Improving Participant Engagement in an Age of Information Overload

Learn how participant engagement, audience engagement, and digital engagement strategies can help organizations cut through information overload and create more meaningful, memorable experiences. Transcript below.

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[00:09] Dave Asheim: Hello, everybody! This is Dave Asheim. Welcome to our webinar. Nice to have you all here. We'll start officially in a minute or two. We're going to make this a quick-paced webinar, and we're going to have everybody use their phones. Eugene, Marissa, everybody, get your phone handy. We're going to be scanning QR codes, and Sending text messages. Megan is my assistant on this. Megan runs our marketing group, so she'll be doing some polls and surveys, sending some text out. Hello, Valerie, good to see you. While we're hanging out here in this room. Could you all go to the chat button?

[01:09] Dave Asheim: And just tell us what organization you're with, maybe the city that you're in, that's kind of fun. Then we're going to use this chat feature to ask questions. I'll I'll start. There's Marie from Dayton. I'm going to say, Dave from Nashville. Valerie, hi from New Orleans. Hey, Robin from New Jersey. Marissa from the fire department. Marissa, you're probably the only one from the fire department here. We've got some workforce development folks, I love that, Sydney. We have some training people here. Rachel St. Louis, excellent. Alright, very good. Alright, another 30 seconds, and then we'll get cooking. This is where you can ask a question to me, or to anybody, or just when I When I will ask for some participation or thumbs up. That's how we'll do it. How about that? North Carolina, love it. All right. Well, let's get started, because I'm hoping that we can wrap this up in 20, 30 minutes.

[02:31] Dave Asheim: Or longer, if you folks have questions. We will be recording this, we are recording this, and we'll send you a copy of the Slides, probably tomorrow morning or so. Love to chat with anybody. Later this week or next week. If you would like to know more about how to use some of these tools yourself. I'm going to share my screen. Get the show on the road. Megan, let me know if and on all of you, if you can see my screen okay, that would be great. Good to go, she says, okay. As I said, I love conversation. Otherwise.

[03:25] Dave Asheim: It gets a little, tedious, maybe, so let's let's have plenty of questions, or I disagree, or I agree. How about that? About a week or two ago, I was, presenting a similar presentation that you're going to see today to the ATD chapter in Nashville. In the chat window, let me know how many of you know what ATD is. If you don't. It's a phenomenal organization, and there's probably a chapter in your neighborhood. It's the, Association of Training and Development, so If you're in Workforce or some of these other groups and you don't know about ATD, you might get involved. It's really fantastic.

[04:10] Dave Asheim: Valerie says, yes, they're great. Valerie is a gamification expert. We're doing a webinar with Valerie on gamification, and distance learning, because she's an expert in about 2 or 3 weeks. Check out, check out that. We'll send all of you information on that. Alright, let's let's get going. A little bit about us, just to start, and then we'll get into what I've learned about training and microlearning over the years. We're a company that I started about 20 years ago. We're based in the U.S. 20 people or so work for our company, dispersed around the country. I happen to be in Nashville, but a lot of our folks are in San Francisco.

[04:56] Dave Asheim: We're a cloud-based company, SaaS, for all of you people that like tech terminology. We're really big on customer support, so we answer our phones almost 24/7, and have a wide range of clients. We work with an awful lot of workforce development folks. Who are on the call today. We do not work with any fire departments, so maybe we'll change that. But because we have so many tools for training and engaging. Whether it's Augusta University, or ChristianaCare or the Post Office, there's going to be something here that, hopefully you'll be able to find and like as well. We just were, told recently that we won Training Magazine's, Choice Award winner for authoring and learning design. How about a few, applauses in the chat window, just to feel good, some, emojis or something? Tell me that, applaud our luck. There we go, we got something from Megan. Okay, that's great. Love that, a little participation. I think this is just letting you know that we know a little bit about How to engage and motivate people using some technology. That's, that's the idea here.

