Training of employees makes business of any company professional and more profitable. Forced training has never been effective. Now all companies are trying to interest and involve their employees to consciously develop knowledge and skills necessary for work. And for this purpose methods of internal marketing are used.
As channels for advertising training can be used:
– General corporate platforms. For example, the company website, blog, groups in social networks and chat rooms in messengers.
– The corporate training portal will naturally also help in marketing. As a rule, the following are used: publishing news, digests, announcements of training activities, announcements.
– Email and sms mailings.
– Additional advertising in the form of branded items, posters, informational booklets.
– Connecting executives and opinion leaders to promotional activities. For example, involvement of top managers in classes, master classes or speeches at training conferences.
Internal training marketing. Collaborator Customer Experience:
1. KERNEL – Valentina Grinchenko, Distance Learning Manager
KERNEL is the world’s leading and Ukraine’s largest manufacturer and exporter of sunflower oil, a key supplier of agricultural products from the Black Sea region to global markets. The company exports its products to more than 80 countries around the world. There are 11700 active users on the portal.
“E-learning at the company is almost ten years old. Last March we updated the learning portal, made content easier to access, developed e-courses with unique author expertise, expanded the knowledge base and automated processes.
Employees learn about the Kernel HUB learning portal on their first day of work, the information comes in an adaptive chatbot and welcome email. Our company is very responsible about compliance with the corporate code, internal set of rules, so in the first week an employee is trained in the CDS. There are five mandatory courses in the adaptation program, which means that every newcomer gets acquainted with E-learning. 100% passing was not always there, but with the introduction of automation, the involvement of HR regions, the help of managers, as well as training videos, we are more often happy with the reports.
Kernel HUB chat-bot
All content on the portal is publicly available, every employee can easily choose an e-course, go to the library, watch a new webinar. But it is not only about the interest of employees, the learning process in Kernel is a well-coordinated branched system: plants study according to their schedule, elevators undergo mandatory training, new technologies are created and implemented, which means a high demand for knowledge transfer, here the narrow experts share knowledge in webinars, which are also stored in the DGS.
For example, the company has updated its corporate competency model and launched a new Annual Performance Appraisal process. A roadmap has been formed on the main page of the DGS and all the information has been collected: webinars, e-courses and video lessons. This training is mandatory and is connected in stages to all participants in the process. Even if an employee misses something, that’s okay, you can always recommend the right resource and, my favorite, give a link 🙂
The Annual performance assessment roadmap
I’ve learned that the main tool for attracting to the learning portal is usefulness! If an employee is helped by the knowledge, they will be loyal to e-learning. And for my part, the training department helps – we choose the best knowledge packaging tools, promote programs, attract the best speakers, help with questions, and share best practices with everyone.
What I love about marketing:
Delivering the news.
The Kernel HUB portal is updated with news and feature headings, we’re interested in everything from the world of learning: articles, TED videos, new books, interviews, predictions, tips; we provide links to popular YouTube videos. Now it’s not so hard to find content. Now there is always a noble reason to flip through the newsfeed 🙂
News on the Kernel HUB portal
About partnering with managers
The company has a very supportive culture of learning, learning at Kernel is a must, finding time to participate in projects is important, in my office time you could see colleagues gathering around one computer to listen to a speaker and exchange opinions. All this, given the very high work rhythm, is only possible due to the understanding on the part of managers and the example of top management.
For example, as soon as the heading “KernelDevelops” appeared, among the first participants were our top management, colleagues recommend books, movies, YouTube channels, share their impressions and thoughts. These recommendations are made into a weekly newsletter for all employees. The rubric is very popular, the entrance to the portal on the day of the newsletter is maximal.
I remember a funny story when one of the managers recommended to listen to the song of R. Rozhdestvensky “I have no time”. I heard colleagues quietly humming the words in the elevator or near the coffee machine. Here it is, viral content in action 🙂
We have good statistics on the library, for example, last month there were almost 2,000 unique visits, the most popular sections are Management, Personal Effectiveness, the second most popular is KernelRozvitiye. And when I was looking for the most popular video, I was surprised, I thought it would be “How to make a vacation in an electronic system,” and 200 views turned out to be “How to generate a Power BI report on HR metrics.
