Are you on the lookout for a new way to start teaching your company’s employees valuable information?
Information transfer is one of the keys to an effective workplace. Anyone who, knowingly or otherwise, withholds important information is only slowing down the progress of the company. Sometimes though, information is not withheld on purpose. An ineffective rate of information sharing can be down to the lack of an efficient corporate learning strategy.
As a simple example, new trainees might often describe themselves as having been “thrown into the deep end” upon taking a new role. Although you might be tempted to attribute this to a positively challenging work environment, a new employee might find themselves feeling overwhelmed by the new tasks they’re facing.
To help minimize the risk of people feeling “thrown into the deep end,” corporate learning strategies aim to provide a level of information that will help people to feel comfortable in their roles. This could be an in-depth course about a particular piece of software that’s being introduced or a general guide to how your workplace functions.
How can you make corporate learning strategies for your company? Surely you can’t purchase an out-of-the-box course, webinar, or program that’s completely relevant to the challenges your company faces. This is where “user generated content” steps in.
Below, we explore how creating your own user generated content can be an effective way to bolster your corporate learning strategy.
What is user generated content and how should you use it?
Simply put, user generated content is any content designed by individuals in-house. Usually, they are not paid to create the content, and they spend time making content that they believe will be beneficial to others in the company. In many cases, multiple people will be involved in the creation of user generated content, in the name of knowledge sharing. In this case, we are discussing how it can be applied to the field of corporate learning.
There are a number of things to keep in mind when designing user generated content for your organization:
Have clear guidelines
It is crucial to keep an accurate record of how people within your company can create user generated learning content. There should be clear-cut guidelines on how to create presentations, courses, and even video content for your company. Make a document that contains industry best practices for each kind of employee training content.
Use the right platform for your needs
Use an online platform that specializes in creating and distributing corporate learning resources. With Dokeos, you can give permission to individuals in your company to create content. By having access to a platform like Dokeos, team members will find it much easier to set up learning plans and also be able to show others how to create content on the platform.
Leverage video
Video is a great asset to any digital learning resource! Creators within your company can add some fun, personalized content and speak to your audience in a more human way.
Feature all perspectives
Your user generated content should speak to people from all corners of your company. From leaders in human resources to marketing executives, everybody will have something valuable to add to your content—so make sure you feature a variety of voices.
Strike a balance
Remember not to assign everything to user generated content! Safety training, for example, is better performed face-to-face due to its serious nature. Experiment with which content results in the more efficient sharing of knowledge.
Often, when companies come up with all of these ideas for a range of educational user generated content, they might put together a learning management system (LMS). This is an online hub which should be home to all of your educational resources, as well as your guides on how to create new user generated content.
Examples of user generated content
Now that you know what user generated content is, let’s explore some other types of content to think about using in your company.
Video content
As we touched on before, video is booming at the moment. With the rise of Instagram and TikTok, video as a medium is a primary method of connecting with people. Your company can use this knowledge and find somebody who is comfortable filming videos related to knowledge transfer. One of the easiest ways to get through to today’s employees is to provide information in ways they’re used to consuming it.
Quizzes and competitions
Go one step further and double down on your existing user generated content! Organize a team of people to create quizzes or competitions based on other content that individuals in your company have created. A higher percentage of your employees might participate in a voluntary corporate learning course if some “winning participants” were to win prizes such as Amazon vouchers or work-from-home privileges.
Of course, as the quizzes and competitions are educational content created by individuals in-house, these also count as user generated content!
Live Q&As
User generated content does not always need to be in the form of pre-recorded materials. As above, consider finding someone within your organization who is willing to host a live Q&A with your employees in which they answer doubts about any workflows. They could even host Q&As with the goal of improving everyone’s understanding of other user generated corporate learning content.
So, why trust user generated content for corporate learning?
Simply put, user generated content helps you to offer resources that are extremely specific to the issues faced by your company. You can also take into account the demographics of your employees in order to focus on content that resonates with them.
Employing an online LMS is a great way to keep all of your user generated content in one place. In times affected by COVID-19 restrictions, having an online library of all your educational and onboarding resources to show new employees is invaluable.
Dokeos provides your company with a white-label solution that allows you to upload user generated content to a user-friendly online platform. With templates for webinars, courses, compliance audits, and more, Dokeos puts all of your organization’s knowledge into one place.