[06:22] Dave Asheim: Alright, so in the chat window, let me know how many, or which ones of these all of you folks are using. For training or motivating, versus just basic, regular communication. Go ahead, everybody, Eugene and everybody. Do you have an LMS? Are you using WhatsApp? Let's just see the course of how many of these you folks are using. Cial media, is that something that you folks are using? Are you using LinkedIn, or Facebook. Sydney, everything except WhatsApp. That's interesting, Sydney. Okay, that's great. An internet and SharePoint? Google Classroom. Robin, I haven't seen Google Classroom used that much, but I'm sure that it's probably pretty awesome.

[07:16] Dave Asheim: Marissa, Teams and email, okay, excellent. How many people use, Slack? Yeah, let me know how many of you use Slack. Janice has got a question, if somebody wants to answer Janice's question in the chat, that would be great. Most of our clients we work with use one of these, oftentimes, an LMS, Marissa, if you're not using Slack, it's basically an instant messaging tool. Maybe you have a Microsoft service that can do instant messaging. We happen to use Slack, and a lot of our clients use Slack. It's just a very handy way to communicate with folks on your team. What we've found is many of these are missing a few key things, and we'll show you what we think are missing from some of these, and maybe you'll pick up some tips.

[08:16] Dave Asheim: During this little discussion. The technologies that we have found to be so darn helpful really boil into these two categories. Text messaging. To do the tap on the shoulder, hey, there's something really interesting here, click this link. Or a mobile web app. Just for that training course, just for job seekers, just something specific. I would love to know in the chat how many of you folks are using let's start with text messaging texting as a way to keep the training and the engagement and the motivation going. Then, are any of you have any of you designed a mobile site, like what you see on the right side?

[09:13] Dave Asheim: Of the screen here, because these are the two things we're going to focus on in our 20-minute chat today. Let me know if those are tools that you are you are using. How many of you folks also, if you don't mind putting in the chat, are using an LMS system? Oh, Robin says I don't use I don't text clients. Yeah, that's a big-time problem, Robin. If you move to a company that provides the texting, then you can get away Without having to divulge your personal cell phone, but yeah, I wouldn't want to give the world my personal cell phone either.

[09:52] Dave Asheim: So LMS, obviously, many of you are using an LMS system, or some CRM, I should say, to store results and all of your content. We've found that is something that systems like ours and other companies in our space can integrate into, so you don't have to worry about information kind of being lost. That you can still have it all stored in your Salesforce, or CRM, or Workday, or LMS. But we've also found, in the last 5 years, so many of the job seekers or trainees that you are training it's logging into the, into the intranet, logging into an LMS, logging into something.

[10:46] Dave Asheim: Just that extra 10 seconds makes them not want to do it. We've found that if you can get away from forcing people to log into these tools, but create little messages with links to little exercises, kind of like what you see on this screen. I think you're going to find that to be much more successful. In the in the training world, if you're a trainer, Valerie knows this, just in time, learning just enough just for me. It's a buzzword that's been around for probably 10 years. Learning nuggets, those are other little buzzwords. We've found that those buzzwords really do Play a role in cementing the knowledge that the folks you're trying to motivate and engage can follow.

[11:40] Dave Asheim: So, we've learned that if you can send a text instead of an email, which might get buried, with a little link to a page like this, it might only take somebody 30 seconds. It's almost some of our clients call it, wow, this is like playing a game. But it's really just chopping up what you want people to do, whether it's fill out a form, or learn how to do something, or watch a video, into a little bite-sized chunk. Much of the reinforcement that we've been seeing actually doesn't fit into the LMS or go be dumped into an LMS. It is just something that is kind of outside of that.

