Are you ready for the new paradigm of learning?

Every new paradigm brings a lot of opportunities and also associated challenges, with the advent of a new paradigm emerging from technology disruption and decarbonization, the GCC region has been facing talent specific challenges. The disruptive nature of technology and business challenges increased demand for new human digital and technical skills, driving a number of traditional jobs to become obsolete.

To quote from #pwcmiddleeast survey “GCC Hopes & Fears Survey 2020” , workers know automation will change their jobs, and want to learn new skills to improve their employability. 75% of workers believe automation will significantly change or make their job obsolete within the next ten years. 96% of adults would learn new skills now or completely retain it to improve their future employability. Most of the workers welcome new technologies. 82% were positive about the impact of technology on their day to day work. But 23% are learning new skills through their employer to better understand or use technology. 73%. In PwC “GCC Hopes & Fears Survey 2021” , workers expressed positive sentiment about the future. COVID drove more upskilling, as people are positive about technology’s impact on jobs. 31% of the workforce say they began the pandemic without adequate digital skills. 45% of the workforce claim they successfully improved their digital skills during the pandemic. 58% of people believe advances in technology could make their jobs obsolete in the next 5 years. 86% are ready to learn new skills or completely re-train in order to remain employable in future. 82% agree it is their own responsibility to update their skills rather than relying on an employer. 90% of the workforce say they’re getting at least some opportunities from their employers to improve digital skills outside of normal duties.

In the latest PwC’s Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey 2022 , 49% of respondents say their job requires specialized training and 40% of employers are taking an action to upskill their employees to address skills and labor shortage. In PwC MiddleEast workforce hopes and Fears survey 2022 , 75% of the employees surveyed in Kuwait , 60% in Qatar, 58% in Saudi Arabia and 46% in UAE believed their country had a shortage of people with the specialized skills. However, respondents in the region are more confident than the global survey average (47% vs 40% globally) that their employers were prioritizing upskilling. This is confirmed with the latest Middle East CEO survey , where almost half the respondents said they are planning double -digit investments in leadership and skills over the next three years. To address skills shortages, many employers are focusing on internal measures. More than 60% respondents in the Middle East said some kind of special training was a necessity in their jobs, substantially higher than the global average. To address skills shortages, many employers are focussing on internal measures. The action plan by employers - 47% - upskilling workers, 38% - Increasing wages, 33% - supporting workers with physical and mental well being, 32% - automating and/or enhancing work via technology.?

“The need for upskilling” is the consistent message we can infer from all these survey findings. It has become inevitable to catch up with this pace with the new generation learning strategy and scale up to these new frontiers in learning. In the absence of this most of these transformations remain on the drawing board without seeing the light or failing the very purpose of transformation. These changes are triggering an upheaval in the way learning and development functions within organizations are operating.

Build the curriculum based on key pedagogy principles?

Learning always to be user centric and build on pedagogy principles to achieve its purpose. Pedagogy is an essential thread to be considered while weaving the entire fabric of learning experiences.?

Incremental learning: It's more common among learners to drop out of a course because of complexity or lack of novelty in content presented. Principle of small steps is the key where the whole curriculum is made into small and meaningful chunks in a sequential flow to make learning processes conducive and encourage the learner to complete the course.?

Linear learning: In a linear learning style the learning content is broken into small pieces and arranged in a sequential order. Quick learners often feel unchallenged and tend to drop off courses as the content becomes too predictable or not exciting. So, it’s good to introduce “skip-linear” or “branched learning''.

Branched learning: This type of learning facilitates skipping certain lessons based on responses by the user at the end of each lesson. If the learner is not able to respond correctly to certain complex questions, they will go through the linear learning framework as usual; whereas the quick learner will be moved to advanced lessons skipping obvious and elaborative content. This will help quick learners to move fast at their own pace.

Pragmatic learning: Always anchor the content with pragmatic illustrations and information that would aid their day-to-day work. This will help the user realize why they are learning and makes the learning meaningful and purposeful.

Transfer of learning: This is highly individualized and targeted learning. Especially suitable in certain industries where the ability of one skill makes individuals learn other similar skills where they use their expertise in one area that can be transferred into a new competency with great ease.?

