Problems with self-directed learning? Here's what to do?

Problems with self-directed learning?

Here’s what to do...

When it comes to learning and development these days, relevance and engagement are vital... but how well are your people owning their development in your organisation?

If you’re hoping employees will naturally gravitate towards development opportunities without really understanding what they’re going to get out of them, then you’re probably already feeling frustrated. Above all, people need to understand the "why" - why they should choose to engage with learning and development content - and, most importantly, have the answer to the WIIFM question: "What’s In It For Me?"

A lot of the time, that’s sabotaged by the approach organisations take to learning and development. Sending employees on courses of little value to them back in the real world won’t achieve buy-in or create an organisational growth mindset. There might even be a cringeworthy perception that workplace learning is effectively schooling for grown-ups... which is another reason why organisations might want to switch their focus from just-in-case to just-in-time learning...

Does just-in-case learning add value?

Just-in-case learning basically involves providing information in the hope that at some point in the future it may be useful. This kind of learning can be essential in helping organisations meet a whole range of demanding compliance obligations, but, let’s be fair, it can often be seen as a box-ticking exercise to pass accountability over to employees.

Other types of just-in-case learning can be seen as ‘nice to do’... which can be notoriously wasteful. Our brains generally hold onto relevant information and discard the rest... so potentially it becomes a knowledge-transfer exercise that some employees will not be able to practically or immediately apply back in the workplace, bringing returns on both the financial and time investment into question. If you haven’t come across it before, check out Hermann Ebbinghaus’s classic work on "The Forgetting Curve" illustrating how quickly we forget what we’ve learned. Shockingly, after only 20 minutes, knowledge retention is 58%. A day after the learning, it’s 34% - and if the learning hasn’t been applied after six days, around 75% is forgotten.

Which helps explain why, according to 2020 Gartner research, employees only apply around 54% of newly learned skills. It can end up being more about the badge of completion than the value of the knowledge and skills acquired. So this raises a significant, albeit controversial, question: what’s the point?

Zero-waste learning

Just-in-time learning, in contrast, is development at the point of need. It’s development focused on what the employee needs to know at the time they need to know it... and no wonder that’s when employees learn most effectively. As it’s development in the real world for maximum efficiency and effectiveness, it’s considered to be zero-waste learning enabling a truly agile environment.

And it’s changing the face of learning and development. It might not sound all that revolutionary... but don’t underestimate its importance. This is a golden opportunity for organisations to renew their focus on encouraging and facilitating self-directed learning and a culture of continual learning where employees aren’t waiting to be sent on courses and told what they need to learn. Employees don’t want the majority of their learning and development opportunities to be provided in a formal classroom anymore: times have changed. Their expectations of how they learn and develop have been shifting for a while, and organisations need to rapidly shift with them.

Curating and enabling a culture of just-in-time learning

So does this mean encouraging employees to Google more questions, then get stuck into the task in hand, armed with that new information? To some extent... but that’s nowhere near the whole story; search engines provide helpful answers but the information isn’t always totally accurate. And in some cases employees might not be asking the right questions, because they simply don’t know what they don’t know.

The L&D team’s curation will be fundamental here, in closing the gaps between what employees currently know and need to know and positioning the "why" of each development opportunity. Don’t underestimate the value this will add to the L&D function – their skills will be needed to curate and market an accessible portfolio of high-quality, just-in-time learning, while providing cross-functional opportunities that tap into existing resources across the organisation and using them to their maximum potential.

Making learning opportunities meaningful

To ensure organisational learning is meaningful, make sure it’s designed to deliver the highest impact. People often want digestible and bite-size content that is accessible on demand 24/7 from wherever they want to access it... a shot of targeted, highly relevant content that’s immediately applicable in their real world.It should be as intuitive and personalised as possible, building the engagement and connection that’s key for an organisational growth mindset. Coaching conversations and in-the-moment feedback as just-in-time development opportunities are hugely valuable. They both have significant roles to play in drawing out specific learning needs that could otherwise stay hidden, and in encouraging employees to think more for themselves, engaging with and owning their own solutions rather than expecting managers to spell out what kind of development they must have. It’ll also enable greater levels of peer-to-peer learning – research tells us when employees want to learn something new, 55% of them will ask a colleague, yet this is still an often hugely underrated resource when it comes to organisational learning.

Culture must evolve to embrace more agile learning

Organisations will need to think about how to enable a “learning on demand” culture. It’s time to dismantle an unintentional culture that pushes learning for learning’s sake, and instead embrace a more agile just-in-time approach, where employees are given the opportunity and means to develop a growth mindset and become engaged in consuming, learning and using information in the very moment they need it.