[12:26] Dave Asheim: Alright. Megan is going to put a little poll on the screen here, I think. All right, everybody, let's take 20 seconds, and answer as many of these, you know, you can pick a couple, I think. Megan, so let us know, we'll wait 5 seconds, and then we'll see our results here. What kind of challenges are you seeing? If you don't see the challenge here, everybody, go ahead and put it in the chat window. All right, Megan, let's see what kind of results we've got from our from our audience. Wow, right down the middle, that's interesting, okay. Getting people to participate, that is always a big-time challenge. Pay attention, yeah, I love that one. Complete the training, retain the information, or all of the above, okay.

[13:30] Dave Asheim: Reaching frontline or desk test employees wasn't a big, a big issue. Alright, well, that is, it's interesting, it's basically everybody's got plenty of issues with getting folks to, like, do the work. You send something. Via email to a group, or maybe through WhatsApp or Slack or something, but they're not doing it. Hopefully, what you're going to learn today, that maybe there's a few Things that you can that you can pick up and implement that'll help. Alright, so, first exercise on your phone, everyone. This is an easy exercise. Open up your phone. Scan that QR code, And in the chat window Let me know what you get It should pop up your text messaging.

[14:34] Dave Asheim: Which is pretty awesome. It should say at the bottom of your text messaging app, Demo Space Training. Hit Send And you are now joining a text message list. Let me know in the chat window. If that worked for you folks, if not, you can put your phone number down and Megan will text it to you. Robin got it, Marie got it. What's so Sydney, excellent, Rachel, okay. What I think is brilliant about this, and it's not just us, by the way, this is the technology that's available. You can ask any new job seeker, anybody that sits down to take a class at the fire station, hey, we have some interns, scan this code, and instead of bringing somebody to a website, you're bypassing it.

[15:31] Dave Asheim: And they're going and signing up to get to join a text message list. Then they get, right after that, a text that you've already set up, maybe with a link to a questionnaire, to a website, to something. But you've now got them on your list. You can send them text messages. Of course, they have now opted in to this text messaging, and they can opt out should their situation change. But the ability to get people to engage, which was one of the big things on that poll. Goes from about 20% open rates with email to about 90-92% with texting.

[16:15] Dave Asheim: So, for all of you folks that are struggling a little bit with getting people to pay attention. If you can get them engaged via a text, you're going to see a dramatic increase. Then one of the other things we're going to talk about is kind of chunking that learning up into little in little pieces. As part of this text, we included a link to a sample little training portal. It's one of the services we provide, a way that you can load whatever kind of content you like, whether it's workforce, or training, or any kind of skill building, you can build that on your on your little site.

[16:55] Dave Asheim: All right, if there's any questions so far, just put them in the chat window, and we'll keep we'll keep going. When learners are overwhelmed, what I've been told by the experts, just info just gets missed, and I just don't read it, I just don't do it, so I don't learn what I need to learn, and the organization suffers, and I suffer. Any way to pro to improve the engagement, I think everybody is on board. We've found tech can help in about 4 ways. Simplify, meet people where they are. Reinforce and personalize, so let's look at those. On the simplification side, what we have found is, if you can allow me, the trainee, I'll say, to do something on my phone.

[17:51] Dave Asheim: although, because it's cloud-based, they can do this on a computer, too. It just makes things easier. If you can drop a text on my phone with a little bit.ly, and it goes right to this, you know, sensible heat discussion, because you want me to answer this question. I will do that, and maybe I'll do 2, 3, 4 minutes worth of this information, and Then you've at least got me. To focus on this topic, and maybe tomorrow morning you do another one. It was just a whole different way to think about transferring knowledge from you and your material into me. Simplification through a text.

[18:38] Dave Asheim: with a link to a page, I think is step number step number one. Let's play the game again. If everybody would scan this QR code. That will go to kind of a sample leadership page. Imagine you're trying to do a little leadership training. Go ahead and scan that code, click the link. Up will pop a little video that we found on YouTube about leadership training. Let me know. Eugene, Rachel, Sydney Megan, if you got that page, and feel free to click it if you want to. It's just an idea that how could you get people that you're working with to watch a video. Well, if you sent them an email with a link, or it's built into some LMS course.

