So how does the team at Hennessey Digital stay ahead of all the changes that Google throws at us? As the Senior Manager of Learning & Development, I will share a couple of tips on how to incorporate new trends and train your team to stay ahead of the curve.

Understand the Market & Identify Trends to Train On

Before you dive into incorporating the latest digital marketing trends in your learning and development program, you need to identify what trends are going on in the first place. This can be dealt with in a couple of different ways.

You’ll want to identify some sources that help you keep track of the latest trends. Those sources are almost always Google, Microsoft (Bing), or other tools you use for your digital marketing strategy such as Ahrefs, Screaming Frog, STAT, etc. Many, if not all, of these tools have marketing newsletters and email alerts that you can subscribe to.

Additionally, you can utilize an alert system like Google Alerts, where you tell Google what you want to be kept in the loop about, and Google will send alerts to your email. Another great source directly from Google, albeit a bit daunting to approach, is the Google Search Central Blog.

Each of these resources are great starting points to stay informed about updates and trends related to digital marketing. But it still produces a large amount of content to weed through to find out what applies to your company. This is where our next step is crucial!

Identify Your Subject Matter Experts

It’s going to take an army to start. Google is a massive brand that is always updating its products and services, from its algorithm which impacts SEO, to Paid Search, Analytics, and even its consumer products like Chrome or VPN. Admittedly, I am not an expert on anything SEO-related, although I’ve learned a lot through my peers. At Hennessey Digital we specifically hire individuals for our digital marketing teams who are true subject matter experts (SMEs) – those who eat, sleep, and bleed their specialties. Having multiple experts, perspectives, and opinions will help you form a solid training that accounts for everything.

Ideally, within your organization, you may hear about the latest trends and updates from your subject matter experts. They may be your department team leads, managers, or directors. They could even be some of your individual contributors in non-people managing roles. Connect with these individuals when something is coming down the pipeline that you are aware of. Or better yet, set up recurring meetings with these individuals throughout the year to make sure you are on top of industry trends and changes. And when changes do occur, be sure to utilize these people to help update any existing resources or training materials you already have.

Empowering SMEs to Create Impactful Trainings

Once you’ve identified key market trends and identified the SMEs who can help decipher these trends and changes, it’s time to start creating training programs and resource materials.

Here, l, we utilize an internal Learning Management System (LMS). It is always my pleasure to have a subject matter expert raise their hand to create the pieces of training specific to their specialty within our LMS. While this task can be intimidating at first, it’s my job to show that subject matter expert how easy (and important) it is to take an idea and bring it to life in our LMS.

This is where I like to lead by example and conduct a live training “creation meeting” with our subject matter experts. During these meetings, I show them the process of creating a resource or training that provides all the details necessary for effectively educating others and adapting to a new trend or change in the digital marketing landscape.

We take it a step further by providing templates within our LMS that SMEs can select from when creating content. These templates equip creators with everything they need to make a stellar, Hennessey Digital-approved resource or training. Then, all the SME needs to do is fill in the blanks and get that information approved before we launch it live to the eyes and ears of our fellow team members.

Announce & Reiterate

Now that you’ve created an exceptional resource or training, you’re eager to make it accessible to everyone. But is there a right way to do this?

In short, yes, there’s a right way – and a wrong way. When it comes to announcing new training or processes, we strive to ensure that the message resonates, and there are various approaches you can take to achieve this. Here’s our approach:

1. Multichannel announcements: After the training is approved, we make it a point to announce it through multiple channels. We begin by sharing the news during company or departmental meetings. The choice between department-specific or company-wide announcements depends on the nature of the training. Some are tailored for specific roles or departments, while others benefit the entire company. These initial announcements, whether in department or company meetings, always come with the promise of future live training sessions. We reserve time on our calendars to host separate meetings about significant changes in our processes or in the digital industry that affect our clients or services. This separation is crucial to ensure that the training’s importance is not diluted when combined with broader department or company meetings.
2. Global announcements: Following the separate training sessions, we make a global announcement of the resource through our LMS. This means that the team has received a general announcement about the update, attended live training, and now has a resource at their disposal that relates to the update.
3. Monthly Updates: To reinforce the message and provide one last reminder about the new trend or update, I send out a monthly message via our internal messaging tool. Within our agency, it goes out on our main Slack channel. This message highlights all the new content we’ve created and added to our LMS in the previous month.

