Learning and talent development can no longer be limited to the classroom. Organizations need to integrate learning methods into real-world experiences, foster knowledge sharing, and promote collaborative connection-building initiatives.

Social learning — learning that happens through developmental relationships and interactions with others — has quickly emerged as the secret weapon for driving organizational performance and learning outcomes. An oft-cited Association for Talent Development stat has affirmed that social learning approaches can provide as much as a 75:1 ROI ratio over traditional web-based training. 

It all begs the question: why aren’t more organizations adopting social learning in the workplace?

The reality is that social learning—while incredibly effective—can be difficult to deploy at scale. But with stakeholder buy-in and the right strategy and tools in place, it doesn’t have to be.

This article explores how organizations can leverage the right technology and strategies to scale social learning to expand employee networks, facilitate knowledge transfer, and develop  high-performing teams. 

How social learning happens in organizations today

From serendipitous water cooler chats to lunchtime banter, social learning is already happening organically in the workplace—at least in some capacity. 

Employees are often learning as they go throughout their workday through more casual moments, such as coffee chats or office social events, to more formal mentorship and networking opportunities.

However, these micro-opportunities tend to be sporadic, unstructured, lack integration into daily work activities, and fail to factor in organizational priorities—highlighting the need for scalable and intentional social learning solutions. 

‍READ MORE: Social Learning: Your Secret Weapon for Building High-Performing Teams

Why is it so hard to scale social learning?

Creating individual social learning moments in the workplace isn’t difficult in and of itself.

Where social learning in the workplace tends to hit a snag is achieving it at scale and measuring outcomes. Which ironically, is also necessary to make an impact.

The biggest challenges organizations experience with deploying social learning at scale include: 

• Lack of structure: With ever-growing skills gaps and fast-changing business needs, developing formal training for every new skill is next to impossible. While leveraging internal expertise and encouraging peer-to-peer learning is a great solution, turning these informal interactions into structured experiences aligned with organizational goals can be a major challenge.

• Limited visibility: Administrators and key stakeholders often lack clear insights into whether the right connections are being made and if critical knowledge is actually being shared. Poor visibility makes it near-impossible to refine or create effective social learning experiences that actually contribute to core business objectives. 

• Difficulty tracking outcomes: The same visibility challenge applies to metrics and analytics. Beyond basic qualitative feedback, stakeholders often lack meaningful quantitative data to understand the ROI of social learning initiatives and make data-driven improvements. 

• Highly-distributed teams: Technological advancements have made communication and access to knowledge easier than ever before. But it also means a rise in remote and globally dispersed teams, which reduces the likelihood of spontaneous learning opportunities and increases the need for intentional efforts to break down silos and facilitate strategic connections.

The nature of these challenges also impacts the ability of program administrators to secure buy-in from key stakeholders and decision-makers, leading organizations to fall back on traditional, one-size-fits-all training models and forgo social learning altogether.

Social learning tools and strategies: the solution to scalability

The answer to scaling social learning lies in having great  tools and strategies in place.

Here are a few ways the right tools and technology can make scaling social learning much less daunting—and less resource-intensive. 

Create curated social learning pathways tailored to key talent priorities 

Social learning often starts with informal interactions — the impromptu coffee break chats, hallway conversations, or general mentorship program. While these moments can spark valuable insights, they rarely align with a structured talent development strategy.

To truly harness the power of social learning, it's crucial to move beyond serendipity and create a purposeful strategy. Ask yourself:

• Step 1: What are your top talent priorities? Are you focused on increasing new hire productivity, building a robust internal talent pipeline, fostering cross-functional collaboration, or accelerating leadership development? Clearly defining your goals is the first step to build out a program. 

• Step 2: Which social learning initiatives best suit your goals? Would a mentorship program, peer coaching circles, expert-led group discussions, or cross-functional networking events be the most effective? The right combination of initiatives will depend on your specific needs.

• Step 3: Once you've identified your objectives and ideal learning approaches, the challenge of orchestration begins. How do you ensure the right people connect with each other? How do you track the impact of these interactions? How do you scale this approach across your entire organization?

While doing this all manually from scratch is a heavy lift, the right social learning tools can help you create and scale personalized pathways to ensure that programs align with organizational goals. 

‍10KC’s Learning Pathways enable your organization to blend together the personalized experiences employees want, all in a way that delivers the results you want. Purposefully deploy a variety of customizable social learning experiences designed with industry experts to directly accelerate skill development, productivity, and performance. 

Foster strategic connections with smart-matching

The secret to effective social learning is facilitating strategic connections and conversations—the ones that turn into relationships and facilitate the transfer of critical institutional knowledge.

New connections and social learning often happen organically in the office. But if it’s not the right connection, that knowledge may never ladder up to business objectives. 

When you leave social learning up to chance, the people who need to meet may never cross paths. Or even when employees identify a potential connection themselves, they might feel uncomfortable reaching out.