[19:34] Dave Asheim: chances are, they just may not do it. But imagine you send them a text with the link, or you give them this QR code, maybe even in an email. Hey, check out this 30-second video on leadership. Performance. You've got at least a shot that they're going to do it. This goes back to the simplification and smaller lessons. I talked earlier about removing barriers. Try to remove making me log in, sign up, look at a PDF, go find a document, find it in my email. Drop them an email if necessary, or a text with a link to a little poll, a little participation challenge, and I think you'll find you're going to get a lot more success. Remove some barriers.

[20:27] Dave Asheim: Okay, meet people where they are. This is just as simple as they Everybody you're engaging with is carrying their phone 24/7. I'm not suggesting that you text people on a Saturday morning, But during the day. You don't I mean, are they at their desk? They may be at their desk, they may be at lunch, they may be on a break. If you send them a text, and they've voluntarily opted in to receive texts. The text is. It's fun, it's game-like, it's clever, it's not boring, some long three paragraphs about something that you want them to do, and you put a link in there to some little exercise. I can guarantee you, we've been doing this 10 years.

[21:15] Dave Asheim: people will click that link. In fact, you can run reports showing how many people will click a link after you send them send them this information. We found it's about 85 to 90% are going to click that link, normally within about 10 minutes, because that's how crazy we all are about checking our phone. Meeting them where they, where they are. Let them look at this on their phone if that's if that's how they want to look at it. It also kind of fits into their day, so I get a text, oh, I'm having lunch with my friend, I don't want to look at it, but I know it's right there.

[21:56] Dave Asheim: With email, this will be kind of fun. In the chat window, if anybody wants to admit it, how many unread emails do some of you have? I think I'm Over a thousand, because you get ads, you get all kinds of crazy stuff. How many unread texts do we have? Me of us probably don't have very many at all. All right, Sydney, you're a bad example. You're clearing your inbox. You're just way too, way too professional on this. But, I think many of the people you're interacting with might not be as good as Sydney, who's clearing her inbox, but the idea is If you can bypass this giant spam inbox, then and Marissa, zero for both. Okay, you guys, applaud for all of you.

[22:54] Dave Asheim: But it is nice to be able to send them a different kind of a message, like a text. That, that grabs them and gets them to do something. Okay. Let's move on to step 3, reinforcing. Obviously, the secret to learning and motivating is not to hit it once, but reinforcing. With mobile tools, you can set up Drips and automatic reminders. There are some LMSs that allow you to do that too, which is wonderful. In the chat window, if any of you are have some great, Examples of how you've automated your follow-up, let us know. But it's so obvious that if you can automate the follow-up.

[23:46] Dave Asheim: through, you know, MailChimp or Constant Contact, if you're using email, or through texting. In our case, there's all kinds of little training template and reminders that you can just grab from a library. Just something to keep the learning going, where you don't have to just sit down and kind of think about, who am I going to send this to? But it's an automatic it's an automatic thing that you can set up in advance. Small reminders make a big difference, I think we all probably Acknowledge that. We've also found that another beautiful thing with SMS is you can ask people a question, you can personalize those texts, and when they reply, you can have automatic text going back and forth. There's even systems that allow for some AI to answer questions, should you want to go that route. Those tools are now available.

[24:42] Dave Asheim: Or you, the supervisor, can log in and personally answer these. People love back and forth, back and forth text conversations. That will help improve the engagement, and I think the motivation. Then personalization, we found that to be great, whether it's addressing them by person and by division and where they are, or by their role. All of that really just helps with keeping people engaged. How many of you folks, maybe let me know in the chat window, are starting to use AI for training and learning? If you want to share with how you're doing that, put that in the chat window. That'd be fun to fun to see. We're not seeing too many yet, but everybody is kind of on the fence as to when they want to start doing it.

