How to Build A High-Performing Digital Learning Team

Want a world-beating digital learning team to transform how your business operates? You’ll likely need to start from scratch, developing a comprehensive strategy before hiring the relevant professionals who can elevate your eLearning solutions. This blog will delve into this exact subject, outlining why and how you should prioritise the development of your digital learning team.

Specialists in our field, at Instinct Resourcing, we are a learning and development recruitment agency that can help to connect you with the professionals that matter. No matter if you’re searching for LMS specialists, tech-savvy developers or otherwise, we have years of experience matching the best talent to the businesses that need them the most. Operating across multiple sectors, we help any organisation looking to elevate their eLearning offerings.

But, before you contact us to discover how we can help you, explore our blog that details how a digital learning team can be built to thrive.

What is a digital learning team?

Let’s start by establishing the basics. A digital learning team is a group of specialist professionals who are responsible for the design, development, implementation and ongoing management of a digital learning solution. This team is made up of specific eLearning roles, with each member being integral to the implementation of a fluid and comprehensive digital learning experience that differs greatly from traditional face-to-face training.

Why building a high-performing digital learning team matters

Thanks to its quick and efficient delivery, eLearning is steadily becoming a more favoured form of learning over traditional methods of teaching. This is particularly true when you consider that it’s been found that eLearning increases information retention rates up to 60%, compared to 8-10% for traditional methods. Building a robust digital learning team will not just allow you to keep up with contemporary market trends, but it will also allow you to:

• Continuously develop your team: Keep your team sharp and up-to-date with new trends by delivering an eLearning solution that’s constantly evolving.

• Align eLearning with business goals: Specifically tailor content to each unique user so that lessons are aligned with defined business goals.

• Provide an innovative solution to your team: Contemporary training modules should be interactive, interesting and accessible, making the whole process as simple as possible.

Five key roles you’ll need in your digital learning team

A high-performing digital learning team doesn’t have to be one with hundreds of employees. Indeed, you can create a robust team with just five key roles. These roles should be considered the basic skeleton of a digital learning team, however, and make for an excellent foundation to which you can add specialists who will innovate and advance your operations. When building your team, consider the following roles first and foremost.

• Digital Learning Manager: Leads the direction of the content and sets the aims and expectations of the project.

• eLearning Developer: A digital tools specialist who can build the learning solution.

• Instructional Designer: Decides how to design the solution to maximise performance and engagement.

• Subject Matter Expert (SME): An expert in the relevant subject who can provide the necessary learning content.

• Digital Content Designer: A design specialist who can create quality imagery and video to use in the digital learning platform.

Looking for these digital learning experts to help establish the foundations of your team or expand your operations? Submit a vacancy on our platform and we’ll get in touch to see how we can best deliver the experts you need.

Submit a vacancy

Six steps to nurture the progress of your eLearning team

Hiring a team of digital learning experts is just the first step in the creation of your digital learning solution. Next, you need to establish a series of expectations to help guide the team in the right direction for the benefit of the initial creation of the digital learning platform and future projects down the line. In the process of building a high-performing digital learning team, consider the following steps:

Clearly define your learning strategy

What do you want your digital learning solution to achieve? Does this align with your current business goals? These are two key questions you should consider during the early stages of formulating your digital learning team. By establishing a unified and well-defined vision, you can create a foundation on which your team’s direction is based, making key decisions simpler.

Why establishing this matters

A lack of unified focus can result in a directionless team that isn’t working towards a common goal with shared ambitions for success. When defining a learning strategy, you should make sure the team is unified on what kind of learning culture they want to create and how they want to create it. With the process and the outcome of your strategy clearly defined, you should find that a better output of performance is achieved.

Establish what success looks like

Establishing exactly what success looks like for your team is a key part of establishing a culture of success. What success might look like will depend on the level of eLearning course that needs to be delivered and the industry you’re operating in. For example, digital learning courses in the NHS might prioritise high course uptake and knowledge retention thanks to the number of users who might be engaging with the course.

Meanwhile, other organisations may establish success as improving overall customer satisfaction, streamlining service delivery, or even improving their total revenue. Without this future vision, it becomes difficult to implement meaningful actions and changes. Therefore, by establishing what success looks like early on, you can create a comprehensive strategy for success and all start singing from the same hymn sheet.

Make this success measurable

Establishing what success looks like for your digital learning team is important, but so is knowing how to measure this success – otherwise, how will you know if your work is achieving what it set out to do? It’s therefore important to set out quantifiable results that align with the business’s overall objectives to help you measure success. So, if knowledge retention was your priority, you might implement course assessments before and after the training to see how much knowledge the user had learned, using this metric as a measure of success.

