Crafting effective learning and development (L&D) programs for today’s workforce requires constant adjustment as new requirements emerge from the marketplace and job candidates.
This holds true for learning professionals serving the gig economy, with some additional challenges layered in. Training programs within on-demand staffing companies are preparing people to work in a variety of settings.
This requires resources that teach or help the gig workers build their careers or skill sets — even though these workers may pursue a different career path or use the on-demand staffing platform intermittently while students or between full-time jobs.
Continuous learning is paramount in a gig economy where workers can be transient. The challenge lies in keeping the workers engaged. Offering incentives, not just monetary but in terms of increased job opportunities, helps keep gig workers engaged in their training journey.
The goal is to offer these individuals L&D opportunities and a program that is as robust as possible. Even though many of your gig workers may not be with you long-term, you want them to know they’re valued and that you are investing in them.
Let’s look at some strategies to engage gig workers and prepare them for their chosen career trajectories.
5 Strategies for Effectively Training Gig Workers
1. Offer diverse learning opportunities.
Create L&D programs that honor the diversity among gig workers, cater to universal and custom needs, and tackle different areas of learning. Be mindful that people using your on-demand staffing platform need flexible schedules. So, create self-paced content delivered at the right moment in the worker’s journey.
Consider which concepts are best delivered in self-led segments and which require in-person training. Record training sessions to accommodate varied schedules and allow employees to revisit the lesson as needed.
While operational learning opportunities that focus on getting the most from the on-demand staffing platform are essential for everyone, effective programs offer optional learning opportunities. These may include supplemental soft skills training courses that dive into customer service interactions, time management, handling stressful situations or other related topics.
The goal is to balance enhancing “hard skills” related to specific job functions while also fostering soft skills for professional and personal development.
2. Combine small, digestible segments with long-form content.
Your gig talent often juggles multiple commitments at once. To ensure they have the time to engage with training, prioritize microlearning options — small, digestible content — wherever possible.
This approach accommodates diverse learning preferences and can improve engagement, complementing long-form articles or courses that might take 15 minutes to complete with 30-second videos with compact content that gives the learner one key takeaway to help with job performance.
3. Ensure content relevance and “stickiness.”
Relevant training empowers gig workers to pick and choose the skills they need to develop, in line with the gigs they aspire to take on, rather than sitting through generalized or irrelevant material.
To make training “sticky,” focus on making the material concise but impactful. Your employees may have varied backgrounds and skill sets, so avoid jargon, assumptions and unnecessary concepts. The goal is to captivate and educate without losing anyone along the way.
Succinct language is essential for comprehension, but it’s equally important to reinforce vital points, revisiting them through different formats to strengthen retention. Revisit main ideas through videos, texts or job aids like checklists.
4. Enhance onboarding from day one with engaging content.
Gig worker onboarding must be efficient and directly applicable, equipping them with the essential tools and information they need to start performing tasks right away. Create an onboarding series to engage gig workers from the outset and give them access to content through a help center, for example, that can help nurture job performance.
Engage with gig workers regularly during their first few months. Deliver the content in different formats while repeating key points and making it eye-catching and digestible to keep newcomers to your platform engaged and increase their chances for success. Bite-sized information facilitates successful platform experiences. Continue to tweak and evolve your content to incorporate new features and tackle hot topics or trends you’re seeing with your users.
Beyond onboarding, create online coaching content to address critical issues like job attendance. Trigger-based learning opportunities, such as coaching content after a worker has missed a job, contribute to a reduction in repeat no-shows by educating workers on how to use the on-demand platform to cancel when plans change and explaining the impact missing a job has for them, their coworkers and the company.
5. Leverage technology to facilitate scalability.
Balancing scalability with the need for personalized, relevant content is challenging, but there are many tech tools that can address these challenges.
Leveraging a learning management system (LMS) for custom digital content, and partnering with platforms providing specialized skills training that can be seamlessly integrated into the LMS, is a scalable solution that offers a broad spectrum of learning opportunities while still catering to individual learning goals.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms can further personalize the learning experience, adapting the content based on the gig worker’s progress, preferences and performance. This level of personalization is key to keeping gig workers engaged in their learning journey, making them feel valued and understood despite the transient nature of their work.
Meeting the Challenge of an Evolving Gig Economy
The evolving nature of gig work requires constant innovation in L&D. By focusing on relevance, scalability and engagement, you can empower your gig workers with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a dynamic work environment.
