We already know that digital learning, in all its forms, is growing. The Covid-19 pandemic forced many organisations to transfer much of their provision to a virtual footing, but it's more than that – the CIPD cite in this report that the top areas of growth have been: video; mobile; blended learning; user-generated content; microlearning; and curated content.
This is far more than just more live virtual sessions, and to use all of these things effectively for a workforce that will retain some elements of remote working requires a special blend of these methods plus a supportive culture around the learning offering. How do we do that?
In many businesses, learning is seen as something separate, an interruption to normal working practices, and we need that to change
Bring it into real-time at the point of need
We have to be comfortable with the fact that most employees’ need for and experience of learning is far less likely to be when they are in a live session (face to face or virtual) with an L&D professional, and the growth in remote and hybrid working can exacerbate this fact.
The aforementioned areas of growth in digital forms of learning need to be facilitated within organisations by L&D professionals – not necessarily creating all personally, but encouraging and helping others to do, whilst having the requisite skills to utilise things like video, audio, AR/VR, and forms of socialised learning.
By encouraging others to do this and being on top of what is being created and curated, we are likely to be closer to performance issues at the source and facilitating solutions that address those issues, in real-time, at the point of need.
This may be a challenge, however. The LPI reports that assessing performance is the third weakest area of skill for L&D professionals and that many learning leaders feel the L&D function is not equipped to meet the needs of the business. So we need to change the culture around L&D as well as change what L&D professionals do – at the moment, in many businesses, learning is seen as something separate, an interruption to normal working practices, and we need that to change.
How can we change?
There is a recurring theme in the annual MindTools for Business benchmarking reports on the L&D profession that it needs to find ways to support performance more effectively. But if we are distant from those we support – physically and metaphorically – how can we do that?
For a start, we have to stop seeing learning as an event and see it more as a process. It needs to be more integrated into, and not separate from, what employees are doing in their day jobs.
We have to be ultra-fast, super comfortable with technology and fast to react and connect those seeking help with sources of help
We can use technology to help us do that. There is already plenty of technology that delivers knowledge to employees when they need it, but often this bypasses L&D professionals. But this technology exists, and delivers its knowledge to the individual employee when needed and certainly not when in a live training session. Most of the time the individual employee is not with other people at the time.
Knowledge repositories and sharing of both tacit and explicit forms of knowledge between employees means that employees can simply search for answers to questions when they want to learn something instead of asking for help from L&D for it – so this will change our roles. We need to focus on populating the knowledge banks rather than encouraging retention of knowledge via live training sessions.
That works really well for knowledge, but what about skills, particularly the more intangible ones? Surely we still need live training sessions for those? Perhaps not. But could technology bring us closer to where we are most needed?
As a qualified personal trainer, I observe individuals when they are performing, both virtually and face-to-face, and give them real-time feedback to improve their performance there and then. That’s only possible using technology, whether that is wearable technology, video calls or both.
This enables me to give in-the-moment feedback on what needs adjusting – and it’s what an L&D professional, supported by the right skills and the right technology, could also do. We could use technology to help us to deliver performance interventions at the point of need, or to connect employees with those who could do so more effectively.
For that to happen we have to be ultra-fast, super comfortable with technology and fast to react and connect those seeking help with sources of help.
From reactive to proactive?
But do we have to be purely reactive, even if lightning-fast? No. We can be more proactive in today’s world of work. We should look at where employees talk to each other online – internal social media channels perhaps – to look at what questions are being asked and in what context, who answers them, and how.
Call this light stalking if you like, but this would help us notice when people need help and get that help to them more efficiently. It also provides us with data with can then use to predict pain points – if one employee asks a question in a certain context at a certain time, others are likely to be wondering about the same and need similar help. We can then build structures that anticipate that and connect the employees with sources of support again.
What next?
Putting all this together means that leaders of teams, and the teams themselves, become recognised experts in learning. We can then perhaps more readily engage them with the more important wrap-around learning on either side of a live training session or perhaps question whether the live training session is really necessary.
We’ll be utilising multiple media sources, multiple types of content, and multiple sources of delivery from a myriad of subject matter experts
And maybe it isn’t – if the learning is focused on what happens outside of the live training session, it’ll be in the flow of work, at the point of need, and we will have changed the culture accordingly.
We’ll be utilising multiple media sources, multiple types of content, and multiple sources of delivery from a myriad of subject matter experts. And it’ll be accessible to employees where they need it the most. It’s a big ask – how geared up is your L&D team for this?
