A business needs all the competitive advantages it can get right now. Especially when it comes to employees. Your people are at their best when actively engaged in their work. Getting them to that point is at the center of learning and development strategies. And here at Wisetail, our learning platforms are built specifically to help you rise to that challenge.

One essential element to engaging employees is buy-in. Your people are most likely to buy into business objectives when they believe in the company’s vision and values, and when they understand how their role relates to those business objectives.

The Wisetail LMS gives you the tools to clarify that vision and show the importance of each person’s role to accomplishing goals. How do we do that? With gamification, an intuitive user interface, and social and collaborative features.

Gamification

Gamification lets you spice up L&D. Because while everyone knows there’s value in getting better at their job, sometimes the motivation just isn’t there.

Holding contests, issuing badges, hosting leaderboards, awarding points for completing content — these are just ways to show your people that their sustained efforts have value.

We like to recommend that you utilize gamification features to incentivize your learners to use the LMS in certain ways. For instance, let’s say you want more user-generated content because that resonates more with staff. Host an upload contest where points are awarded for creating content and viewing others’ submissions.

Most everyone has heard the phrase ‘virtue is its own reward.’ But sometimes it’s nice to redeem points for gift cards.

Ease of use

This seems like a no-brainer but it bears noting: an LMS needs to be simple, straightforward, and easy to navigate. Otherwise learners won’t use it at all.

The Wisetail platform is designed to feel like social media — a familiar layout that makes it easy for learners to quickly figure out what’s where and how to get there.

Of course, you have to fill the platform with training content and elements of company culture. That’s where it can get tricky. So let’s look at how one client, fast casual restaurant Urban Plates, succeeded in crafting a layout that made it easy for learners to access learning in the flow of work.

Matt Bassuk, Instructional Design Manager at Urban Plates, says the key is to think about how your content is supposed to work. He and his team ended up creating six separate pages that functioned as portals. In the end, any information an Urban Plates employee might need was a click or two away.

Social and collaborative

Social and collaborative features are the ones that let your people feel heard and involved. In other words, the features under this umbrella are the ones that make the Wisetail LMS greater than the sum of its parts.

Each employee — from frontline workers to the CEO — has their own user profile and the ability to create content, leave comments, feedback, and interact on discussion boards. Learners at all levels can talk through concepts or techniques and connect with their peers in far flung locations.

Our client Hello Alfred, a hospitality industry startup, put these features to use in their response to the pandemic. The company launched a new offering, Alfred Delivers, and shifted focus from in-home chores to errands complicated by stay-at-home orders.

Keeping all their employees, known as ‘Alfreds’, informed with proper safety guidelines and relevant details for each of the 20 cities in which they operate was a major communications hurdle.

“It’s fun to see now because there’s so much information to download,” says Ally Martinelli, Operations Project Manager and LMS admin. “There’s definitely high engagement. And people want all the resources in here, which is step one in the process.”