Within our previous in this series, Amelia Best our Multimedia Learning Designer, looked at the importance of understanding what challenges you are trying to overcome when building your digital learning strategy.

In this short piece I’ll talk about an additional challenge that we often find ourselves having to tackle – knowing your audience, who they are? what they need? and why?

Many organisations identify what they will be aiming to achieve, but their strategy tends to focus on the outcomes they’d like to see for the business. If we think about this approach practically, how can this be guaranteed to succeed?

Sure, we often need to make decisions that are company-centric, which in turn influence the shape and outcomes of our strategy. However, if we want to be truly successful in our approach when forming and evolving digital learning strategies, we have 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 and learn how they interact and use technology. How do they speak with your customers? Do they prefer messaging and email, Or voice notes, maybe even in-person communication.

Taking into account these forms of communication within your organisations demographic, think about your Inclusion strategy. What benefits can digital bring? Digital learning can inject confidence and help make your people feel supported in their development of skills, covering a whole range of learning needs. It can make them feel safe to help them thrive in this digital world.

Is your platforms and digital learning all easily usable for everyone, have you considered your vulnerable learners? what have you put in place to make sure the accessibility to all is covered?

Consider your business values, does your digital content represent this and is this relatable to the audience it is in front of, its key we are adaptable and set a culture that aligns through every part of the organisation.

These are considerations when creating your strategy. The attention span and cognitive approaches users have, should shape the approach. Thus, ensuring we meet the needs of everybody. It is undoubtedly challenging and a lot to think about. However, something this important can’t be overlooked.

The experience of your people

Employee experience is incredibly vital within your organisation, it’s something that is essential to retain your best talent. There can be many factors that contribute towards your people’s experience and feelings towards your digital offering. I recommend knowing a thing or two about your audience and what they expect, getting this right will accelerate the success of your digital learning.

For example, do you have any data and analytics that can be reviewed? Use this to understand the outcomes of engagement levels, knowledge retention, completion rates and product knowledge. This will aid in your understanding of the experience being had by your audience on a wider scale.

A key recommendation to think about, what has been a success in the past? Review this, you can learn what about the experience was so engaging for the audience and why did it work well. Then think how you can build upon these results to replicate the achievements and positive outcomes from this past experience.

It can also be a useful exercise to think about this from the opposing side. What wasn’t successful in the past and find out why. Don’t be scared to review your failures, because if you keep doing the same thing and expect different results, it’s very unlikely to happen. If you’ve not been accomplishing acceptable levels of engagement or feedback, this is an indicator, that a refresh is needed.

My advice is to experiment and try new things, have a look at any new trends or technologies. Make sure you are relevant and keeping up with the competitors, as you don’t want to be left behind. Implementing these recommendations will help you move towards the best experience for your people, when interacting with your digital offering.

Closing words

And remember, this is the second of this series of digital blogs we are sharing with you. There is more great insights coming your way. We also have our upcoming webinar where we will share with all attendees 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 blog of the series from Amelia Best, Multimedia Learning Designer around adapting your solutions to the individual learner’s needs!

Adam Eckersley

Head of Digital Experiences