Zachery Wilkinson
4 min read
My colleague Will spoke of some celebrations last week, notably birthdays and little ways to recognize employees. But today, I want to chat about a different kind of celebration: Big and small ways to celebrate changes in your L&D program.
First, let me ask: How well do you know your L&D department? Could you name the team members? How about what they offer to your organization? Let’s be honest, unless you are in a position that requires annual training for you to complete, you probably have no idea about what exists.
The truth is your L&D team can be your strongest weapon — and greatest advocate — for career development and growth.
It's why L&D is one of the 10 elements of the Engagement Bridge™, and holds a precious spot in building employee engagement.
At Reward Gateway, our L&D group went through a rebrand. We wanted to put a greater focus on training (one thing I was brought on to handle) and drive engagement and excitement around this initiative. So what did we do?
We celebrated.
Not only did we have our creative team come up with a new logo for us and our learning center, called RG University, but we also took over our company messaging for an entire week using our internal communication tools to broadcast all the training initiatives and the other exciting things our employees could soon use.
From our new learning center called RG University, to our new exam software called “The Accreditation Portal,” where we house all of our tests. We did this in an effort to make a big splash in the company so that they not only knew who L&D was, what we looked like but also to announce all of our new initiatives and show how serious we were about training and empowering our workforce.
There are a few pieces that were (and continue to be) instrumental in drumming up excitement, but also making sure our RG University is set up for success.
Our announcement wasn’t “one and done”
When we first announced the changes to L&D, we started with a WOW post from Didi, our Head of Learning & People Experience, but we were in no way finished. We used our internal communications platform boom! to do an “L&D Takeover” where we introduced a special L&D Tile up at the top of our platform so it was impossible for employees to miss, created our own L&D figure — we really like Legos around RG — and planned out our communications throughout the week to reveal different pieces of RG University, including where the logo came from, what the University would host and how people could access it.
We handed over the tools and information in a variety of formats
People learn in different ways, as I’ve talked about, so it was essential that our communications not just be rambling posts. Some of our employees have English as a second, even third language and may find videos easier to digest than blogs.
In smaller offices, or if you have an L&D team member in each location, face-to-face personal meetings can be best to field any questions that may come up and to get your message to truly “stick.”
As with any employee communications, the key point here is to know your audience and understand how they interact with information.
Using your internal communications tools effectively and efficiently is a vital part of any organization’s employee engagement journey, and for us, that started with showcasing our L&D initiatives. By highlighting all the fun and exciting things that they’re doing will not only drive excitement but anticipation of what is to come.
If people know, really know that there is a one stop shop for all things training that will help to educate, inform and inspire people to really own their job and pursue personal career development, talk about empowering and creating an engaged workforce.
How do you celebrate L&D at your organization?