Measuring the effectiveness of learning: Define and execute the measurement and evaluation criteria for learner/instructor/e-learning etc. These outcomes are fed back to other talent management processes and improves the learning processes, learning content and curricula. Measurement will also give you to set certain criteria as a prerequisite and for certification purposes.?

New generation learning

Learning is an essential and lifelong process for employees within organizations, however many reach a “plateau” or stagnation phase very quickly and continue to do things as they normally do. A significant challenge could be unlearning or relearning old behaviors once they reach this phase. Fortunately, organizations are beginning to identify this dynamic and focus on new generation learning that could catch up to the speed of transformation. However, they may spend most of their time and money developing super curricula with rich content to upskill and reskills their employees without much attention to the “learner abilities” and respective “learning needs”.?

Traditional learning modules need to be complemented by the 3J, Just Adequate, Just for me and Just in Time, learning principles. The learning content in 3J mode is relatively small and like a 3 to 5 minutes learning capsule targeting the objectives very precisely.?

“Just Adequate” learning: Many times, individuals need quick support on the job while performing certain tasks; and they can’t afford to start learning a lengthy curriculum which is fully loaded with exhaustive learning content. Just adequate learning helps the individual to consume small bites of relevant pieces of learning to complete the task on their hand with no delays. If required, these individuals can undergo a full-fledged and an exhaustive course at a later stage. It’s a prerequisite to qualify such learning content before considering this kind of category.

“Just for me” learning: earning capsules should be very specific and highly individualized based on the roles/tasks being executed. This will help these individuals to quickly navigate to suitable and relevant learning capsules and consume them on the fly.

“Just in Time” learning: earning capsules are designed in such a way where individuals can access them from a mobile, tablet, computer, or a kiosk. Individuals are able to easily search and navigate capsules very quickly whenever they need.

Further, in the age of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram etc, it is important to adopt informal and collaborative learning.

Collaborative learning : Quantum of knowledge experience is highly scattered across the organization among many individuals. Develop a framework where individuals can create meaningful learning content and curricula. Most of the time this content is highly focused on organization needs and avoids reinventing the wheel.?

Informal learning: Create a platform to share updates, knowledge within your organization. Specially to help the individuals to share the informal type information seamlessly and can get benefit.?

Right content: Prioritize your curriculum based on your enterprise vision and anchor with present and future needs of the organization. It’s very important to note that there are diversified modes of content delivery. Hence it is critical to categorize content and mode of delivery (e-learning/classroom) as per the nature of content/learners.?

Outsourcing: Avoid building every course from scratch unless it is specific to your organization. To save time, cost, and energy, try to outsource certain learning courses from leading learning providers. Many learning courses are readily available for consumption. You can also subscribe to popular online libraries and give access across the organization.?

Digitalization of learning

Digitalization of learning is not just e-learning. Learning and Development can facilitate multifaceted learning and measure learning outcomes easily when appropriately digitizalized. The technology helps to host end-to-end processes with detailed analytics from qualitative and quantitative perspectives.?

Technology makes learning management more effective with automation and insights. Technology platforms can allow blended learning, external learning (learning to be made available for your vendors, partner ecosystem) and also supports the Validated Learning Management (VLM) System which is prevalent in certain industries like life sciences. With digital learning platforms, create learning maps, create the curricula/courses, catalogs, track the learning progress, certification, enrollment, wait list for enrollment, qualification criteria for learning, control the learning budget, enable auto assignment of courses and enable virtual learning very easily with skype/zoom/MS teams/WebEx/Adobe connect etc., evaluate/measure the learning outcomes. We can also seamlessly integrate learning management with other talent management modules such as performance management, employee onboarding with meticulous access control with defined roles and appropriate authorizations. It will also enable us to collect feedback on training effectiveness very easily. You can easily manage learning contracts and learning plans with the help of technology platforms.?

Not only the right strategy but also choosing the right technology platform along with the right implementation partner and translating the strategy into a feasible and hassle-free learning Management is also a key for the successful learning among the organizations.?

Please reach out to us to hear more about our success stories or if you need more information or for any support on how to strategize your learning journey, define, design the learning processes and framework and to enable your learning management on a best in breed IT platform. Also, if you have experienced any exciting learning transformation journey, do share the experiences in the comments.?

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