Even before moving to hybrid working, over 70% of employees reported being distracted at work. A figure that has likely increased with the mass introduction of working from home. One element that has particularly suffered from disengagement is essential training. The mere mention of training can cause office-wide murmurs and sighs of disapproval, and yet managers are left wondering why their employees aren't engaged throughout the 3-hour lecture that they have already heard twice before.

Online training courses are part of the solution, but they are no longer one-size-fits-all. For the vast majority of businesses, their workforce is likely comprised of a variety of employees, all with different skills, working hours, tasks and more. This makes personalisation one of the most essential aspects of the provision of online training. Courses need to be personalised and tailored to the specific needs of the employee as well as the business. There are virtual training platforms, such as myAko, available, that will provide this level of personalization. They provide the ideal solution for maintaining a high level of engagement, interest and understanding amongst employees through their highly adaptable training courses. This ultimately enables staff to better assimilate the content and more effectively apply it to their everyday work.

Kevin Ashley - founder and CEO of virtual training platform, myAko, has shared his expertise surrounding the 5 best ways to keep employee engagement high through essential training.

1. Make the learning more engaging and bite size.

Everyone is short of time these days, with staff juggling tight deadlines whilst battling the short attention spans inflicted on us all by social media. Regardless of this, employer’s want thorough training to be carried out, but expecting staff to sit through torturously long training sessions when they already have a long to-do list on the go is not the right way to go about this.

Training should be able to fit between tasks, or carried out on the go so it doesn’t have a massive impact on the average working day, so, whilst not everyone has hours free to complete a lengthy training course, even the busiest of people can find 10 minutes in their schedule to complete a learning module. This is why bite size learning should be promoted.

2. Utilising virtual reality.

Technology within the training space has also developed to keep staff engaged and level up the quality of training provided. Virtual Reality in particular has been extremely helpful. It can allow the learner to immerse themselves within a relevant environment and encounter scenarios that are much more realistic to their everyday work environment than any example they would experience in another form of training.

In many cases, the implementation of virtual reality as a learning and development tool simply isn’t feasible, or even necessary, but with technology developing as quickly as it is, VR training is becoming more and more accessible. Many different industries - including healthcare, law enforcement, manufacturing and even sales - utilise it to their advantage. In fact, VR training is proven to increase learning retention of up to 80%, with a whopping 40-60% reduction in training time, when compared to traditional training methods.

3. Offer a range of digital courses.

Providing your employees with access to a library of content that helps them refresh their current skills, learn new skills and even help with their career aspirations is a very effective approach to creating a healthy work environment with an enviable learning culture.

Whilst no employer ever wants a good employee to leave, encouraging career development actually increases employee motivation and productivity. Attention to career development will help employers to attract top staff and retain valued employees.

4. Seek continuous feedback.

Seeking continuous feedback is important, but, further to this, you must also put what you learn into practice to ensure your learning community feel heard and are pleased with the content you are delivering and/or propose to deliver. Your staff want to feel valued and listened to. They will engage more if they feel their feedback is valued and having them involved in the process may also improve motivation to learn.

5. Tell a story and create a case for completing the learning.

All learners find it tedious and rather soul crushing to be told to complete learning for the sake of completing it; provided with no real motivation for doing so other than ticking it off a checklist. It’s important for the learner and the organisation alike to understand that to invest their valuable time in anything that differs from their usual processes must have a purpose.

All learning should be utilised to either improve the learner’s skills, broaden their skillset or improve the organisation’s service. Understanding the rationale and need for the learning, and explaining this at the start, should create the case for why an employee should not only engage with the learning, but take what they’ve learned it on board, too.

There are multiple benefits to be found in interactive, virtual learning, and with the growth of virtual training provision on an upward trend, knowing exactly how to engage employees is a must