Why You Should Embrace Grassroots Learning Movements (7 Reasons)
The intrapreneurs are heading your way! Intrapreneurs are employees who take initiatives, innovative ideas, and learning head on to drive real business advantages. Although it isn’t often encouraged, the grassroots learning movement that intrapreneurs are driving is a great competitive advantage for businesses.
In her article The Rise of the MWL Intrapreneur, Jane Hart, a well-regarded international speaker and writer on modern approaches to workplace learning, points out the habits of traditional Learning and Development teams that gridlock the learning process by attempting to deliver general learning content in a linear format. The issue with this method of learning delivery is that it does not support individuals as they perform the tasks they were taught to do for themselves or for others. However, intrapreneurs can change this stalemate and drive business growth by using grassroots efforts. Discover 7 reasons this intrapreneur-powered grassroots learning movement should be embraced, and learn about a few tools to keep the movement going.
1. Intrapreneurs Help Inspire Personal Motivation To Enhance Learning Within The Company
Learning is more than what is done to a person. It's about inspiring and helping people by supporting learning through well-designed content. This allows each individual to discover, try, share, compare, fail, and discuss their experiences. However, learning truly happens via personal motivation. The intrapreneur movement can help drive this personal motivation by starting conversations around changing performance and behaviors with peer-to-peer learning.
2. Involved Employees Help Drive Business Growth
When employees get involved in business activities, such as learning, development, and strategic planning, they can help grow the business. In fact, studies such as Brand Learning's Growth Drivers report highlight how critical employee involvement is to business growth. It's to your advantage to enable this growth by giving employees the tools and opportunities they need to help drive growth. Use projects as a platform for getting employees involved and promoting collaboration that bolsters growth opportunities.
3. Your Employees Can Spread The Good Word As Brand Advocates
Employees act as valuable touchpoints and liaisons at different levels, including with customers and peers. That's why you want to make sure you empower them to spread the word as advocates of your brand. Grassroots learning is engaging, and engaged employees are more productive, innovative, and loyal. Get your employees involved in the storytelling of the brand, and let them be brand evangelists by giving them a voice through content creation opportunities like blog posts, videos, and success stories. Let them share valuable lessons that they learned through your onboarding initiatives to easily spread the good word.
4. People Know What They Need
As a learning development designer, it's important to collaborate and listen to your audience of learners; they may know more than you think they do regarding their own needs. They know when it's time to find someone for help. Performance goal alignment and syncing with contemporary learning technologies are important endeavors, but also be sure to make room for collaboration with your audience on your learning projects. Then provide them with the right tools to encourage collaboration amongst themselves.
5. Baby Boomers Are Leaving With Tons Of Knowledge
Leadership teams will be faced with the reality of the Baby Boomer generation retiring within the next few years. That means all the experience and knowledge they have will exit along with them, which can further widen the talent gap. However, this talent gap can be bridged by taking action that goes beyond workshops and mentorships. Implementing technologies that are easy to use can help spread the baby boomer knowledge faster so that their valuable insight stays with the business even when the Baby Boomer generation leaves.
6. Grassroots Learning Makes Learning Sustainable
Promote learning sustainability by viewing it as a continuous process for improvements that stretches for the long haul. Achieve this by blending expert- or user-generated content with formal learning to support various needs, and encourage learners to keep expanding their knowledge.
7. …And It Makes Learning Smarter
Whether the grassroots learning movement in your workforce is powered by peer-to-peer or informal learning, it will keep growing. So rather than trying to stop the grassroots learning movement, simplify sharing and content creation with the help of smart, collaborative, and open technologies to improve efficiency and nourish the intrapreneur culture of your company.
Related: 5 Ways to Ensure Your Learning Is Relevant and Useful
Jumpstart Your Learning With Collaborative Technology
You want to make sure you can empower people to learn by helping them to collaborate and share information with the right tools. Here are 3 valuable tools you can use to enable learning:
1. Live Meeting Tools
Share your screen, use mind-mapping and videos, or utilize interactive whiteboards to collaborate with live meeting tools. You can try Google Hangouts, Skype, GoToMeeting or appear.in to get you started.
2. Content Curation Tool: Anderspink
If you want a reliable collaborative tool that makes it easy to learn and share content, then consider using Anderspink. Your teams can use it to curate content for personalized briefings to filter out irrelevant information and ensure that they are getting the content they need. Use it to share and learn new content, either by using its standard features or customizing it to fit the needs of your team.
3. Authoring Tool: Elucidat
Authoring tools such as Elucidat will help you enhance learning. You can use Elucidat to empower more people inside your organization to create high quality eLearning.
Related: 5 eLearning Authoring Tools: Comparison and Review
Final Thoughts
If you want to embrace modern technology that easily promotes knowledge sharing and works with employees, then contact Elucidat. You can get the support you need, whether you're not sure where to begin or you just need additional help!
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