setting up a user upload contest it’s important to get manager buy-in first. Announce it to them first and get them onboard and thinking about how their team can get involved.
Communicate to Motivate
The social features of your LMS are perfect for promoting contests and incentives.
Be sure to announce everything through your LMS—when it starts, what the rules are, how voting works, and especially who wins. Comment and like everything. This helps drive questions and engagement because it shows learners that you’re paying attention and care enough to respond.
Use the social channels on your LMS to recognize employees and their achievements. Highlight employees of the month on your LMS homepage for the entire organization to see. Spotlight great teams or cool stories whenever you update or publish new content.
This last one sounds the simplest, but it also might be the most effective. Regular meaningful recognition is one of the most effective ways to motivate users.
