Heard of quiet quitting and the disengagement epidemic? If you’re an L&D or HR professional, we’re certain you would have—and we’re also sure it keeps you up at night. Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace found that 62% of employees are currently not engaged at work, and 15% are actively disengaged.
What is driving this disengagement? Among the most notable causes are employees who feel they’re not being recognised or supported, a lack of career development opportunities, workplace changes, no possibility of promotion, and poor leadership. According to the Gallup 2024 Q12 Meta-Analysis, in addition to being recognised for doing good work, most employees want to know that they are improving and have opportunities to build their knowledge and skills.
Getting employees to engage with learning, however, remains a challenge. The main reason is that an astonishingly large number of companies still serve up the same old training fare in the same old one-size-fits-all, top-down learning programs.
So, how do you fix that? Having guided dozens of companies and franchises through their workforce training programs, we can confidently say the solution lies in investing in an agile and flexible AI-powered learning management system (LMS) that engages employees with immersive and personalised learning journeys.
The eLearning Industry’s research found that 77% of L&D professionals regard personalised learning as key to employee engagement. A recent survey conducted at the Learning Technologies Exhibition supports this: nearly four out of five L&D professionals see a clear link between personalised learning and improved employee engagement.
How technology is enabling personalised learning
Although personalised learning is not new (think one-on-one tutoring), technology has enabled us to take it to an entirely new level. The first step into this learning method has been through data-driven personalised learning, a technique still widely used today.
Traditional analytics tools, LMSs and dashboards collect data such as test scores, learning behaviour, and engagement metrics. These are combined with historical data and learners’ past performance or feedback to adjust learning content and create personalised paths.
However, data-driven learning systems aren’t easily scalable as they would require manual configuration and oversight to remain effective across large or diverse workforces. And while they can group learners into broad categories or “personas” based on trends and patterns, they often lack granularity.
Enter AI-driven personalised learning, an adaptive teaching approach that considers each learner’s strengths, weaknesses, interests, and learning style. It accommodates learners by adapting learning pathways to be relevant and applicable to their own professional interests and goals.
AI-powered learning is proactive and responsive and can predict an individual learner’s future learning needs and challenges. For example, it can instantly adjust content difficulty based on a learner’s real-time performance, offering immediate remediation or more advanced material. It can take content down to a beginner level for someone struggling with a topic or take it to an expert level for those accelerating rapidly.
This adaptivity allows LMSs to create unique, dynamic learning paths for every individual—without human intervention. AI has become so smart that it can factor in learning speed, preferred formats, and even a learner’s emotional state to provide tailored experiences.
AI is also at the point where it can analyse unstructured data—text documents like reports, emails, and social media posts; multimedia files such as photos, videos, and audio recordings; and human communication like conversations, feedback, and reviews. This data contains rich, context-driven information that can provide deeper insights into learner behaviour and trends, further enabling learning experience designers to create more immersive, personalised and engaging courses.
Finally, AI-powered, adaptive learning management systems are inherently scalable. They can handle massive data sets, accommodate many learners simultaneously, and provide individualised feedback for all users without increased administrative effort. This saves time and money and improves operational efficiency.
What are the benefits of personalised learning?
- Personalised learning leads to better learning outcomes
Because it is a learner-centred approach, employees take an active role in their learning, which improves retention rates and assessment scores.
- Personalised learning is flexible
It can be delivered asynchronously or synchronously. Asynchronous learning allows employees to access training when it suits them.
- It improves engagement
When learners engage with content that better aligns with their needs, interests, and abilities, their motivation to learn increases, leading to a more immersive and engaging learning experience.
Are there any specific issues to look out for?
Before switching to an adaptive learning platform to create your personalised learning program, consider these factors to determine whether it’s the right approach for your online programs and courses.
Integration With Existing Systems
Integrating an AI-powered LMS with legacy systems such as HR platforms or other training tools requires specialised technical expertise.
Tip: Use a platform with robust APIs and integration capabilities, such as aNewSpring, to ensure seamless connectivity, and contact us for expert help with integration.
Data Privacy and Security
Personalised learning relies on collecting large amounts of learner data, raising concerns about compliance and data privacy regulations.
Tip: Choose platforms such as eFront, which offers advanced data encryption and other enterprise-grade security features to keep your platform and data safe at all times.
Content Readiness and Alignment
Personalisation requires diverse, high-quality content in a variety of media formats to build individual learning paths, and organisations often don’t have the resources to create such content.
Tip: Access our ready-made content libraries that offer SCORM-compliant courses. Some of these courses are customisable and available through LTI and API integrations, ensuring seamless deployment across a wide range of LMS platforms.
Scalability Challenges
Scaling personalised learning for large organisations with thousands of employees can be daunting.
Tip: Choose a cloud-based LMS platform such as TalentLMS that can efficiently handle large-scale user bases.
NLT is ready to help you personalise training in 2025
If you haven’t yet finalised your L&D programs for the new year, now’s the time to speak to New Leaf Technologies.
Regardless of your training needs or the size of your workforce, we are here to guide you through the pros and cons and technical aspects of implementing an AI-powered, personalised training program that will get your employees engaged in no time. Contact us or request a demo today!
