16 December 2024
What are the top 5 challenges of learner engagement?
Explore some of the key challenges that result in low learner engagement — and how to overcome them.
We all want high levels of engagement in our learning and development programmes. High engagement drives better learning outcomes, which supports wider business goals. It justifies budgets — past, present and future — and decisions.
But above all else, engagement maximises the opportunities for our people to improve themselves and the organisation as a whole.
In this article, we will explore some of the key challenges facing L&D leaders who want to increase learner engagement.
1. Lack of time
All organisations want their employees to be hard-working and productive. When workloads get heavy, learning and development is often pushed to one side in favour of the big project or the urgent deadline.
To solve this challenge, there first needs to be an organisation-wide culture to protect L&D time. This could be as prescriptive as time being blocked out in calendars or a less formal equivalent.
In any case, learners need to be confident in being able to spend time engaging in learning without fear of repercussions or a knock-on effect on their workload. That will involve buy-in from senior leaders and team managers to ensure all employers are given the time and space to engage with learning.
2. Negative mindsets
For a proportion of any organisation’s workforce, learning and development remains a waste of time. It might be viewed as an unnecessary distraction from ‘real work’, a box-ticking exercise to keep HR happy or a boredom-inducing return to school.
While each learner’s attitude is mainly their responsibility, there are several things you can do to change mindsets and overcome this challenge. These largely involve showing employees directly how engaging with learning will benefit them.
Create personalised learning journeys. Signpost how development will lead to that promotion or pay rise. Talk to each learner about their career goals and create L&D pathways that support their ambitions.
3. Access problems
‘Build it and they will come’ definitely doesn’t apply to L&D programmes. The more barriers there are between your learner and your learning, the lower engagement will be. For any employees who are already pushed for time or unconvinced of the benefits of L&D, being made to work to access learning will almost certainly be a dealbreaker.
Of course, some of those barriers are essential. Your LMS needs login details and security measures, for example. But there are still steps you can take to take friction out of the process. These include:
- Integrating learning management system user accounts with your HR system so people don’t have to sign up for learning manually
- Using automated learning pathways to avoid having to find and enrol on specific courses
- Setting up single sign-on (SSO) so learners don’t have another set of login credentials to remember
- Choosing an LMS that is responsive and suitable for use on all devices
- Ensuring your LMS has an offline sync mode so people can learn even when they don’t have an internet connection
- Maintaining high standards of accessibility so all learners can benefit from your LMS
4. Poor user experiences
Bad experiences in the past are a surefire challenge to learner engagement. If your employees have endured poor learning experiences previously — and not even necessarily at your organisation — you will have to work hard to rebuild trust.
Similarly to the access problems we mentioned above, poor user experiences and difficulties engaging with learning will either dampen enthusiasm or else completely prevent people from completing learning entirely.
Intuitive UX design, seamless user journeys and clear navigation all have an important part to play in encouraging engagement. Of course, once learners have reached a course, the learning experience must be equally engaging.
5. Boring learning content
Dull or outdated learning content is arguably the biggest challenge to learner engagement. As with accessing learning and user experiences, learning content that forces learners to do more than should be necessary will instantly kill engagement.
The archetypal example is the old PowerPoint presentation that is simply uploaded to an LMS. Very few learners will go to the effort of reading the slides, and even fewer will retain any of the information they contain.
Introducing personalised content, using a variety of interactive learning elements and creating shorter courses are all proven ways of driving engagement.
Explore ways to increase engagement
Book a meeting to discuss how learning technologies, better UX design and smarter learning content will overcome your learner engagement challenges.
