Pop quiz: What percentage of employees actually use the skills they learn in L&D programs at their jobs?

It's not most. It's not even half. It's twelve percent.

That's pretty rough. Learning and development is critical to retaining top talent – but the vast majority of business education programs fall short, leaving employees uninspired and unable to grow. 

This doesn’t have to be our reality. Let’s explore why these programs fail, and what a truly engaging L&D solution looks like. 

1. Your people spend most of their time scrolling through courses, not taking them

When a learning platform provider says, "We have more than 5,000 courses on our platform," that probably sounds great.

But in fact, having too many options is overwhelming and confusing. Your teams end up spending most of their time searching for the right course -- similar to scrolling Netflix for hours without finding anything good to watch.

Instead of cramming our catalogue full of fluff that you'll never watch, we've narrowed our curriculum down to 20 two-week sprints and 1/2-day workshops that are essential for high-performing teams.

Teams are encouraged to take one sprint at a time, increasing engagement and completion rates and ensuring you get focused learning instead of mindless clicking around.

2. People sign up, but they never complete the courses

A student recently shared with us, "I've had a MasterClass subscription for the last six months, and I haven't taken a single course. I've signed up for a few, though!"

Signing up without engaging is an epidemic in online business education. Udemy has a completion rate of 10%. EdX has a completion rate of just 3%. 

Section4's completion rate is 70%. Why so much higher? Every class is staffed with hands-on community managers and HAs who guide your team through the material, keep them accountable, and check in when they're falling behind.

Plus, our sprints and workshops are focused on real-world applicability, so there's always a project, discussion, or debate to engage in.

3. The outcomes are vague

While many learning platforms report on usage, few report on real business impact. And frankly, usage doesn't matter that much if your teams aren't doing better work at the end of the day.

We follow up with all sprinters, including those from your team, to find out how the sprint has impacted their work 1 month and 3 months out from taking the sprint, and we deliver that feedback to you.

4. Learning alone (after working alone at home) is not fun

Almost 50% of today’s workforce is working from home. So we know that when teams hear, "Please join this mandatory webinar," it feels like yet another task to add to their to-do list.

We focus on making the learning experience fun and hands-on by:

• Including a project in every workshop and sprint to put ideas into practice right away
• Creating a super engaging Slack community to pressure-test big ideas
• Provoking discussions and debates on the hottest topics in business

Let Section4 take your L&D to the next level

We want to work with innovative L&D leaders who are interested in taking their teams to the next level. So if you’re ready to give your employees and organization a real boost, then get in touch.