Most organisations’ digital learning maturity is worryingly low. So what should you change?
David Perring, FLPI
Chief Insights Officer @ Fosway Group | People Experience Innovator
David Perring, September 2023
Chief Insights Officer David Perring continues his dive into the latest Digital Learning Realities research for 2023 – this time looking at learning technology maturity.
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Why do less than 20% typically say they are advanced in any digital learning technology?
From business to business, learning tech maturity varies hugely. Why? My gut says that for many there's a lack of willingness to embrace innovation. For others there's intent, but a lack of expertise in L&D to execute learning innovation well. But potentially for most, the challenge is that the weakness in DL tech is representative of a weakness of business partnering and leadership. That in turn impacts the investment in learning and that stifles Digital Learning maturity.
I'm not saying that people should chase every shiny new toy, but if L&D teams respond to real challenges in your organization with a growth mindset, they’ll experiment more and build expertise in getting learning technology right. ?
Another reason why L&D can be immature is that L&D sometimes get choices hoisted on them, which can be quite restrictive and that can make it much ?harder to be mature.
Now if you had to press me on what was the most significant barrier of all the ones we’ve highlighted, the harsh truth is that often we don't have the levels of expertise to execute learning technology well. Poor choices inevitably generate weak learning experiences and puts the breaks on digital learning maturity.
There is a new wave of L&D leaders and technologies that are pushing the boundaries – so it’s getting easier to mature fast
One of the interesting things we're starting to see is another step change, and that comes from demographic shifts in people's expectations about what learning works, and what doesn't. At the same time some of the technological shifts are becoming easier to embrace. Most people are dependent on their providers, and innovations are coming on stream even where budgets have meant that L&D Teams haven't been able to make maybe that sophisticated a choice.
L&D leaders need to be assertive about how critical they are to the people’s and organisations’ futures to secure proper investment
When it comes to investing in your own tech maturity, I don't think it's something you can afford not to do.
The world is moving so fast and not to think about how technology can deliver transformation within your learning team alone, or even your entire business, is dangerous.
The way I think about it is that if innovation and technology is reshaping the workforce so significantly, it's incumbent on us all to think about how we increase our maturity and skills around the use of technology in our role. Ultimately, if you don't understand what's coming down the line at you, you’re more likely to get wiped out. and you're less likely to jump on it and ride that innovation.
So, learning innovation is not something you cannot afford to not know about, not only from an L&D point of view, but the impacts from a business point of view and what it means for all people who work across your organization too.
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Across the whole people experience, we're seeing people make connections between the strategic workforce plan and what learning people would need to make it successful. AI and innovation are central to enabling that. In fact, all these things are coming together, and not to be investing in exploring that is a big mistake.
Data is one thing, but acting on workforce intelligence is what will really make the difference today and tomorrow
The next two or three years are going to be the story of workforce intelligence, and the way we talk about how this has evolved from being all about ‘big data’, to now around ‘what does that data mean and how can I make better decisions?’ And, ‘what are the different data points that add up to me understanding what's happening in the workforce in all its different guises?’
Whether that's things like engagement, a sense of satisfaction in your role, how long you've been in your role and how much you haven't moved on within that role, or whether it's your productivity, your performance feedback; all these things are coming together to form a better view of the latent potential within our organisation. One of the most exciting emerging practices is how we can get a much better understanding of who works for us so we can unleash their potential in a more proactive way. From a learning experience point of view, things are also moving at pace. If you look at adaptive learning, personalising the learning experience as people go through content to give them the optimal path so they're not wasting business time or getting fed up because they already know it, has the potential to transform our view of the cost of learning; not in the production of content, but the cost of our workforce consuming learning.? Most L&D budgets got squeezed as face to face training became digitised. The next most significant savings will come from ramping up learning speed and the efficiency of learning – so people learn through the optimal pathway – not studying things they already know.
There are some interesting developments emerging around the pacing of learning, e.g. how much am I forgetting and what is the algorithm telling L&D about my need to be better by just topping up my learning ‘just enough’. Because, topping up is a different experience to having all this compliance learning to do in one week when there's not enough time, for example.
Something else which is becoming a priority ?is scenario-based learning for skills development. Helping the transition from knowing to doing, by helping people prepare their knowledge and skills and put it into action.
This is another area that's being driven both by people's expectations of developing skills. And as we know, learning for building skills is very different from simply putting knowledge in people's heads.
Generative AI is also on the verge of generating a whole new step change for L&D by enabling people to create richer learning experiences in a shorter amount of time. In a world where doing more with less is a constant, generative AI is going to help L&D budgets go further and make solutions even more accessible to a greater range of budgets.
To download the infographic
The latest Digital Learning Realities research infographics are free to download from our website.
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