In our previous blog in this series, Amelia highlighted the crucial need to understand the problem you’re trying to solve when developing your digital learning strategy . In this short piece, I want to pivot to another vital aspect that often requires our attention – the audience.

Many organisations start by identifying their objectives, but their strategy is often designed around the desired outcomes for the business. But if we think about this approach practically, how can it be guaranteed to succeed?

It’s often necessary to make company-centric decisions that shape our strategy and influence its outcomes. However, for our digital learning strategies to genuinely thrive, we need to understand what our people need. Here are a couple of key considerations I always recommend our clients focus on:

The demographic of your people

Is your workforce tech-savvy? Empathise with them. Consider how you prefer to engage with organisations where you’re a customer. Do you opt for emails, chat, WhatsApp, or even in-person communication?

These are all considerations to bear in mind when creating our strategies. The attention span and cognitive approaches users have should shape the approach, thus ensuring we meet the needs of everybody. It is undoubtedly challenging, but then again, nothing worth doing is straightforward!

The experience of your people

Is your organisation blessed with a low turnover? Are your people familiar with the organisation and its processes? If so, that’s awesome! However, they’ll also likely have entrenched views and strong opinions on what should and should not be done. These people can often be reluctant to embrace change and new approaches.

On the flip side, if you have a new intake of staff who are keen to absorb all the knowledge and information you have to offer, their skill gaps are going to need to be dealt with immediately before we get to the “nice to haves”!

These examples represent two extremes, and often organisations are somewhere in between. Nevertheless, it illustrates the importance of understanding how wide-ranging your digital learning strategy needs to be to meet the needs of both the business and your people.

Have you experienced any of the challenges mentioned above, or have you come across them in organisations that you have dealt with? If so let me know in the comments section, I’d really love to hear what you think.

And remember, this is the second of six in this series. We will eventually provide attendees of our upcoming webinars with an extensive playbook around digital learning strategy, so stay tuned!

Look out for our next blog from Luke Allen, Digital Experiences Consultant. He will be building on this (and the first piece from Amelia) around adapting your solutions to the individual learner’s needs!