LEARN Recap: 5 Ways L&D Can Impact Employee Productivity

Learning and development (L&D) programs are vital to the long-term success of your business. Not only do L&D programs give you a competitive advantage by improving retention and engagement—in addition, they can also be leveraged to boost employee productivity. 

By providing these benefits, L&D programs support and empower organizational growth, making them a crucial investment for businesses in 2023 and beyond. 

Discover how learning and development impacts employee productivity in this on-demand session with Knowledge Services L&D partner Andrea Burow.

Andrea shares how Knowledge Services transformed its L&D programs to support and enhance employee performance. Read on to learn her five tips to help your business achieve the same outcomes. 

5 tips for developing L&D programs that support and align with your productivity goals 

“Knowledge is one of the four pillars at Knowledge Services,” which was established in mid-2022, Andrea says. Since then, “We’ve definitely invested in learning, and KSU is what we have branded our platform.” 

The platform, which is hosted by WorkRamp, functions as a “seamless extension of who we are and what we want to be in creating a learning experience for everyone,” Andrea explains. “We have been seeing continued engagement for learners, and we know that’s translating into growth and development.” 

“When we first started KSU,” she recalls, “we rolled with three libraries of content. Today we have over 17, and that’s continuing to rise all the time.” 

So how can other brands achieve the same sort of growth? 

One way to reach your targets faster and more efficiently is by aligning your L&D programs with your organizational goals. 

For example, L&D programs can be designed to achieve outcomes like: 

• Closing specific skill gaps
• Increasing employees’ job satisfaction 
• Retaining more employees 

For many organizations, optimizing efficiency and increasing productivity is always a top priority. 

So how can you bring your L&D programs into alignment with that goal? 

Andrea offers five tips for businesses, which we explore in more detail below:  

1. Create a collaborative workplace culture 
2. Develop a powerful framework for learning 
3. Cross platforms to provide more shared learning experiences 
4. Maintain expertise by making programs repeatable 
5. Remember to get creative and have fun 

Promote and prioritize collaboration

If you want to optimize workplace productivity, your first priority should be creating a collaborative environment where communication can flow freely—in short, the opposite of a siloed organizational culture. 

“First and foremost,” says Andrea, “collaboration is key. You want learners to be part of the journey. They’re going to show you where you need to go, and also, your champions are going to help you along the way. That’s been a huge part of this.”

Getting learners involved doesn’t need to be complicated, either. It could be something as simple as, for example, naming a company program or podcast. 

Read more: Why Build a Learning Culture?

Develop a robust framework for learning 

Your business needs to stay on brand and be consistent in its messaging. That’s why building a framework to launch your vision is key, according to Andrea, who says that KSU created a platform that enabled those goals.

Taking this step, she says, “helps you to maintain that flow and keep [your content] on brand.” 

She also points out that having fun with the process is important—but more on that later. First, Andrea has another suggestion: provide opportunities for shared (collaborative) learning, an approach that Forbes says is “revolutionizing learning and development.”  

Read more: Make eLearning Engaging in 7 Steps

Cross platforms to create shared learning experiences 

“The more you can cross platforms and create shared learning experiences,” says Andrea, “the better.”

“We have lots of platforms in our company that we work with,” she explains, “[and] whether it’s an HRIS or wellness platform, we are continually finding ways to blend it with KSU.”

“We’re creating those drivers,” she adds, “where we can have that crossover. We want this to be something that’s… part of people’s overall experience with WorkRamp.” 

Learn more about the benefits of shared and social learning experiences, then try implementing these strategies to create a workplace learning culture. 

Make educational content and programs repeatable 

As any teacher can tell you, learning information isn’t the same as retaining it. 

If you want your education content to be absorbed, you must ensure your programs are easy to access and repeat—anytime, anywhere, from any device. 

“Making content or programs repeatable, and ensuring we don’t lose the expertise that we have here in our company, is so crucial,” says Andrea, who emphasizes the importance of an organization’s most valuable asset: its people. 

“Our knowledge and insights are with our people,” she says. “They bring so much to the table. We want to capture that, and we want to share that across the table.”

Her advice for businesses? Leverage an L&D platform where team members can “make sure that [they’re] repeating the experience over and over again, and making sure that [they] are the best that [they] can be every day.” 

Be creative—and have some fun! 

Andrea offers one final tip for businesses: “Be creative and have fun with it along the way.” 

“The more fun and creative you can be,” she elaborates, “the easier it is for people to engage.”

That’s significant because better engagement is linked to improved employee performance and retention, while conversely, poor engagement is associated with outcomes like high churn, low morale, and lack of innovation. 

By improving employee engagement, you can create a happier and more satisfied team, which translates to happier and more satisfied customers—and, as Andrea mentions, there are tons of potential approaches to take. 

“There are so many different ways that you can celebrate your champions [and] get people excited,” she says, highlighting the success of ice cream socials and other company celebrations at Knowledge Services. Even if the event is based on a less-than-thrilling theme or topic (for example, Andrea mentions compliance), “The more fun you can have with that along the way, the better.” 

Drive growth and boost productivity with the Learning Cloud

In a competitive market where businesses need to keep costs low, retention high, and skills sharp, L&D offers solutions that can’t afford to be overlooked.

The best way to launch and deliver effective, engaging L&D content is to harness the power of a cloud-based, centralized platform like the Learning Cloud from WorkRamp. 

The Learning Cloud empowers you to upskill and reskill employees, scale your customer success initiatives, and track the results of your training programs. That means you can maximize your ROI and reach your productivity targets faster. 

Discover how the Learning Cloud can help you maximize your team’s potential. Contact us to schedule a free, personalized demo.