Fosway - Corporate Learning Realities 2024

At the time of the launch of our Fosway Group Digital Learning Realities Research back in September this year, Jon Kennard asked me a few questions about the results of the survey. He's been digging into the data using his journalistic guile and I challenged him to find the hardest questions he could create exploring the key themes of the survey

• L&D Priorities
• AI and Learning
• Learning Systems and the Modern Workforce
• Innovation in the Modern Learning Experience

Below are the questions Jon asked and a lightly edited transcipt of my answers - mainly to remove my wincing at the questions - they were really tricksy!

L&D PRIORITIES 2024-25

Jon Kennard:

One interesting thing off the bat that the latest Digital Learning Realities Research is that career development as one of the strategic priorities of learning teams appears to have declined.

Does this speak to the growing popularity of the gig economy? What's going on there? Why the decline in Career Development as a priority?

David Perring:

I think in some ways that those top three priorities, right around what L&D based their strategy around and what they prioritize has typically always been compliance as number one. And then it's been followed up with elements of upskilling, reskilling and the career story.

So I think the key thing is actually out of the prioritization, it's still in the top three, top five. It's not really dropped. I think that the bigger story and maybe this is a contextualization for career development slipping a little bit is actually that compliance has always been number one. We've been doing the survey for ten years and what's fallen off its perch is compliance. It's almost as though there's been a real sea change in trying to focus on the things that matter even more to business, and that is upskilling and reskilling, which has taken the number one spot. So I think when you look at it through that lens of upskilling and reskilling, in some ways it's very close to and very proximate to that whole thing of actually wanting career development.

But there seems to be maybe a slightly more business edge in that, for our business to function, we need to have these people with these new skills, these emerging technologies, these emerging practices. Maybe it's because there's been this demographic bubble filtering through, of needing more managers who have never managed before in organisations.

So actually, whilst maybe the employee-led view, which is how my career has filtered down just marginally, the bigger story is actually upskilling and reskilling as number one. And what that shows, I think, is that puts the business first, the employee second, almost.        

And compliance is number two. So it's still not shifted that far from its perch. But that's the key story; I'm not sure if it's necessarily the pressure not to offer a really strong employee brand and employer value proposition, but I think in terms of how that's being positioned internally within organisations, in order to make a stronger business case, e.g. if our business needs to succeed, we need to develop those skills.

And actually that's as much to do with my current role as it is around future roles.

AI AND LEARNING

Jon Kennard:

You mention upskilling also from respondents. Almost three quarters of respondents to the survey said they're planning on using AI for content creation and upskilling subject matter experts. So are we finally seeing mass adoption?

We know that there's always a disconnect between what people say they're going to do and what part of the hype cycle we’re in, but are we now actually going to see adoption at scale of AI tech?

David Perring:

I think one of the things that organisations’ L&D teams have typically struggled to do is scale up themselves to cope with the scale of demand. And we know that there's more demands from them in terms of the changes and technological leaps in organisations that need to upskill and reskill more people. And just this pace of change, because companies are becoming maybe more agile in the way they operate and work, is making it really tough to keep up to speed.

And there's different ways that L&D teams can start to adjust themselves in order to cope with an increase in demand, or actually probably just cope with historic demand, right.

L&D Teams have always been trying to do what they can and there's probably ten times as much that's being demanded. And so I think we see this dual track of the things that people expect to do more of is more subject matter expert-led learning, and the AI is probably the enabler. They're two different sides of the same coin.

And I think that points to exactly what you said, which is democratising content development, especially if my learning team’s focus is now less on the transfer of knowledge and more on developing people's skills, giving them more opportunity to practise and rehearse in learning rather than just absorb base-line knowledge.

We’re still in early days, we're still in the early adopters, but as people start to get more and more familiar, I don't see that strategy changing. And again, we've seen that probably over the last two or three years the emphasis has been on upskilling subject matter experts, upskilling other parts of the business.         

To be able to deliver learning, AI in the last couple of years, has just gone off on a rocket trajectory to support that strategy. I think we'll see it grow.

The other area it's really grown probably is in skills and skills inference and knowledge and generative AI is booming at the moment, although it's not necessarily an easy thing to execute, despite the hype.

LEARNING SYSTEMS AND THE MODERN WORKFORCE

Jon Kennard:

Elsewhere, 69% of learning leaders say their LMS falls below expectations for what they expect with AI and learning.

Do you think we'll see a higher churn rate over the next twelve months? And will this also contribute to a move towards buyers looking at the specialist market?

David Perring:

I think so. I think the things that are or were broken with the learning systems market have always been broken. So, the ability for us to personalise based on understanding what people genuinely need, where they are in their journey, understand their level, what they do and don't know, I think that's always been a challenge.        