Setup An Audit Program

Now let’s admit, tackling all things digital marketing related can still be a daunting process even with subject matter experts helping you out. Sometimes, critical updates or changes slip through the cracks, including minor alterations such as user interface (UI) updates for a Google tool or the rebranding of a tool or system.

To safeguard yourself from dropping the ball and missing updates, we suggest implementing an L&D audit program. By having a recurring audit program you get buy-in from department leads and SMEs. Audits don’t take place overnight and might require significant time depending on how much content you have to review in your LMS.

I suggest giving yourself 4 weeks for the audit to give everyone ample time amidst their daily responsibilities. Here at Hennessey Digital, we attack this process over the course of a month and have our department leads go through everything related to their specific department. They are required to read through and ensure the content contained within is still relevant. This allows department leads to identify old, outdated content that either needs to be updated or potentially removed entirely. During this process, department leads and SMEs can update anything that needs immediate change. Generally, there shouldn’t be too much to update as long as you are keeping in touch with your department leads and subject matter experts throughout the year.

The L&D Audit process can also unearth gaps in your training where you might be lacking content. From there it’s back to the drawing board with identifying the subject matter experts to help you fill in that gap of content.

Rinse, repeat, and reward!

The post Incorporating the Latest Digital Marketing Trends & How to Train Your Team to Stay Ahead appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Currently, we’re seeing team member requests for a few subject matter areas in L&D that are fairly common in the workplace. Before I even address the topics we see, I want to stress that you always need to keep a pulse on your company’s requests when it comes to continued education or the development of new skills.

How to approach learning and development

Last month, our resident HR expert and Senior Director of People Success Jill Wenk addressed five questions she gets the most. As she shared, we’re serious about incorporating team member feedback into our decisions, and this includes learning and development content.

At Hennessey Digital, we use a couple of different methods to ensure we have our employees’ best interests in mind when creating or endorsing learning content. Primarily, we utilize an internal form that is accessible and available to all team members at any time. People can suggest learning content based on an existing module or something brand-new to us.

As our L&D champion, I personally attend cross-functional and cross-departmental meetings to get a clear understanding of our company’s goals, challenges, and go-to-market strategy. This way, I can design learning and development content that aligns with where our business is and where we’re going. Fortunately, these pieces of content often jive with what our team members want.

And speaking of giving people what they want, look no further than social media! We use LinkedIn to see what our team members are engaging in outside of our digital walls. We also keep note of what competitors and others in the industry are finding valuable and share these assets with the proper teams and roles. I also take advantage of Lessonly’s internal community known as LlamaNation to get insights on how others in our industry and beyond are incorporating L&D into their programs.

You need an open-door policy to make sure you are present in various parts of the company, especially if you’re a remote company. At a minimum, your L&D specialist should be meeting regularly with senior management to discuss ideas and any gaps in training and skills at the company. This will help your L&D specialist understand the goals, expectations, and needs at your organization.

Based on what I see at Hennessey Digital, and in monitoring the L&D industry, these are the top three trends in learning and development right now.

Google updates and enhancements

Because of the nature of our business in SEO, the first unique request that we get most frequently is on the search engine giant, and Google has always presented an interesting challenge when it comes to learning and development.

Most of the time in the L&D space, you can create content that doesn’t need to be updated as often. It might require a tweak here and there, maybe every other year or so. But with Google, the L&D strategy has to be on its toes.

Updates to policies or core updates at Google create obstacles with keeping training materials updated and reflective of those updates from Google. What was true one day in search engine optimization may not be true the next day. Additionally, this type of content can be harder to implement if you are sticking to a singular medium to administer the training.

When it comes to training around Google updates, we find that a blended learning approach is best. It’s one thing to read through all of Google’s updates, and it’s another thing to understand what they mean and how/if you should change your strategies based upon those updates. We find that blended learning is the best approach because it creates a digital resource that we can always point back to, but also an element of in-person training to see the hands-on application of that training. This is helpful in any industry that has client-facing roles.

Role playing is generally one of the best strategies as you can bring up recurring conversations that an employee might encounter and provide them with the company’s preferred response. This is also a great way to highlight the best practices and give practice to those that aren’t as comfortable with the training topic.

learning and development in progress!

What is blended learning?

Blended learning is an approach that combines online or virtual educational materials with activities that take place in a traditional classroom-based environment. For most L&D content, it’s smart to have a blended learning approach as it presents the content to the many different styles of learning at your organization.