Games, ratings and badges
I’m the kind of person who is cautious about gamification. I don’t believe that learning boring or complex material will accelerate competition or scores. I’m closer to the approach that motivation, meaning, and a methodical approach are more important in adult learning. At the same time I like gamification elements and use them with pleasure. For example, in spring we launched an online game on system thinking with mandatory rating of the most successful, badges by levels, diplomas and corporate prizes. For additional PR they created an energetic promo video.
Badges for passed modules of the online game on systems thinking
Badges for passing the Excel course
Video mastery
I advise all beginners to take a closer look at the animation video creation editor. Such a tool helps to create an atmosphere of celebration, joy, surprise. The main thing is not to get carried away by special effects, pick up energetic music and make promo short, up to 1 minute. We have successful examples when even a strict report in social networks was PRed in an animation format.
Digest lab
My favorite tool for promotion is the corporate E-learning Digest.
In the newsletter we always tell what interesting things have been uploaded to the portal, what book novelties have arrived, where to find new webinars, I recommend enrolling in an e-learning course and lure you into the CDS. It helps to systematize information, colleagues see what interesting things they have missed, they like to look at new books.
Straight ahead
A beautiful bright tool was suggested by our HRD, Natalia Kulchitskaya. She suggested a brightly designed Kernel HUB icon on the corporate portal. This dramatically reduced the flow of questions, how to find the learning portal? After the rebranding it is impossible to ignore it 🙂
Kernel HUB icon on employees’ desktops
Kernel HUB badge on the KERNEL website
Kernel HUB logo
Kernel HUB is my place of pride and strength, I like to download new products, I appreciate obligatory training, I listen to feedback and recommendations, I don’t get tired of answering thousands of comments from my colleagues. E-learning is always about benefiting both people and business!”
2. ViYar – Irina Podgoretskaya, Head of Corporate University
“ViYar” is a company that has been working in the furniture and furniture components market for more than 18 years. Their clients are specialized trading companies, various production enterprises, as well as private craftsmen producing furniture.
ViYar e-learning was launched a year ago. At the moment the training portal has 1500 registered users, about 600 of them are salespeople. The training is designed more specifically for this category of employees.
“We use quite different internal marketing tools. For example, we celebrate the most active employees in a special rubric – “Stars of Viyarum”. We publish mini interviews with these employees and give them branded T-shirts #starsofviyarum. We also duplicate such news in corporate groups in social networks – Facebook “Viyar Work“, Instagram “viyarteam”.
#STARSOFVIYARUM
We visualize information as much as possible – we make something interesting out of boring things. We try to create resources in the form of infographics and structured text, shoot short screencasts and educational videos. Such resources are easier to perceive by employees and have a greater reach. We also make colorful ads.
An example of an ad on the Viyarum portal
Every month we do digests. We collect information for the month and categorize it. In the digest we describe the appearance of new resources. Based on this data, we do a newsletter for all employees of the company, even those who are not registered on the Viyarum portal. When we made the newsletter, many employees who are not registered on the portal began to be active and register.
Digest cover
We also do a digital digest – we briefly show in the form of an infographic the changes in Viyarum’s functionality that are important for users during the month. For example, in September we added the possibility to unsubscribe from newsletter categories only. In the past, our employees often unsubscribed from the portal because they perceived it as spam. Now they can choose the categories they are interested in and subscribe to their newsletters.
Digital digest
In the future, we plan to launch sticker packs in the theme of corporate training. Also add social networking elements to the platform:
- the ability to leave reactions to resources in the form of likes, stickers and emoji;
- the ability to share resources and make reposts.
In the near future, we plan to create a user roadmap on the platform, so that they respond to the material they read as much as possible – actively communicating and sharing links.”
- Read also: Using the training rating – the case of SOCAR Energy Ukraine
Thank you for finishing reading 🙂 We showed examples of two companies that are actively engaged in internal training marketing. We do not urge to repeat everything exactly as they do. You may have your own effective solutions, which you can share in the comments. We’ll be glad if some of our tips will be useful for effective marketing of corporate training.
