For any business or organization to move forward, innovation needs to occur. And innovation cannot happen in the absence of education and inspiration. The organization will stagnate without creativity and innovations, leading to potential losses. More teams need to incorporate education into their activities to ensure that fresh ideas continue to flow.
It doesn’t matter if you’re leading an entire department or just a group of workers with similar interests; education is a trusted way to inspire productivity, engagement and high-quality outputs. The benefits of having an educated, engaged team are numerous.
Four Ways to Educate Your Team
Some studies have shown that companies who engage and educate their workforce do better in profitability and productivity than other companies. You can engage and educate your team in several ways, and we will discuss them in this article.
- Pique Their Interest
For your team members to gain from the learning experience, you need to grab their attention from the very beginning. The problem many team leaders face is how to go about grabbing that attention.
The first question to be answered is: Why should they care? Training and education programs are often introduced without caring about the learner’s emotions or interests. You could have a seemingly exciting training, but if the target audience is not interested, the experience would be an exercise in futility.
In addition, while we know that a learning program needs to be relevant to pique the learner’s interest, we should not forget that empathy is what lets them complete the program.
Learners need to be able to see themselves applying the learning material to real-life situations and find meaning or reward in the time and effort they invest in such programs. The process needs to include settings and scenarios that encourage the team members to internalize the process because they can relate to it.
- Incorporate Inclusivity
Once we find out what makes our learners feel connected to the learning process, we can provide relatable content to encourage their brains to learn. Brains are highly efficient machines and will often automatically disconnect from topics that may not be useful or content that doesn’t serve a personal purpose.
Some learning processes end up being ineffective due to this reason. By creating an inclusive space, we can ensure that learners see themselves applying information from the training. When graphics look like the learners and content explores roles they already fill (or intend to fill), they will be encouraged to pay attention to the training.
An inclusive learning experience ensures that all learners are duly represented throughout the process. When creating a learning plan, it is essential to keep your workforce in mind so your team members do not feel left out.
Elements like graphics and storytelling help learners become connected to the content. Emotions are a powerful way of retaining attention and information. As a team leader, you must incorporate systems that create spaces to help team members feel understood and seen.
- Microlearning
The human brain finds it difficult to retain information that isn’t directly related to a task or can be used regularly. Hence, learning designers must carefully categorize learning material based on a “nice-to-know” versus a “need-to-know” basis.
You need to analyze the needs and roles of your learners to determine what has immediate applications and should be covered first, alongside tools and resources that can be delivered when needed. Doing this ensures that information not retained by the brain is easily accessible in the outside world. You should break down the tools and resources into bite-sized learning pieces. When this happens, even complicated topics become more accessible and digestible for the users.
Team members have space to digest and reflect by breaking content into pieces. Learners need this time to digest and reflect after their brains have received new information in bulk. This time allows the brain to organize, reflect and move data into long-term memory.
This style is based on the knowledge that brains can only retain new information one at a time. Bite-sized learning is the best way to ensure that complex information is digested and learners have the chance to store the information for when it is required.
- Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR reality) is an advanced version of the physical world that is created using digital elements like sound and sensory stimuli to transmit information through technology. More organizations have begun incorporating AR reality into their activities and team education.
Frequently, presenters face difficulties in transmitting information to audiences and sending messages. Augmented reality makes it easier to engage audiences by including them in the presentation. For example, rather than telling learners to visualize a location, you can use AR to show precisely how it would look as though they were present.
Conclusion
Most people have gone through some training at some point. However, in the workplace, you need to incorporate some tools to make the learning process better and more engaging for team members.