Provide a defined team structure

Providing a robust team structure shouldn’t be overlooked when creating a high-performing digital learning team, or indeed any well-functioning team for that matter. Solid team structures provide individuals with clear roles and responsibilities and help to create a hierarchy that, in turn, aids cooperation. Having these clear roles also gives motivation and a route of progression to each team member.

Establishing a defined team structure also has the following hidden benefits:

• The improvement of talent retention: The digital learning industry is a competitive space, so if you can retain your best talent, you can increase the longevity of your team, creating a familiar and cohesive working unit in the process.

• Prevents obstacles to progress: When you’re working with a team where each individual is aware of their role, you can create a group that is cohesive and collaborative, working to each other’s strengths and weaknesses. This maximises productivity and prevents needless obstacles to progress.

• Betters conflict resolution: Conflict is a natural part of being in any creative team and can even be a sign of healthy innovation. When every team member knows their role and the internal hierarchy, any conflicts can be easily resolved, developing stronger professional bonds in the process.

It’s also worth noting that different team structures exist in the digital learning field that demand different approaches. This includes the matrix format where individuals have multiple lines of reporting, as well as the squad model, which sees several autonomous teams be structured around one singular working goal. When setting up your digital learning team, choose and define the team structure that best suits your organisation.

1. Continuously invest in tools and technologies

The importance of continuous development in the eLearning industry should come as no surprise, with the sector going through regular evolution thanks to the emergence of new tools and technologies. Regular investment in these innovations will keep your company on the cutting edge and will also allow you to develop an eLearning solution that engages users considerably more effectively.

But, continuously keeping your eye on the ball when it comes to new technologies isn’t the only thing you need to do. To keep up with the complexities of these tools, you will need to invest in the skills of your team. This means regularly evaluating the needs and skills of your team and providing access to workshops and training courses of their own to allow them to gain the necessary knowledge.

Just some of the most popular emerging technologies that your company should be investing in include:

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): The role of AI in the modern workplace is only becoming more prevalent. With the ability to transform how the development and coding of eLearning platforms are achieved, your company should be harnessing the capabilities of AI today.

• Virtual Reality (VR): While VR won’t be suitable for every kind of business, for sectors like the medical industry, it can transform how information is interpreted and put into practice.

• The Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT is not one specific technology, but rather a network of physical devices that exchange information on the same network. Utilising the IoT could change the accessibility and efficiency of eLearning platforms.

 

Curate a positive working environment for your team

The creation of a positive working environment shouldn’t be ignored in your development of an efficient, high-performing digital learning team. By fostering an environment that promotes creativity, experimentation and coordination, you see a range of benefits effortlessly blossom, from individual confidence to cross-functional cooperation. The curation of a positive working environment can be achieved in the following ways:

Organisation

We’ve already established the importance of a proper team structure, and ensuring that your close working colleagues have a broad range of skills and technical expertise will help everyone thrive. Structure your team to maximise the potential for collaboration, putting those with the relevant technical and leadership skills in the right managerial positions.

Unification

Consider and prioritise how you can unify a team that has the potential to be fragmented with outsourced contract workers, hybrid employees and more. Creating a sense of equality and belonging will help to foster collaboration and passion for the work that is being completed.

Environment:

Work on creating an environment of kindness and collaboration where every kind of voice is listened to, valued and respected. By fostering this environment, you’ll create a more motivated workforce that is more productive and positive in its thinking.

Recruitment

The digital learning sector is extremely competitive, so hiring the right people for the right positions is of crucial importance to the future performance of your team. But, if you’ve followed the step-by-step structure to building a high-performing team, then you should have few problems standing out from the crowd as an innovative employer that prioritises the wellbeing, productivity and progression of your employees.

Recruitment excellence is of the utmost importance in every industry, but particularly in the competitive eLearning space, where the cost of a bad hire could be damaging. The identification of top talent is, therefore, crucial to your company’s success, with the implementation of robust assessments being helpful in this process.

Getting an idea of a candidate’s skills and abilities is crucial, but difficult to do without the proper role-specific assessments. These could include coding assessments, writing tests and general quizzes. By using these test scores alongside the candidate’s existing digital portfolio, you should be able to build a strong understanding of their technical ability and their understanding of the ever-evolving industry.

If you’re searching for the right professionals to fulfil your digital learning needs, at Instinct Resourcing, we can take on your onboarding tasks and pair you with instructional design experts, designers, developers and much more. Taking care of your entire recruitment process, we can screen applicants for the necessary skills for your eLearning job before organising interviews and even providing an aftercare service.

Working with pace and efficiency, by partnering with Instinct Resourcing, you can elevate your digital learning solutions today!