A perfect example of blended learning at Hennessey Digital would be learning through our online LMS (learning management system) and pairing it with in-person demonstration and/or role playing through virtual means like Zoom.

When our company leaders and local team members met for an in-person retreat in Austin this spring, we used a blended learning approach where we all took personality assessments online prior to the event. Next, we gathered for a live training session to better our understanding of our team members and how to leverage the assessment results to enhance how we work together.

Another thing to consider is where you get your educational content if you don’t have existing content or a subject matter expert to help. Perhaps you just don’t have someone on staff who has the time to help train another individual.

In this case, seek out online learning institutions like Coursera, Udemy, and LinkedIn Learning. Many of these education portals have free learning options or the ability to audit courses for free. Your company may even have tuition reimbursement programs or accepted educational expenses via expense reporting. Check with your leaders and People Success/Human Resources to check on these benefits, because you may even be able to have courses fully covered. Get those certifications!

Outside of our unique learning and development situation with Google, there are other requests for training and L&D content that I see internally at Hennessey Digital. Some of these learning areas are also discussed among local and national L&D/People Success/HR groups.

Upskilling and career development

One of the biggest trends in learning and development content is upskilling and career development. This could be someone looking to upgrade their current skill set within their role or department or look to gain new skills in relative roles or departments. We even make training a piece of our career pathway program!

Upskilling training varies widely depending on industry, but for the sake of an example, we see our SEO team members looking to broaden their cross-departmental understanding. Topics such as publishing content, general SEO skills, technical SEO, or specific tool training are just a few of the many examples that pop up here.

Additionally, we see individuals looking for an upward trajectory in their careers so they seek out people manager training and ways to involve themselves in additional company projects. Our mentoring program is a perfect complement to the individuals looking for the latter! Running a mentoring program effectively means you need to devote the time and effort to make it run properly, and this is where our blended learning approach comes in heavily.

At Hennessey Digital, we pair a monthly virtual learning topic with monthly 1-on-1 meetings between mentors and mentees as well as a monthly group meeting with all mentors and mentees. This allows all groups to share their findings and experience based on the month’s topic, and this sharing helps mentees prepare for their growth behind a curated set of topics. They also create a strong relationship with a senior leader at the company.

Health and wellness learning

Outside of job-related requests, health and wellness is a big area that employees are asking for in learning and development. We tend to see a good amount of requests come in for topics related to personal development in areas like physical health, mental health, and financial wellness.

I recall one specific request where someone wanted more information on our benefits offerings at Hennessey Digital. The team member’s idea was to create tips on ways to utilize the benefits we offer, such as knowing when benefit coverage periods start and end, what rules our 401(k) plan has around rollover funds, and more.

In response to this request, we are now implementing recurring education sessions every six months with our 401(k) vendor. They present to our teams and provide virtual learning on how to save towards retirement, offering personalized 1-on-1 sessions for individual financial decisions. This shows our employees that we want them to grow outside of our walls as well.

These types of training requests are common and can sometimes be the most valuable for your employees. Why is this? One could argue that specific technical skills training would be more valuable in leveling up an employee’s skill set. However, investing more in your employee’s well being shows you truly care about them and, in turn, they are more invested in the business.

Our People Success department also dedicates time to an internal health and wellness program. From walking competitions to sharing tips for a healthy and happy life, I can say with confidence that we truly care about our team members’ well being. Life at Hennessey Digital is certainly about more than just our day-to-day work!

example of a Lessonly learning path

Following trends in learning and development

One big takeaway here is that learning and development categories are constantly evolving and revolving. By this, I mean the means and ways you administer training is always changing, and sometimes you’ll notice old ways working best for new situations. Essentially, you need to be ready to find new ways to make your content engaging and modern, whether that looks like adding existing content to a learning management system (we love Lessonly!) or finding a new way to increase employee engagement in said content.

Trends in learning and development are always changing, but the good news is some of the old, tried-and-true ways to engage employees still work. Role playing and gamification are great ways to make that learning and development shine.

What do you think were the trends in learning and development requests throughout 2020? Ask any friend in the learning and development or human resources space, and after a good sampling, you’ll find out that a lot of employees were trying to get a better financial education then. At that time, companies offered learning sessions about all of the new COVID-related bills that were tied to unemployment, 401(k)s, and much more.

L&D always needs to be prepared to pivot quickly to provide the resources to make sure employees feel invested in and ready to conquer their personal and professional lives. Offering plenty of opportunities for learning and growth helps your people feel valued. When you invest in your people, they invest in the company. This is what learning and development is all about!

