Learning Experience is Critical to Creating Thriving Company Communities
“Experience” as a concept, is a very 21st century idea that has entered our collective consciousness and permeated our economic, commercial, and spiritual culture. Our global obsession with experience is now long past fad status from a longevity perspective. As we have seen, experience has many legitimate impacts on people’s ability to engage, align, retain, and become loyal to a concept or organization — that is why “Learning Experience” is critical to create a thriving company community.
Wisetail goes long and deep on experience. From the very beginning, our approach has been anchored in powering our clients to create second-to-none learner experiences with a highly socialized, modern space, designed to feel like your company’s website and not like a third-party platform. And we never stopped; our current software version is an LMS and LXP in one, and we’ve added LXD — Learning Experience Design — to round out a suite of products and services.
Why? Because we understand the very real impact that positive and negative experiences have on each and every one of us. How we’re welcomed in our favorite restaurant, the energy in a fitness studio, the ease-of-use of a digital tool that’s critical to our daily workflow — these experiences make our days better, gear us up to be more productive, ready to learn, and our willingness to participate (or not participate).
As you’ll learn over this series, the LXD team’s purpose is to support our clients in bringing their exceptional brand experiences online, and to their user audience, so they can achieve better business outcomes.
Part 1: Design your learning experiences to foster community
If you’ve engaged with Wisetail you’re likely to know that we eat, breathe, and live community, and for good reason. The experience of belonging to a community — be it a social or business community — has many benefits for its members. Today, this also extends from in-person to the online, digital world. Beyond the benefits, there’s another important aspect of community that we’d like you to consider: communicating purpose in order to build a strong, engaged community.
We take this focus because it offers valuable theory and exercisable steps. Many organizations are rightly concerned with communicating identity and purpose externally, to their market. Yet, this ignores the individuals you rely upon to deliver your brand promise, and think of ways to grow and improve the business over time. We all want our market and customers to be hugely loyal brand advocates. We should want the same of our employees, too. In today’s world, your online community is the place where new teammates are welcomed, employees learn new skills, connect with peers, and receive company communications. There is no better place to exercise your brand purpose if you want to reach this important audience over, and over again.
Communicating purpose to community members
There are many ways these communities identify themselves to the world and, more importantly, to their members. In the past this may have been as a symbol, as a statement of belief, or even as a flag. Today, we typically call this identity the “brand.” Many organizations use a collection of logos, colors, taglines, and catchphrases to tell you what they do — like, “Turning Companies into Communities” — and establish and represent the brand. These things are equivalent to a team flag or membership pin, that your people can rally around.
Both internally and externally, your flag (or brand) is one of the most defining assets you have. As such, it should be front and center in any organizational community. We know our clients feel the same way, which is why we love helping them create highly branded communities and learning experiences in their Wisetail LMS and LXPs.
The Dave & Buster’s team does a great job of infiltrating their Wisetail LXP, the “FunHub,” with their brand’s sense of energy — and, for a lack of a better term, fun. You can clearly see they understand how to use their brand as an effective way to inspire employees with the passion they want to be brought to the company, and to their customers.
When setting up an LMS or LXP, the primary focus can lean towards platform capabilities, content, and user management. Establishing brand experience (look, voice, tone) often becomes a secondary consideration. Usually, because of time constraints, the brand aspects get put lower on the priority totem pole. That’s where Wisetail’s LXD team is ready to help out. We’re here to help you showcase your brand to your community so that it’s at the forefront of any experience your users have. If you want them to rally around your brand, it needs to be unmissable.
The impact: Build strong, engaged company communities
If your organization has a remote workforce, consider the impacts. It can be challenging to keep company culture alive with employees lacking physical interaction and/or are spread across many locations. Creating a community hub with an immersive, consistent brand will keep remote workforces connected to the company, each other, and their work — even though they aren’t physically together.
Through our many client interactions, we find that platform adoption rates on properly branded sites are much higher, and there tends to be a correlation with employee retention rates. Furthermore, an Achievers Workforce Institute report shows that turnover is reduced at companies with strong company culture. This report cites that job seeking drops to 5 percent compared to organizations with low company culture reaching highs of 40 percent. Why might this be? Well, organizations with strong company culture are doing a good job displaying, communicating, and dare we say, immersing their audiences in their brand experience. They’re waving their organizational flag high, so their community is able to rally around it.
See how the Wisetail LXD team can help you fly your organizational flag high and create fully branded learning and community experiences. Wisetail clients can contact the LXD team via The Drop. Otherwise, get in touch via email, wisetailhousemedia@wisetail.com.
Be on the lookout for the next part in this blog series where we will discuss how you can save time, effort, and money with Grab & Go content!
