Raising the Bar on Corporate Learning: The 5 Essentials. #1 : Embrace
Tianhui (Nina) Grosse
Global People & Organization HR Executive | High-Performance Culture | Transformation & Innovation| Accelerate Growth | Global, Switzerland, EMEA, APAC | Industrial, Life Science, New Tech, Saas
In this 5-part series, I will post One Essential in each post to start a dialogue about advancing the learning function to help better prepare the talent and organizations for the Future of Work. Please join me in the discussion and reshare it with your peers and networks.
The current state of Corporate Learning is being heavily influenced by two dominant factors. The first is a colossal transformation of the entire job market centered around advances in technology and world trade. Millions of jobs are disappearing, while millions of other jobs, requiring brand new skill sets, are emerging. The rapid rate of change is undeniable and its effect on Corporate Learning is substantial. To get a better picture about what jobs are declining, rising, or what skills to develop for the future, check out the article from Stephane Kasriel CEO at Upwork, “Skill, re-skill and re-skill again. How to keep up with the future of work,” published on World Economic Forum.
The second is a new breed of free or almost-free consumer-driven online and mobile learning resources that are improving every day. These include high-quality videos, MOOC courses, podcasts, and industry reports on just about any imaginable topic that are available anywhere — anytime outside the company’s firewall. Consequently, this has “outsourced” some of the curricula that previously needed to be provided internally. At the same time, the standards for what is acceptable have risen.
Learning has become ubiquitous and is paramount to the future success of businesses and individual careers. How then, can a company’s learning function, whether it’s made up of just one individual or a sizable team, better assist talent and organizations to reach their full potential through learning?
In the quest to answer this question I discovered, what I believe to be, 5 essential undertakings. My wish in sharing my thoughts on this topic with you is that we can start a dialogue between as many of us as possible. Each of us sharing our insights and experience in an attempt to raise the bar on Corporate Learning.
Essential No. 1: Embrace the Democratization of Learning
A plethora of online learning content and social platforms inside and outside companies are revealing new avenues for learning. Some of these platforms, in the past, may not have been viewed as within the scope of Corporate Learning, however, many of these offer enormous learning potential that is worth recognizing.
Let us use the 70/20/10 (Experience, Exposure, Education) framework to look at a few examples of what is currently on offer and emerging.
Experience: Social platforms at work like Slack, Jive, and Yammer are adding a new dimension to learning on the job. For those who are observing the conversations, offering help and/or asking questions, it is a learning experience for all while simultaneously getting the work done. This type of platform is making a difference in several ways:
- Finding an answer quicker with the help of others.
- Breaking the silos and allowing knowledge sharing and collaboration across the boundaries faster than any one person could direct.
- Providing a way for global employees to feel more connected.
Exposure: Options for mentoring are expanding beyond just a small number of high-potentials. The Linkedin Mentoring feature, for instance, makes it possible to leverage the expertise of others from a diverse population. Mentoring groups organized outside work, like Thrive, a women-to-women mentoring group, leveraging strong social circles for professional growth are also — well, thriving.
Education: The most exciting options in this category are mainly digital. I am sure we all have our favorite learning apps installed on our phones. The beauty of these portable learning options is that we can squeeze them into our busy lifestyle — during a workout, waiting in line or on our daily commute. Keep in mind that what makes many of these digital tools effective, is their use of the latest techniques and strategies acknowledged by the science of learning.
Learning has been democratized, it is cheaper and more accessible than ever before. Stay informed on what is available and consider embracing some of these new learning options before building or buying any new courses yourself.
Here are some of my favorites: Harvard Business Review Ideacast, Mckinsey Quarterly App, DuoLingo, MOOC courses, e.g. “ Learning How to Learn”, TED Talks, Wikipedia via Google bot, Meetups (specialized interest group). What are your all-time favorites or new discoveries?
If your Learning function has little or no budget for buying or building content this year, what would you do to leverage the best available?
How might we embed more meaningful learning into our day-to-day work and teams?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas! Stay tuned for the Essential #2: Designing Learning Experiences tomorrow (You can click the link to view the Essential #2 now).
If you like this article, please share it and invite others to join this conversation.
Exec Coach for Mid-Career Crisis | Future of Work Expert | Author | Speaker
6 年Hi Tianhui I agree that there is so much learning available on the internet, and on company’s intranets. I see there are two challenges. The first as already mentioned you can’t believe everything you read on the internet so creating some quality seal or curating content is one option. The second is how many people give up part way through a voluntary MOOC or online course. It is 5-10% according to some stats I found on the internet (yes I see the irony after just saying you can’t believe everything you read on the internet ;-). So overcoming these challenges will help democratize learning further.
Partner with Borderless Executive Search
6 年Great topic Tianhui. And so very relevant. My instinct is that the wide variety of available learning tools is not always helpful. It is much the way I feel when I walk into a store to buy new sneakers, i.e., I become overwhelmed with choice and in the end walk away empty handed. Given the amount of choice, here are my questions. When in a corporate learning environment, how do you select for quality, i.e., which includes the learning content and process and who should be responsible for making this assessment? And, is it advisable for corporate learning to avoid overloading your employees with too many learning choices? I look forward to your insight and will definitely look forward to your next installment.
Learning | Performance | Internal Communications | Consulting
6 年Great piece Tianhui and congratulations your new venture by the way. I certainly agree that those of us working in learning need to embrace the radical changes we see in learning, if for no other reason that if we don't embrace it it will happen without us anyway. Two questions I have about the new ways of learning are: 1. When does content become learning (i.e. something that I have internalized to such an extent that it changes how I behave) rather than just content that I consume, use perhaps once and then forget? 2. What strategies should we use to decide what we truly need to learn, and what we can look up as and when we need it, safe in the knowledge that if we forget it, we can just look it up again the next time? Certainly will need to engage with content in different ways and perhaps the same content will need to be packaged in different ways, depending on the degree of internalization (awareness, short-term application, long-term application) required by the learner.
Global Talent Development Executive
6 年Nice piece Tianhui. For me the biggest challenge is helping organisations see the benefits of OTJ development, and finding clever ways of maximising those experiences and showing the value add. Am yet to see anything in the digital space that truly supports this - anyone out there perhaps seen solutions that potentially leverage AI to help people maximise their learning on the job?