How L&D Pros Can Take Best Advantage of New Tech Tools

A rush of new tech tools. Turbulent times. It’s a combination that’s turned many learning and development (L&D) tech stacks into kitchen junk drawers instead of orderly sets of applications and services. This is understandable. A lot has changed over a short period in both purpose and process. And it’s one of the reasons why operations has become a fast-growing skill for HR as a whole.  

As L&D leaders charge ahead with a better understanding of workplace and workforce needs, now is a great time to empty that junk drawer and install a bit of order. A purposefully designed L&D tech stack flows content and data between the back office (management) and front office (user experience). 

Let’s take a look at the key parts of the L&D program lifecycle and how you can use tech to your advantage in each. 

Determining what learning content you need 

Content development is driven by need — what skills does your workforce need to do their jobs? Where is there room for upskilling as individuals and departments continue to grow? What skills will make your workforce and business successful?

The best way to determine these necessary skills is through working closely with colleagues across the organization, from the C-suite on down. Review strategic roadmaps with executives, partner with talent development leads, and have conversations with employees about the skills necessary to perform their jobs.

Ideally, this discovery work will produce a list known as a skills taxonomy. The skills taxonomy functions as a universal dictionary within your organization to ensure consistent and standardized agreement on skill definitions as content is curated for your learning system. A skills taxonomy can also be purchased from an outside supplier. 

Once you have a skills taxonomy, you should inventory the learning styles across your workforce as well. This will aid you as you determine how best to deliver skill development and learning content. 

Creating and storing content

The push to digital-first content delivery forced L&D pros into a space where all of their training content had to be available online, rather suddenly. This task may still be underway in some organizations in the wake of pandemic disruption. The urgency of this initiative led to a scramble for digital content, and that is when that junk drawer of material, sources, and applications started to fill up. 

Curating appropriate digital content for existing and new skills courses involves solutions such as in-house video and audio production, purchasing existing content from external training organizations, and buying seats on Learning Management Systems (LMS) or Learning Experience Platforms (LXP) that contain some proprietary content. 

Once curated, the storage, management, and tracking of this content at scale requires a smart LMS. While there are many features to consider when choosing an LMS, finding one with skill-tagging capabilities will ensure your content remains organized and accessible within the appropriate skill taxonomy. 

Distributing content

This is another area where a tech platform can save L&D pros a lot of time and hassle. New tech eliminates the need for manually driven campaigns. Having a platform with its own user-focused notifications and marketing takes some pressure off managers to fully own learner engagement. Some platforms enable admins to curate content campaigns to ensure learners are learning business-critical skills. 

Securing feedback

If your learning programs go out and don’t generate any reaction, do they even exist? Tech can also share some of the burden of securing feedback from your workforce. Popular survey tools make it easy for L&D pros to follow up with insightful questions after users have finished a course. Some LMS and LXP tools even include automated survey features that remind users to leave their feedback upon program completion. 

Understanding the impact of learning

Beyond valuable qualitative feedback, L&D pros benefit from having access to data that frames the impact of learning in quantifiable terms. Some of these measures include progress to closing skills gaps, internal mobility, retention, and employee engagement.

A quality LXP offers tools for tracking progress on reskilling and upskilling programs through assessments, industry benchmarking, and completion rates. The next frontier in LXP tech will be integrated suites that connect learning paths to career paths and internal mobility. With these advances, L&D pros can fine-tune their understanding of how opportunities to learn and grow drive engagement and ultimately retention. 

Sharing impact

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially to your organization’s busy C-suite.

Platforms with data-rich visualizations help you spot and share out findings faster, demonstrating the effectiveness of your programs and winning the buy-in of executives. A skilled talent pool with high retention and upward mobility is an investment that pays dividends.

Final thoughts: Take advantage of the surge

In tandem with exponential growth in the learning technology sector, investment in HR and L&D is surging across all industries as hiring and retention grow more competitive. Now is the time to take advantage of this surge and fill out your custom L&D tech stack with a suite of current and relevant HR and learning technology.