“Having a matching algorithm is fantastic.[...] We're incredibly grateful for the thought that goes into matching algorithms. It's given us time back to really be able to manage programs holistically, instead of being so much in the weeds.” - Michelle Rojas, Director, DEI & People Business Partner, Spring Health

AI and data-driven technology eliminate the need for time-consuming manual matching, reducing the administrative burden of social learning. More importantly, this breaks down barriers and ensures that connections are made based on skills and organizational attributes, leading to more meaningful and productive interactions that impact your specific goals. 

‍10KC’s Smart-Match Algorithm lets you ditch manual matching spreadsheets and give everyone the tools they need to expand their professional network. Automatically match employees on their skills, career goals, shared interests, or differences. 

Encourage critical knowledge sharing via curated resources and discussion guides

Organizations often invest heavily in external expertise, overlooking the wealth of knowledge that already exists within their ranks. Revealing this internal expertise is key to fostering a thriving learning culture.

But how do you ensure that when employees connect through mentorship, sponsorship, or networking programs, they have the right conversations? It's not just about creating opportunities for interaction; it's about providing the tools and content to guide meaningful knowledge exchange.

The right curriculums and knowledge-sharing resources should include: 

• Science-backed and customizable curriculums: Tailored to align with specific program goals and audiences, these curriculums should actively encourage the sharing of targeted institutional knowledge.

• Conversation guides: Providing clear goals for each interaction and thought-provoking discussion questions helps participants focus their conversations and maximize learning opportunities.

• Supplementary resources: Offering additional materials for continued learning after each meeting reinforces key concepts and encourages deeper exploration. 

By incorporating these elements, you put employees back in the driver’s seat of their career development and skills building, all while providing existing leaders with opportunities to build leadership competencies. This creates a culture of knowledge sharing that minimizes the risk of missed connection or loss of institutional knowledge across the organization, ultimately driving business results. 

‍10KC’s Development Programs provide flexible curriculum capabilities, including plug-and-play expert-backed content, the ability to customize existing content or create your own, and seamless integration of your existing resources into our platform. This ensures that learning happens in the most natural and effective way possible – through collaboration and knowledge sharing with peers and experts.

“Also phenomenally helpful, each session comes with supporting materials that help people from a pre-reading standpoint. There are conversation guides that help [...] and homework for people to think about once they leave the session. There's always a purpose to the conversation that they're coming together to have.” - Fatima Winfrey, Vice President of DEI and Belonging at Horizon Media

Track, analyze, and report on social learning KPIs 

One of the biggest reasons businesses continue to invest in traditional learning solutions is the ease of measurement. Stakeholders can often easily access metrics such as program completion and activities that prove value.

It’s a common misconception that social learning outcomes are locked in a black box. With the right infrastructure in place, social learning initiatives can be measured with the same rigor as formal learning. You can track program participation, satisfaction, learning outcomes, and completion in real time, while tying every conversation to core business metrics, like productivity, retention, performance, and innovation. 

For example, with 10KC’s Data Dashboard, Horizon Media's THRIVE mentorship program goes beyond tracking standard metrics like participation rates. They can view conversation ratings and deeper insights, revealing the program's impact on learning outcomes and the overall sense of connection employees feel to their colleagues and the organization.

“We have a 98% conversation rating inside of our mentorship program with THRIVE. That’s constantly reassuring to see. Not only are people excited to lean in, but as they're having the conversations–as they're leveraging the tools that the platform provides for us–they're seeing success, they're gaining value out of it, and they're rating it really highly. Then, career development and personal growth to make sure people are actually receiving something from this program that helps them become stronger professionals at the end of each mentorship session–that is continually measured highly for us.” - Fatima Winfrey, Vice President of DEI and Belonging, Horizon Media

Integrations with key business platforms 

With all-too-busy talent, making time for learning and development is easier said than done. That’s why it often gets left behind in favor of more business-critical tasks. But the reality is, this type of development IS critical to the performance of your business and employees.

By embedding social learning opportunities, such as mentoring, networking, and group learning, directly into your current tech stack, you can make social learning a part of your existing workflow. This way, your team doesn’t have to learn a new platform. When it’s accessible, it no longer feels like a burden and becomes a part of your organizational culture.

‍10KC Integrations make it easy for program administrators to launch and manage any social learning pathway. We easily integrate with your existing tools and systems, and our plugins drive engagement by allowing your employees to access our features through their preferred work apps and tools.

The need for a dedicated social learning platform to drive scale 

The future of work demands a cohesive and strategic approach to workplace connections and conversations, growing beyond serendipity or ad-hoc initiatives. By centralizing all your social learning needs, you can facilitate meaningful connections that accelerate learning and make an impact on key business objectives

10KC activates and unlocks the full potential of social learning at scale by empowering you to:

• Create personalized Learning Pathways for different talent groups that accelerate development and address organizational development needs.
• Identify the right connections and fill network gaps with a data-driven Smart Match algorithm that breaks down silos and fosters collaboration
• Unlock and transfer critical knowledge within the organization by facilitating purposeful conversations.
• Measure the value of social learning and demonstrate ROI with a comprehensive analytics suite and pathway certifications.
• Seamlessly integrate social learning initiatives into your existing HRIS and tech stack with 20+ integrations across HRIS, IAM, CRM, 25+ single-sign on integrations, two calendar, and two messaging integrations.

Scale social learning with 10KC

‍

‍