3 Reasons Why Both Employers And Employees Love Next Best Action

Summary: “Next Best Action” can serve as a great way to prompt learning action in eLearning platforms or gamification deployments. Its impact on the daily behaviors related to learning can be profound, prompting immediate action and a daily/weekly engagement with learning materials.

Why Both Employers And Employees Love Next Best Action

So what is the Next Best Action?

Just like Facebook suggests to “share a memory” or LinkedIn suggests to follow a person – Next Best Action suggests an activity that the user can immediately perform upon entering the system.

This feature is well known in the  eCommerce world (although it isn’t necessarily called “next best action”). Netflix’s recommendation algorithm is an example of a smart algorithm that helps millions of users to discover new content they would like, out of the tens of thousands of titles. It does so by answering the question “what now?” – and answering it. This is what “Next Best Action” does, telling employees “what now”.

What Makes Next Best Action So Useful For eLearning Platforms? 

Next Best Action as a feature in an eLearning platform can show employees exactly how they are performing and direct them to change their behavior. Through different recommended activities and push learning tools, mostly with regards to microlearning, employees receive suggestions on how to act in a way which is most reasonable in their own state, and which will improve their level and skills.

For example, imagine an employee who isn’t selling enough of a new product, because he didn’t engage with the learning content and can’t explain the new product properly. In that case, the Next Best Action feature would answer the “what now” question by suggesting some microlearning activities to improve his product knowledge. Those activities include quizzes, simulations, and explanations through different types of media.

The same goes for an employee who struggles in creating positive interaction with clients. The Next Best Action feature could direct him to a one-on-one simulation with a client, highlighting required soft skills.

As you can see, each employee in this example had been facing different difficulties and needed strengthening in another field, and each of their learning journeys had evolved completely different, based on their personal needs and expertise.

Here are a few more reasons why this feature is absolutely going to change everything you knew about eLearning:

1. Promoting Continuous Learning. 

Next-best-action prompts users to complete microlearning sequences and ensures users are engaging continuously and maximizing their learning. Learning in repetitive intervals is proven to maximize remembering, heighten attention to content, and improve the cognitive frames and processes in learning. By breaking the learning process into bite-sized pieces, the employer can be sure that everything is kept fresh in learners’ mind and promotes their interest and motivation.

2. Making Learning Easy And Efficient. 

The employee no longer needs to think “now what?” and search for the next best thing to do, making the decision and the activity a much easier choice for the employee. Next-best-action highlights the highly relevant learning missions and prompts employees to act through quizzes, simulations, and new and relevant content (such as new product information). It takes the employee profile into account and checks each employee’s individual learning achievement, scores, and performance, then elegantly directs the employee to the one thing he should do now, facilitating the daily several minutes’ interaction with microlearning. Employees enjoy a personalized learning process that takes their success into account and is highly relevant for them.

3. Improving Motivation Through Gamification. 

By using game elements, users become more engaged with learning. Instead of waiting for the manager’s instructions, employees feel that they are in control of their own learning, on track of how they are doing and fully engaged in improving their performance through the microlearning assignments. Employees are aiming to reach their success, dedicated to the learning process and highly motivated to improve their skills and performance.

Final Thoughts 

Using Next Best Action combined with interactive media and gamified content is a great tool that promotes engagement, motivation, and exciting learning.

Employers like it for its efficiency and simplicity, and for the ability to “push” important content to their employees exactly at the time they need it.

On the other side, employees like it because it transforms their learning process from a chore, to a fun and exciting thing to look forward to. It changes the way they perceive the whole process of learning and promotes their dedication and motivation for success.

More and more organizations are now realizing the importance of meaningful learning and understanding that this is in fact what helps reaching the goals of long-term improvement and better performance.