Being able to offer that adaptive experience that says, okay, you're learning at this pace, and you grasp those concepts really well. Let's give you an extra leap rather than just taking through the predictive path.

I think those things are having a real disruptive moment. Where do we see this going? I think in terms of the systems, the systems have been about managing audiences and managing content. What they're having to gear up to now is personalising a learning experience, not at a generic content level, but at a learning moment level. So I think that's driving element of the dissatisfaction and stretching people into new areas.

The other thing is ‘touchpoints’. So how did I know that I needed to do learning or where did I want to find it? Switching into learning, and what people have called learning in the flow of work, there's not many people who've been doing that, but I think that’ll become part of the other story.

When somebody had a need, did they ask the question in Teams or Slack and get an answer and point it to some relevant content? Did they actually get an answer from ChatGPT or some other chatbot which was referencing the content rather than telling them to do this course because it was just something they needed to look up? So I think those things start to change the dynamics and touch-points around learning.

Particularly, what we're also seeing on the skills side is people getting access to learning or being prompted about learning when they see that there's a work or career opportunity that matches their career aspirations. And again, you're almost getting the sense that the LMSs are starting to get ‘disintermediated’, they're starting to get pushed to the background because my immediate touchpoint is the triggering of what I wanted to know.

To me there is a sense that the triggers for learning and the touchpoints for learning are starting to get picked up in other solutions. I think that also drives some of the dissatisfaction. So personalisation, point of need, triggers for touch points in terms of career, I think those are some of the underlying dynamics around why people are maybe falling a little bit out of love with some of their LMS systems.

And again, it's not something that's new, it's always been there. Why did you want to go to a learning system when you wanted to learn? As learners we always just wanted learning to be there… and for it to come to us.? Not to always go to it!

INNOVATION AND THE MODERN LEARNING EXPERIENCE

Jon Kennard:

Something that doesn't have a great take up at the moment is learning chatbots. So only 3% of respondents are using chatbots in what's considered to be an advanced way.

Do you see this exploding in the next year or are we still some way off?

David Perring:

I think we're still some way off.

It's a significant change to change the nature of content to fit the moment of need. And again, it's something that we know has been part of people's learning thinking since Bob Mosher, and he created an amazing model about the five moments of need. Historically, learning teams have been embedded in thinking ‘I need to train you for tomorrow’.

Right now, the challenge for us all as learning professionals is not to abandon one technique. It's about how we embrace more and more touchpoints to be more influential. But in embracing different touchpoints, like that workflow moment of need, ‘how do I question and get pointed not to a course, but to some helpful support’ is something that I think is a really significant shift.        

So, it's one of those things I think we'll see early adopters running away with and we're starting to see some of that already. We're seeing some of the platform providers pivot into providing that sort of experience as well. I think over five years, we start to look back a bit like mobile learning and saying, wasn't that the way that all learning was just accessible?

So, I think that's one of the key takeaways. And one of the key things to think about is that whole sense of AI enabling us to create a more natural language response.

But the learners themselves have got to change a little bit as well. The other side I see that's on the learning experience side from a touch-point of view; I think there is something that we're seeing, if I was looking at my crystal ball, I think over the next five years we will start to see a lot more focus on practice and rehearsal, scenario-based learning to get people ready for work around tasks, around particular skills, around particular things you want to do in the workplace, in an interface where people can explore, practise safety procedures, best practice in terms of working with their way through a workflow.

Because actually generative AI is able to do some of the heavy lifting on creating those scenarios. And I think that's one of the big shifts that's going to come, I hope anyway, because it means that rather than having to sit through and absorb knowledge, actually put people into a situation which is like their work situation, where they can practise and rehearse and understand how to overcome difficult situations.

If you know the ones that are difficult and take a long time, helping people rehearse and practise for those moments of need is going to be important.

So those are three areas; the bit about personalising the learning experience and creating that adaptive experience, and the other is the practice and rehearsal.

But ultimately it’s about creating more valuable learning for both learners and organisations.? And perhaps that’s where AI will help us most in the future…? to focus on priorities and maximise our value for the people we create learning for in the fastest way that’s right for them…

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To Find Out More:

It's easy. You can download the infographics using the link below, or you can get Fosway Group to brief you about the specific implications of learning innovation on your L&D team including Myles Runham and Fiona Leteney to de-risk your strategy and choices, and accelerate your success by mailing [email protected]

All the infographics and more can be downloaded from the FOSWAY KNOWLEDGE CENTRE expertly crafted by Ian McKenna .

https://www.fosway.com/knowledge-centre/

Or you can go to...

https://www.fosway.com/research/next-gen-learning/digital-learning-realities-2024/

Enjoy!