Employee engagement
No two people are alike. Everyone is unique and experience the world differently, so it’s not surprising that we all learn in different ways too.
In order to successfully engage employees in your learning initiatives, you need to understand how they learn. That way you’ll be able to meet their needs better, find the right training platform, and keep them motivated to continuously develop and apply new skills.
Catering for each individual’s learning style may sound like a mammoth task, but there are four major learning styles which are easily incorporated into your workplace.
1. Visual learners
Visual learners understand and absorb new information more effectively when it’s presented to them in a graphical form.
Workplace training for visual learners can be tailored to include high-definition images, charts, animations, and videos. When presenting data, adding charts and graphics will ensure your visual learner’s process and retain the information.
Visual learners often need more time to process learning materials and visual cues. That’s why online training courses are perfect for them; they can complete them in their own time and pace. With a range of visual features, our off-the-shelf online courses encourage high employee participation, not just among these types of learners.
2. Auditory learners
Auditory learners tend to learn better when the subject matter is reinforced by sound. In other words, they learn by listening. They like reading aloud and talking through ideas during brainstorms. This type of learner will often stop by your desk for a quick chat on a problem. They don’t like silent work environments and don’t respond well to long-winded instructions over email. But they’re often good at writing responses and putting reports together – they just need to talk things through first.
To help auditory learners absorb new information faster, encourage group-learning activities and team discussions where they can bounce ideas off others. Allow them to listen to music whilst they work and learn. For online training, use voice-over videos, audio-recordings and uploaded in-house training recordings that they can rewind and listen to again as needed.
3. Reading/writing learners
Reading/writing learners prefer to learn through written words. They read a lot of books and articles and write down what they’ve just learnt to help them remember it better. You’ll often catch them reading reports, video transcripts, case studies, or blogs, and taking detailed notes during company meetings. These learners are also huge fans of to-do lists which help them organise their thoughts.
Workplace training for readers/writers should be tailored to offer handout notes, manuals, or presentations. Avoid text-heavy sources to provide an engaging learning experience. Organise your learning materials, including bullet-points and written explanations of any diagrams.
To boost knowledge retention and support this type of learner, Engage in Learning partnered with the world’s largest eBook publisher, BookBoon. Alongside our current online training courses, you can now offer micro-learning in the form of easy-to-use and beautifully designed eBooks. Read more about our eBook library.
4. Kinesthetic learners
Kinesthetic, or tactile learners, learn best by experiencing or doing things. They thrive when mimicking real-life situations, solve problems through a trial-error method, or touch and handle objects. All this adds up to them having the hardest time sitting through conventional, theory-based training in boardrooms.
If you’re training staff on your new safety procedures, give kinesthetic learners an in-person scenario to help simulate the situation, for example how to operate machinery correctly or deploy fire extinguishers. Introduce role-playing to your training to help them identify health and safety hazards or bullying in the workplace. When offering online training, give kinesthetic learners a physical task to complete simultaneously as well as plenty of opportunities to apply their new-found skills in real life.
Engage different learning styles with online courses
It might seem challenging at first to try and engage all four different learning styles in your company’s learning strategy. However, online training courses, such as Engage in Learning, provide an ideal blend of learning materials and course features to cater for them all. From media-rich content for visual and auditory learners to eBooks for readers and real-life scenarios for kinesthetic learners, every type of learner will find online training that suits them.
Get in touch to discuss your training needs today.
Mara has a passion for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion across global workplaces and hopes to inspire learners to focus on their own careers with self-directed learning content.