The post What Are the Trends in Learning and Development Right Now? appeared first on Hennessey Digital.

Thinking back, I can still remember most of my early days of education. I loved being with my friends and classmates, and most of the time I also enjoyed the topics or lessons we were being taught.

But I didn’t always love everything I was learning.

Fast forward to 2021, and I look back and wonder: why did I have that feeling of not wanting to learn the interesting things my teachers had planned? Why am I now so accepting to learn new things when I wasn’t always as willing in school?

Several factors affect curiosity levels in learners. How an educator teaches a subject matters because it affects the learner’s willingness or ability to grasp and retain the information being presented.

The rules of L&D engagement

Knowing your audience and how to connect with them is important to get right before you start to approach how to teach a topic.

As I started out in my professional career, I viewed opportunities for learning as less available. (Spoiler alert: I was wrong!) I thought that my future career path was predefined and that I had to  buckle down on what I was currently doing. (Wrong again!) I call this “FOML”. It’s not as catchy as FOMO, but with the same concept: Fear Of Missed Learning.

I realized I craved education because I hadn’t been taught properly. Many of us have probably had opportunities stripped away from us without even knowing it!

As I thought about this shift in my attitude towards education, I wanted to do something about it. This urge to keep learning coincided with an amazing opportunity that changed my career trajectory forever.

Greg Herrmann

Learning at work?

At that time, I was working in the customer service department at a large travel website in Boston, MA. Our group was told that we would get a half day off work to attend an in-person training around digital communications. The training topic was how to control and adjust your tone of voice in digital communication channels like email and chat.

My cynical side saw this as at least an opportunity to be off the phone for four hours. But that learning session was four of the most beneficial hours of my life.

The instructor for the training was from outside the organization. He was an older gentleman, my knee-jerk reaction at the time was, “Oh, so some 60-year-old man is going to teach us Millennials about digital tonality and communications?!” My inner voice laughed, but that instructor brought a fun spirit to the meeting. He joked about the very idea of whether he was qualified to run the training with us.

My initial impressions about the instructor and the material were dead wrong.

As the training continued, I learned that not only did this guy have authority on the subject, but he also understood human conversations and how spelling, grammar, and sentence structure played a role in how people receive written messages.

I learned a lot about my own writing during that session, and I thought I’d known it all!

A career-changing lesson

That training sticks in my memory because of something the instructor said to me after my colleagues had left the room. He told me things that boosted my confidence and ultimately changed the course of my career.

The instructor told me that I didn’t belong where I was. He said, through my participation and observations I’d shared, he felt the job I was performing was beneath me. And he also said it wasn’t necessarily his place to offer advice, nor was he suggesting that I find a new job. He said it was a simple observation that he couldn’t let sit.

I was floored.

This experience that I first scoffed at was building me up in ways that I had never thought possible.

I immediately had a new focus on my career and had already been looking for a new job before getting that instructor’s advice. But now I had greater aspirations and ideas that I wanted to see come true.

I kept up my knowledge in customer service, but I also involved myself in new hire training and onboarding in my next role. Volunteering for learning and development opportunities and programs beyond the onboarding process happened. Soon I was participating in Google-hosted training, cross-functional education opportunities, and more.

A shift to a learning-focused culture

After this shift, I landed a role at a new organization that was fully invested in learning and development. This experience was also my first exposure to digital marketing, an industry that is constantly changing. We had to learn and move fast to stay on top of this ever-evolving landscape.

Not long after starting that job, I was able to carve out a specific career path that led me to People Success (our take on Human Resources) and a new role as a Learning & Development Program Manager. This helped me step into my current role as Senior Manager of Learning & Development at Hennessey Digital, where I’m building out an entire program for the company.

Sounds daunting, right? With the right resources and technology, a great team, and attention to detail, it can be done!

Bringing Learning and Development to Hennessey Digital

Before you start to uncover the potential learning and development needs at your company, you first need to hire someone to do the work. I can’t stress enough the importance of hiring an L&D expert early on. Doing this is the perfect opportunity to reinforce your company culture and develop a “voice of the company”.

You also reinforce that voice through how (and what) you teach your employees. This is especially important for fully-remote companies without the opportunity for in-person training or 1-on-1 time.

