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Purpose

Many organizations invest heavily in workplace learning platforms yet still face low participation because learning sits outside employees’ day-to-day workflow. This paper reframes low workplace-learning engagement as an ecosystem and switching-cost problem. It aims to map how learning activity co-occurs with employees’ use of key enterprise super app service categories, and to identify which categories provide the strongest behavioral signals for learning moments within everyday work.

Design/methodology/approach

We investigate a large North American financial institution that implemented an enterprise super app consolidating dozens of employee services behind a single sign on interface. Using a two stage card sorting exercise, we derive five in app service categories: human resource services, utilitarian tools, hedonic perks, social touchpoints, and learning platforms. We then perform a secondary analysis of fully anonymized, aggregated engagement logs from June to November 2025 at the user hour level. Accordingly, the empirical results capture within hour patterns of co-occurrence across service categories and learning activity, rather than causal relationships.

Findings

Among the five service categories, social touchpoints display the strongest association with learning sessions. Utilitarian tools and human resource services are likewise positively associated with learning, suggesting that learning engagement is more likely to emerge where routine workflows reduce switching costs and repeatedly expose employees to learning opportunities. In contrast, hedonic perks do not exhibit a meaningful association with learning engagement in this context.

Research limitations/implications

Single-organization data and observational aggregation limit causal inference and generalizability. The results are intended to guide practical design choices and prioritization. Future work could further explore proposed mechanisms across organizations.

Practical implications

The findings suggest that organizations should design for socially embedded learning, reduce switching costs through workflow adjacent utilitarian features, integrate learning into routine human resource touchpoints, and position hedonic perks as supportive rather than primary drivers of engagement.

Originality/value

This study reconceptualizes learning engagement as an ecosystem integration and switching cost problem and provides large scale evidence on which service categories of an enterprise super app are most strongly associated with learning in the flow of work.

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