Rewire and Refresh

In the Learning world of today, two major global shifts are pushing us to rewire:

 1.    The evolution of careers

2. COVID’s impact on the workplace, workforce and work

 So, how does this tie into the learning space that we would experience and is there a need to gear up for something bigger?

 The evolution of careers – The mindset of the new age employee is perhaps geared for shorter and impactful stints. From tenure to gig working, the landscape of work and careers is in transition. Impactful stints include experiences, learning filled journeys and a holistic output driven career for the digital native. A major consideration for employees in the choice of an organisation to be associated with definitely includes the democratic and personalised learning opportunities that they can get. From vertical, horizontal to cyclic careers, work is being looked at as transient and fluid across most industries with remote working here to stay.

 How does this impact the Learning industry, the Learning space and learners? With shorter stints and moving careers, the need for speed in skill acquisition is imminent. Both generalists and specialists will be sought after. Rewiring to make the learning curve shorter for oneself is ringing loud. “Fast”, “Many”, “New”, “Digital” are words that are reshaping not only the way we work but forcing us to reshape the way we think. The Attention era, where we are flooded with information but have narrow focus drive individuals to look for learning that is focused and capsulated. The re-emergence of micro-learning, “Learning on the go and in the flow of work” is the way forward. Be it Mentoring or spaced learning in technical skills, the thrust is on “Fast” and “Many”. On the other end of the evolving learning spectrum, “Digital is King, and Change is queen”. Enabling digital learning without steering a change mindset is a recipe for disaster. A culture that embraces digitalisation by considering the human mind’s ability to adapt and adopt Digital will force organisations to retain learning of Change management at the crux of any transformation. Micro-learning courses in areas of digital, change, metacognition, renewed HR capabilities, creative thinking will be most sought after. The biggest question learning providers would face would be, “How are careers in organisations and the world shifting and are we equipped with learning courses that empower and complement these shifts?” The plethora of learning courses to choose from is a necessity.

 The learning revolution every organisation experienced due to COVID needs no conversation. Implicitly we saw the tirade of new experiences, learning and working from anywhere become an overnight reality. Organisations scampered to keep things moving and in order. Not only was there a need for employees to “learn to adapt” to the sudden change, but they also had to question themselves about “Personal agility”. The Learning Leaders had the last laugh since the world moved from a push to a pull in learning finally. Increase in use of online learning courses increased in the ranges of anywhere between 40-60% in most organisations. Need for collaborative tools pushed learning nuggets to garner speed.

 The world finally woke up to the fact that “virtual is real” and learning has to be amoebic, agile and will start at the edges of the organisation and shall interconnect organisations seamlessly going forward. Learning became democratic and the power of knowledge sharing in crisis drove the human spirit to be compassionate in Learning too. Now, the biggest question learning providers and organisations faced was,” How do I enable remote learning that is relevant and contextual? How do I equip people to learn to adapt to the changes around and again, the plethora of learning options became a priority.

 What are your thoughts? Do both the above learning shifts play on your mind as much as they do on mine?