Drive Trailhead Engagement

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• Incorporate Trailhead into onboarding.
• Organize Trailhead-focused learning events.
• Set up friendly competitions to encourage continued learning.
• Highlight Trailhead learning opportunities in your regular communications.

Introduction

Now that you know what makes Trailhead such a fun way to learn, it’s time to engage your team. Encourage them to continue learning after earning their first badge or attending their first class. Sometimes people need a little incentive to keep working toward a learning goal. If you have to enable a team, use some tried-and-true strategies to keep them going. In this unit you learn how companies use Trailhead to make the learning experience fun and engaging.

Make Trailhead Part of Their DNA

Starting off on the right foot is important on any journey. At the beginning of each employee’s journey with your company, make it clear that Trailhead is part of your company culture.

Use Trailhead in your new employee orientation. Start by scheduling time to help new hires create an account on Trailhead. Give them time to make a Trailhead Playground, explore Trailhead, and complete their first badges. The Trailhead Basics badge is a great place to start! Use Trail Tracker to assign an introductory trailmix for new hires to complete within their first week. If learners feel comfortable using Trailhead now, they’re more likely to return when they need to learn something new.

Next, show badges earned on the user profile page in your Salesforce org. People see what their teammates have been learning, and the team receives well-deserved recognition. Trailhead badges are part of their identity from the start.

Send Them on a Quest

Picking up new knowledge and skills is pretty great in its own right, but what if there was a chance to win a prize too? There is, with Trailhead Quests.

A Trailhead quest is a goal with a potential reward at the end, for example, “Earn 10 badges in a month to be entered into a drawing for a gift card.” Some of the prizes we’ve offered in the past include:

• Gift cards
• Limited-edition community badges
• Certification vouchers
• Charitable donations

Trailhead quest incentives foster continuous learning. Make sure your team knows where to find quests on Trailhead.

Offer Group Activities

Trailhead makes it easy and fun for people to learn independently or in a group. Encourage your team to explore Trailhead together by holding a Lunch & Learn (virtual or in-person). The team bonds while earning a badge. The Lunch & Learn can promote an important company initiative or feature the first step in a required trailmix. Allow time for discussion and take lunch to a whole new level. 

Group activities are a good way to tackle badges that have hands-on challenges. The team’s experts, who naturally “scout ahead,” support those who need a little extra help, so no one is left behind. 

Since there are over 1,000 Trailhead badges, guidance of what to earn next is especially important. Encourage your team to discuss and recommend badges that they’ve found especially interesting or useful. Listen for themes that might help you decide on a topic for your next event. Ask if anyone would like to lead a Lunch & Learn. Let team members Be a Multiplier (BAM). Multipliers empower others by sharing knowledge with their community. It’s a way to champion equality for all and empower anyone to learn and build skills with Trailhead.

Light a Fire with Competition

Sometimes a little friendly competition inspires people to cross the finish line. To inspire your team to complete an important trailmix, consider making it a game. Show everyone’s progress on a dashboard (using Trail Tracker data). Offer prizes based on trailmix completion.

Another popular event is a badge-a-thon. Reward learners for completing the most badges in a set amount of time. Create badge-a-thon teams to encourage teammates to help one another finish their hands-on challenges. What’s more fun than debugging while the clock is ticking?

Finally, remember that sometimes simple recognition is the best reward. Celebrate when someone reaches a new Trailhead rank. Use Trail Tracker to identify your best performers, and then acknowledge them. Show your team that their effort is valued, and they’ll keep learning on Trailhead. Remember, this can be done from anywhere so it doesn’t matter if employees are in the office or remote, everyone can participate.

Watch and Learn

Another way to engage with content on Trailhead is Trailhead Live. Trailhead Live hosts live and on-demand videos from experts. Topics range from best practices and certification preparation to career growth, new release highlights, and even badge walkthroughs. The experts leading these sessions include product managers, executives, Trailhead writers, thought leaders, and even fellow community members. This free extension of Trailhead provides access to expert guidance from anywhere at any time.

Highlight Trailhead Activities

To keep team members actively learning and building skills, tie Trailhead in to your communication strategy. While messaging should be consistent, there are various ways to mention Trailhead learning opportunities in the channels you already use to share information.

Adding a learning focus to your regular communications shows your team that Trailhead is relevant to their careers. 

You’ll also want to open lines of communication specific to Trailhead. For example, post a “Mix of the Month” in Slack to help shore up a skill deficit. Send a reminder email when a badge assignment due date draws near. Make a blog post to share the story of how someone on your team benefited themselves (or others) with the skills they learned on Trailhead. Customize messaging for the audience and objective, and solicit feedback so you can fine-tune your communications.

You’ve learned the benefits of the Trailhead, the structure of badges, the extensive offerings of Trailhead, common scenarios of how Trailhead can be used to help your company, and most importantly how to engage your employees in learning. It’s time to help your company transform and grow with Trailhead. Well... what are you waiting for? There’s learning to be done!

Resources

• Trailhead: Trailhead Basics
• Trailhead: Trailhead Quests
• Trailhead: Be a Multiplier (BAM)
• Trailhead: Trailhead Live