From here on out, every month we’ll be bringing you a round-up of the newest and most interesting product updates we’ve been working on. Expect insights into how we’re thinking about developing our platform and our programs to create a more powerful peer learning experience so you can shape, change, and sustain your culture faster.
This month, we’ve made it easier for admins to build more creative and accessible learning content.
We’ve also made it even easier to manage your learning campaigns and schedule nudges in advance.
And based on insight curated from thousands of data points, we’ve made our Inclusion Works program pathways even more bitesize to help busy learners stay on track.
We know how intimidating it can be for a learner to be faced with a long, bland wall of text. It brings back memories of boring, stale compliance training and makes people think of learning they have to do, not learning they want to do.
That’s why when we design learning content, we write to our own ‘bitesize content standards’.
We’ve built and iterated on these standards over the course of deploying more than 20,000 learning programs, and they include everything we’ve learned about how to create learning content that keeps learners coming back and makes sure they put what they’ve learned into practice.
As part of these standards, our goal is to make sure learners rarely see a screen of just text –– especially on mobile. As they scroll, they should always see an image or some other kind of interactive media.
One of the ways we keep content stimulating is by using what we call ‘Callout Blocks’ –– image-based headings that break up large pieces of text.
We know customers love creating Callout Blocks too. But until now, admins had to create these images using third-party tools and upload them. This wasn’t only time-consuming, but it wasn’t great for accessibility either.
This is because typically text within an image can’t be read by screen readers for visually impaired people; admins could add ‘alternative text’ for screen readers to pick up, but this was time-consuming and meant images couldn’t be automatically translated into other languages either.
That’s why we redesigned Callout Blocks.
Our new Callout Blocks feature lets admins create images with text overlays quickly and easily. You can choose background images from Unsplash without leaving the platform. And you can also change the image size, background color, and cropping to suit the style of your content.
What’s more, all Callout Blocks are now accessible to screen readers and can be automatically translated.
Nudge theory sits at the heart of the Hive Learning approach to activating behavior change. As most of you already know reading this, nudge theory is the idea that if you want people to do something, you have to make it as easy for them as possible.
We use nudges and notifications throughout our programs to help busy learners keep up momentum on their learning journey, put what they’ve learned into action, and join in conversation with their peers.
Based on our data, a nudge featuring a peer is dramatically more effective at driving engagement than a system-generated nudge featuring standard marketing copy.
We use our ‘ghost posting’ system to schedule nudges created by senior stakeholders and influencers in advance, so they can post nudges at the times we know they’re most likely to be read. These are a critical part of our campaign management suite to keep engagement levels high.
Now we’ve made it even easier for admins to schedule nudges in advance.
Admins can now schedule a nudge to post at any date and time in the future. They can still @ mention a Group or specific people. Now they can also edit or cancel the nudge right up until the send date and see all upcoming scheduled nudges in one simple view before they get sent.
We know that a lot of people are well-meaning when it comes to learning, but they’re also really busy. That’s why we’re always looking for ways to make their lives easier (and to help companies move along on their culture change journey faster).
According to Josh Bersin, the average learner has just 24 minutes a week to spend on learning. But we think the reality is that today it’s probably even less.
We’ve now deployed our Inclusion Works program to 100’s of cohorts, and based on our analysis and user feedback, we felt like we needed to distill our (already quite bitesize pathways) even more to give learners all the juicy content they needed, in an even more bitesize format.
That’s why it now takes less than 15 minutes to complete an Inclusion Works pathway, with each card taking just 2 to 3 minutes to digest. A new pathway is usually released every week, so new behaviors and habits to learn are never far away.
We’ve also made it even easier for learners to keep on top of how to take action on what they have learned, so each pathway now finishes with a “Try This” card, making it easier to put learning into practice and build everyday habits.
Same action-oriented content. Same learning outcomes. Just easier and faster to digest and put into practice.
Lastly, we’ve just announced the launch of our Microsoft Teams integration, designed to fit directly into your learner’s flow of work and send highlights from the Hive Learning platform directly into their Microsoft Teams dashboard – increasing engagement without being too distracting. You can check out the full details over on our blog post announcement.
That’s a wrap for this month’s release update. Got a killer idea you think would help us make our peer learning experience even more powerful? We curate customer feedback and ideas to feed into our roadmap prioritization sessions every six weeks. Talk to your Customer Success Manager to send our ideas our way.