You don’t always need to hire someone with a Learning & Development background to do this work. Internal team members have institutional knowledge and skills to teach others what they need to know. Your tenured staff will know the most about your brand, your products and services, the goals of the organization, and your core values.

Once you have the right person or people identified for Learning & Development work, it’s time to start chipping away at the needs your company has. But where to start?

I often reference a quote I heard recently at Hennessey Digital’s LMS (learning management system) Lessonly’s annual Yellowship conference:

“You can’t boil the ocean.”

You can slowly bring the ocean’s temperature up, but it’s going to be hard to snap your fingers and get that thing boiling. So rather than attacking everything at once, consider what the main priority is for your company. Are you expecting a large influx in hiring? Is company-wide training a focus area?

Consider auditing your current onboarding process and think about ways to improve or accelerate it for new hires. Do you have a formal orientation program for new employees? Does a prescribed path of lessons exist to set them up for success?

Maybe your company has many directors, managers, and team leads. Employees in roles like these might need management training that’s lighter on technical content and creates big-picture learning opportunities for leaders. Programs like this should involve a hybrid learning model with digital and live training elements.

Learning through technology

At Hennessey Digital, we use technology to connect virtually and establish the same type of learning experience we would have if we were meeting in person.

What about those company requirements to be legally compliant with local or federal law and regulations? Ah, yes: the always exciting compliance training! Like them or loathe them, compliance trainings are necessary in workplaces around the world.

Compliance training ensures that proper expectations are communicated throughout the company. Specific state and federal training requirements will depend on your industry, location, and company size.

Although compliance training gets a bad rap as a necessary evil, there can be a night-and-day difference between a compliance training that’s beneficial and one that just checks some boxes.

With the right Learning & Development talent and resources, you have the opportunity to turn an otherwise boring requirement into a fun way to engage your employees.

Beyond the basics of learning and development

Once you have a Learning & Development professional on staff, don’t stop with just the basics! This person can help you go beyond required compliance training and new hire onboarding to transform your company into a culture of learning and innovation.

Continued education is important in every industry. Hennessey Digital lives in the digital marketing world, which is always changing. Whether it’s updating our employees about third-party vendor updates or educating them about internal changes, Learning & Development plays a role in spreading that awareness.

Accountability is a big piece of the puzzle in driving innovation through education. We use Lessonly for our learning management system to keep track of who’s been assigned what training module, whether they’ve completed it, and how long it’s taken to complete. These key data points help us learn more about our employees and the content we assign.

Learning and development for different learning styles

Audits are a constant in the Learning & Development world. A piece of content you created last year, last month, or even yesterday may not work today.

Learning content needs to be updated, as does the method the content is delivered. This leads us to another key area for all Learning & Development professionals to pay attention to: learning styles!

At Hennessey Digital, every new hire completes a VARK questionnaire to give us a guide for how they learn best. Team members are identified as a visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic, or multimodal learner. Using this information, I can tailor our learning materials to different audiences and learning styles.

We also provide VARK questionnaire results along with a personality assessment to managers. This way, they can create the best way to communicate messages within teams and between departments. Accessibility is crucial to training diverse sets of learning styles.

Making learning and development a way of life

The Learning & Development function should be integrated with your Human Resources/People Success department. L&D should also partner with your Executive and Marketing teams to amplify the company’s voice. By leveraging a learning management system (LMS), Learning & Development can help reinforce important messages.

As an example, Hennessey Digital recently unveiled our four guiding principles (our core values). We presented these at internal meetings, in blog posts, and on social media. Learning & Development then took our core messaging to the next level with assigned learning in our LMS.

We also baked our guiding principles into our onboarding process that connects new hires to Hennessey Digital as a company. Their employee experience begins with what we do, why we do it, how we got here, and who their peers are. Context matters!

Because learning and development goes hand-in-hand with company culture, always involve L&D in employee-driven initiatives and resource groups. Make L&D part of your DNA!

Introducing L&D to your organization

Learning and development is a philosophy that goes far beyond onboarding and compliance training. Creating a culture of growth and learning is intentional and requires an investment of time and resources. A full-time L&D professional on staff is ideal, but you can always start small.

Look internally to see if you have someone who can devote time to training. They can review your company’s needs one at a time and make recommendations on opportunities for learning and development.

You’ll start to see a boost in engagement, compliance, and employee retention. Now you’re learning and developing your way to bigger things for your company—and your culture!

The post Why Learning and Development is Your Company’s Biggest Asset appeared first on Hennessey Digital.