April 19, 2021
4 Min. Read
How does your workplace approach content curation or creation?
For companies dedicated to learning and development, content curation is a great way to add value to their employees.
In the context of learning and development, content curation is the process of gathering, sourcing, and organizing information that’s helpful for a team.
In many workplaces, the learning and development team is solely responsible for creating this type of content.
However, companies should consider the benefits of empowering their L&D teams to tap into their employee community to help provide curated content, too.
In this episode of The Learning Xchange, Matthew Brown (Schoox’s VP of Learning and Brand Success) discusses the benefits of content curation in workplace learning and development.
Listen to the podcast episode below to learn more or keep reading.
The problem with off-the-shelf learning content
When it comes to training, companies may purchase an off-the-shelf training solution that doesn’t quite hit the mark when it comes to your team, specifically.
For example, you might work in the restaurant industry and sit down to watch a training video featuring people in suits and ties. If it’s not something your employees relate to, it’s much harder for that content to resonate with them.
So, what if, instead of this, you had a training program curated by the very people it concerns—other employees?
Here are four benefits of involving your employees in content curation.
1. Increased trust and adoption
Including employees in the process and asking them to share things that work for them can increase trust and adoption.
Employees could go away and find articles, websites, training videos that they find helpful and share them with others. Additionally, they could take part in some content creation and create videos or process flows for other team members.
Therefore, when the people sourcing the material have experience in the same role, it’s easier to trust and take their advice.
2. Content with fresh perspectives
We can always benefit from a fresh perspective, especially in the world of learning and development.
Learning and development professionals may be too close to the problem. Even subject matter experts can be too close to it. The perspectives are too narrow and the training becomes less effective or even over-engineered.
Additionally, try to consider the perspective of the training course. Did a boss or learning professional design it? How well will that translate to employees?
Similarly, you may have experienced training programs squeezed into a four-step method just for the sake of being in that four-step structure. Maybe it’s the typical way your company does it. Perhaps it’s based on a template. And the cycle continues with that structure.
So, what if you had a different perspective? You might find a far better way of organizing your content or program. With outside perspectives, you can start tapping into other ways to articulate messages that resonate with their intended audience. In other words, sometimes it takes a different voice to spark a better idea!
3. Positive effect on employee engagement
A lot of companies tend to think too narrowly about career development and growth. For instance, they may design programs with the primary purpose of helping people move up the career ladder.
Consequently, the problem here is assuming that everyone wants to move up. Some people would prefer to move sideways into a different department or role. Some people don’t want to move at all and are happy where they are.
For instance, if you design your training resources around promotions and getting ahead they’re likely to fall flat for those who don’t share that goal.
Does that mean these people shouldn’t take part in learning and development programs? No. Everyone can benefit from learning experiences that help them learn and grow, regardless of their career aspirations.
By realizing that not everyone is searching for their next promotion or wants the same outcome, we can alter our training programs to focus on development, not a fixed end goal.
The key is to encourage participation. Encouraging different types of people to contribute can be a critical element of your employee development strategy. This ensures that your training programs aren’t serving just one select group of people.
This takes us back to the second point: Sometimes, all you need is a fresh perspective.
But most importantly, encouraging participation in content curation and creation can add value to employees, increase engagement, and ultimately improve retention.
4. Helps you avoid building a program just for your needs
If you don’t involve employees in the content curation process, you end up building a learning experience tailored to your needs, not the employee’s.
For example, you may design a program and exam to keep a log of everyone’s skills and knowledge. But what value does this add to your employees? What more can you teach them about, beyond passing an exam or being a statistic in your records?
This doesn’t mean you can’t have exams, of course. There are other things to consider from an employee’s perspective, not just from the stakeholders in the background.
In conclusion, try to get different perspectives. It can be eye-opening to hear alternate views and combine them together into something that really harnesses the power of all that expertise, passion, and talent.