[25:40] Dave Asheim: If you've not heard about a tool called Closed Loop. It's the last little bullet here. You might write that down and do a little Google search on Closed Loop. It's been around a long time, but it's not that familiar to everybody. Closed loop is a way that the AI can only look at documents or websites that you've given it. You might say, well, I don't want this job seeker This trainee to Go crazy and look at a million things that have nothing to do with us. All of your training documents, your manuals, your videos. Links to websites that you like. That can be Uploaded into, call it a closed-loop box, and then when people ask questions, it's only asking it's only getting answers from that closed-loop information. It's a very handy way to appease not only yourself, but superiors who are thinking, boy, I don't want I don't want people to just get answers about This topic.

[27:01] Dave Asheim: That we don't necessarily support. Closed loop is one way to go around that. All right, Robin uses it to revise resumes. Yeah, that's a great one. Eugene, a little bit. Okay, cool. Feedback and completion, obviously, any way that you can keep the closed the information flowing back and forth is great, and a lot of this can be automated. Just a couple of examples as we wind this down to, the, end of the half an hour here. Here's an example of a mobile site from a plumbing and heating company. They had an issue with training new people, onboarding folks, so they just used a mobile tool.

[27:51] Dave Asheim: to load whatever content they wanted. They've got employee handbooks, and you can recommend high fives to people. They have accident reports. All of this is loaded here, and then once a month, text messages go to the people that are getting trained, or all employees about What's going on at the company, and then they'll use this a lot about, keeping the engagement going, especially in training exercises. Here's a surgical trauma unit at Augusta University. They are trying to train residents and nurses and staff It's complicated, they're very busy, obviously, so they are loading not only training materials, but they're creating text messages to be dropped into people's laps as well, and they're loading everything from schedules to phone numbers to hospital hacks.

[28:46] Dave Asheim: And then finally, this is a really interesting company. Debt Wizard is a wonderful company, lots of franchises. They have wonderful training materials that really weren't getting used as much as they would like. They've got this great content, PDF kind of content, LMS content, as well as videos, and of course, some podcasts. But Getting folks that are working in shops to finish the training is kind of tough. They would, and still do, ask people to scan a QR code. That pops open the texting, they'll sign up to get text, and then they will individually get information about interior training, or paint training, or whatever it is they happen to be interested in, and that might be a 30-day, 60-day, quote, class, where maybe every day or two they're getting a text with a link to some information. They're chopping up this information, making it bite-sized.

[29:45] Dave Asheim: Seems to really help. Considerations, most people are comfortable using their phone. If not, this material can be looked at on a computer. We love the idea that it is, personalized. I think that information fatigue can be a big issue on training and motivating and engaging. Once again, if you make it bicides, I think you've got a little bit of a chance to get people to do it. If you can use AI in a responsible manner. I think, it's going to be the way that we go. As I mentioned earlier, make it simple where they are and reinforce. It's all really important. I think Megan is going to send out a text that will just basically say, if you want a copy of these slides, or you would like us to make sure that you're on the webinar invitation for Valerie and myself in a couple weeks about gamification, which can really supercharge the learning.

[30:58] Dave Asheim: reply to that text that, Megan's going to be sending. We'll send you a copy of these slides and all this information. That wraps up my suggestions for you on how to use some off-the-shelf technologies, either from us or from other providers in the country. Would love to have any more questions or discussion if, you folks, want to ask a few more questions. Just put them in the chat window. We'll answer them. If not, we will we'll wrap this up and, send everybody information probably tomorrow morning. Thank you, Sydney. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Hopefully, you learned a little something about to use, maybe a new way to use some technologies to get more response. That's that's the idea.

[32:09] Dave Asheim: I'll hang out here if anybody's got some questions, and we'll open up the floor, but if you've got to run, go ahead and run, and we hope to see you at another webinar. But thanks so much! All right. Bye, everybody!

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