Five Ways Learning Needs to Change to Keep up with the Modern Learner.

Change is the only constant.

The learning and development industry certainly lives up to this adage. How people learn at work and evolve continuously changes with shifting responsibilities and challenges.?

Once upon a time, instructor-led, in-person, mass knowledge transfer with business goals was the only way to train employees. Fast forward to now, modern learners want to learn in personalised formats, independent of formal training constantly with the help of the latest learning technology.?

Now more than ever, businesses need agile learning strategies with room for change and the ability to pivot. Especially as the world is moving towards the other side of the pandemic, organisations need to reimagine what learning will look like for them in the new normal.?

Keeping that in mind, here are five things businesses need to incorporate into their learning strategies to meet the new and evolving needs of the modern learner in an impactful and sustainable way.?

Five ways learning needs to change to keep up with the modern learner

1. Build Trust

Bottleneck?

When was the last time you had to do anything more than a simple Google search to find the information you needed? In a time when knowledge is available at the click of a button, it is absurd to expect employees to jump hoops for the organisation’s data. When learning materials are dispersed over several formats and locations, learners cannot trust the knowledge, nor can they rely on the source of information. It is common knowledge that people are reluctant to grow, adapt, and advance when they lack confidence in their learning.

Solution?

Learners need to trust the knowledge they are receiving in an agile environment. Mitigate the chaos of unorganised learning content, by offering a single source of truth - use centralised learning technology platforms to organise and deliver your learning content, and ensure that the learners trust the knowledge and information delivered.

2. Make Information Accessible

Bottleneck?

In the era of Google Drive and DropBox, where modern learners can store and source information at any time and from any device, organisations must also match the pace. Offer your learners easy, simpler access to learning content at the speed of need. It is ineffective to just provide learning through instructor-led classes, desktop eLearning, weekly, monthly, or daily in-person learning activities. Why? Because it drastically restricts employees’ access to training, particularly when they most need it.

Solution?

Remote working has forced businesses to halt or drastically reduce their in-person learning events; Now is a good opportunity to reinvent the learning process. Concentrate on integrating learning in the flow of work using hybrid learning modalities and access to anywhere-anytime learning opportunities rather than building digital reproductions of the in-person events.?

3. Offer Experiences

Bottleneck

The world of modern learners is dynamic, highly connected, accessible, and filled with disruptions. According to a Deloitte survey, in a normal work week, employees only have 1% of their time available for training. And many modern learners don’t receive any value from structured, linear, long-form learning content or classroom sessions as they are often unable to pay attention for a longer period. The entire exercise is a waste of time and resources since learners may or may not retain any of this knowledge.

Solution?

Change your learning strategies to concentrate on quicker, collaborative delivery techniques, provide bite-sized learning content, make microlearning and just-in-time learning more pervasive, and develop valuable experiences that can engage the always distracted modern learner. Make experience the core of your learning design rather than just a wrapper around your content.

4. Make It Relevant

Bottleneck

For modern learners, relevancy is one of the essential qualities that learning must offer them. The modern learner is interested in their own needs. They want to know how the learning applies to them and their job, how it will improve their performance now and in future, and how it will benefit the company. The development of learning content under the “teach, study, learn” paradigm pays little to no regard to the learner’s present demands or future skill development.

Solution?

Invest in the “find, learn, do” model and empathy to create learning content with levels of relevance and personalisation based on what you know about your learners and link it to their pain points, goals and objectives.

5. Increase Adoption

Bottleneck

Adoption is the hallmark of successful training. It occurs when the vast majority of the targeted employees show up and take part in the training. This is easier said than done, though. According to several observations, employees skip training because they think they already know the subject, which leads them to assume that the training is useless. Worse, the organisation’s training programs have a reputation for being boring. Employees even feel that the organisation’s Learning Management Systems (LMS) are hard to use and counterintuitive.

Solution??

Opt for learning technology that works the same way things work in everyday lives- simply, easily, accessibly and with relevance. Choose an LMS or an LXP that is mobile-friendly, easy to use and offers quick access to small nuggets of learning.

Design your learning ecosystem around the modern learner profile to achieve higher adoption. Modern learners feel empowered when they can access learning materials anytime, anywhere. Leverage this knowledge to encourage new learning paradigms along with different delivery methods and formats to match the evolving needs of the modern learner.?

We hope this article provides the required cues to embrace these new learning strategies and formats that will pay huge dividends to both employees and employers alike.?