Exploring Immersive Technology - Much of the current excitement around augmented reality
and virtual reality is centered around gaming, but these technologies will have
a larger, lasting impact on the L&D. A 2018 Capterra survey on top tech
trends found as many as 46% of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses are
looking into leveraging VR in the next two years. Virtual and augmented reality
are becoming more accessible each year. These emerging technologies have the
greatest potential to help manage change in an organization.
Designing Training for Sustainment
and Retention - All instruction, especially
skills-based training, requires validation and reinforcement. Whether
custom-designed or off-the-shelf, the impact of your training will be minimal
if your organization doesn’t have a plan for application and reflection in the
field after the training is complete. Effective training is not a “one and
done” event. Smart companies recognize the real change happens when the team
walks into the field with their new learning in hand and starts putting it into
practice. These companies design training with the longer view of change in
mind.
The goal of refresher training is to
sustain learning, increase knowledge retention, and fight the forgetting curve.
People forget 50% of what they learn in 1 hour. 70% within 24 hours. And 90%
within a week.
Making Learning More Accessible - L&D needs to provide access to training “anytime,
anywhere, on any device.” as our roles become more complex and the way we work
more dynamic. Pull up a simulation on your phone and review, in a lull between
meetings, jump on your computer and work through an interactive learning guide,
these are the facilitation L&D needs to work on. Micro-learning and
accessible learning go hand in hand. The process of repackaging training for
agility also sets you up for quicker, more efficient development of training.
Embracing Artificial Intelligence - Emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence and
Machine Learning can have a significant impact on how learning is consumed in
2019. The two ways in which it can enhance learning experience is through
measuring effectiveness and achieving personalization. IBM recently noted by
applying AI to a workplace, “employees can receive more personalized
recommendations to facilitate evergreen, curated learning paths and
anticipatory career management.”, which on the other hand can help employers to
offer career pathing to employees, highly personalized training programs and
enhanced onsite job training.
From Netflix to Amazon to Facebook,
AI has permeated our daily lives to deliver personalized recommendation each
time we visit these sites. Imagine the effect of this smart curation can have
in your learning environment; it can lead to a more timely and engaging
experience for employees.
Another significant way in which AI
can aid you is in measuring effectiveness. Technologies such as Face
recognition, for example, can be used in training, simulation, and role-playing
to measure how each employee is applying new learning. Based on this
assessment, learners can then be directed back to the LMS where they can
receive custom follow up training.
Accepting Automation - Much of the focus of bots in the news has been on how a
coming “Bot-pocolypse” will result in major job losses. This alarmist
perspective mischaracterizes how bots are impacting work. They’re being used
most often in places where we look for answers and to augment services, but
they are not coming for our jobs. As these bots help employees and customers
and take over repetitive, process-oriented tasks that provide little meaning to
us humans, they will make our work more engaging. The Training Journal points
out, “Increasingly, businesses will look to automation to handle technical and
process-driven tasks, and they’ll look to their people to spend more time on
value-add tasks, which require creative and objective thought.”
Companies embracing automation need
to work closely with L&D to teach employees how to work alongside these new
tools. As work becomes more creative and objective, the role of L&D will
shift along with our teams in response to automation. L&D must ensure
workplace training is designed and delivered for more complex work. What an
amazing opportunity for Instructional Designers and Trainers.
Using Mindfulness at Workplace - A study conducted by Wrike found 94% of the workers surveyed
reported that their stress level is “high to unsustainably high,” which further
impacts their health and workplace productivity. Today, many companies have
already taken cognizance of this and started investing in Mindfulness programs
for their employees with a view to reducing burnout and subsequent turnover.
The same report predicts how
Mindfulness and meditation are set to become a $2.08 billion industry with an
annual growth rate of 11.4 percent by 2022. The report also cites the examples
of McKinsey, Adobe, Nike, P&G, Google, Intel, General Mills and Apple who
have successfully implemented Mindfulness programs for their employees.
Prioritization of Soft Skills - With organizations becoming more global, employers are
realizing how critical it is to develop an employee’s soft skills such as
collaboration, negotiation, and emotional intelligence. In fact, soft skills
are known to boost an organization’s work culture, increase the retention rate
and improve leadership.
The importance of soft skills is
backed by several scholarships. One example is LinkedIn’s ‘2018 Workforce
Report’ which identified soft skills gap as a critical priority. The report
further highlighted that skills such as leadership, communication, and
collaboration have become obsolete as compared with the “limited life of hard
skills.” The importance of soft skills has also been a topic of study and widely
discussed by author Daniel Goleman in his well-acclaimed book ‘Emotional
Intelligence at Work’. Some of the key findings outlined in his book are that:
- 90% of people advanced up their career ladder because of their Emotional Intelligence
- Competency research carried out globally in over 200 organizations found that EQ was twice as critical as cognitive and technical ability in distinguishing best performers from average ones. When it comes to senior leadership roles, it was found to be four times as important.
- A study of over 500 executives revealed EQ as a better predictor of success as compared to IQ or relevant previous experience.
Leverage Training As an Employee
Incentive - According to a Middlesex
University study cited in a recent Sh!ft infographic, of almost 4,300 workers
polled, a whopping 74% felt that they weren’t achieving their full potential at
work. So how does a business engage its employees to make them feel empowered
and more productive? One answer is by providing the right learning and
development opportunities with making it learner centric.
Making your learning and development
program learner-centric is one thing, but getting them to view training as an
opportunity for growth and investment for knowledge and skills honing is another.
L&D programs have become a key differentiator between companies competing
for talent. It also plays an active role in engaging, motivating, retaining and
empowering your best talent; decreasing employee turnover and unproductivity.
Design Thinking - Design thinking draws upon logic, imagination, intuition,
and systemic reasoning, to explore possibilities of what could be—and to create
desired outcomes that benefit the end user. It places a great value on empathy
for your users. The practice of Design Thinking seems to be sorely missing from
instructional design university programs, professional training and workplace
practices. Design Thinking has the potential to help us come up with better
design solutions that get the interest and attention of a learner.
As Tim Brown (the CEO of IDEO)
beautifully puts “Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation
that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the
possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” So,
infusing your programmes with a design-driven culture that understands the
learners first may not only provide real and measurable results but also give
you a distinct competitive advantage.
Weigh Learner-Centric Against
Content-Oriented Training - Training
in the past that focused solely on content was “one size fits all,” which made
it difficult to engage with the learner. Today, we must zero in on the learner,
including his or her experience, work environment, performance and
technological fluency, to create a training program. Any effective training
program is one developed for the individual and offers social activities to
share their experiences.
As you train, think of your
employees as consumers. They are used to getting 500,000 results per search on
Google, YouTube automatically playing related videos based on what they’ve just
watched, and Netflix suggesting content matches based on viewing pattern
algorithms. For the learning consumer, training clips on your YouTube channel,
a classroom training session, a MOOC (massive online open course) or a post
shared on Facebook Workplace are elements that can be turned into learning
content.
Adaptive Learning - We’ve been doing it for years before the term “adaptive
learning” got coined. Everyone wants something that’s custom for themselves. If
it’s unique—special for me—it’s seen as more valuable than things that are
mass-produced where everyone gets the same thing. In the past, identifying a performance
gap happening in a given role meant everyone got trained; today, there’s more
focus on training and upskilling according to individual needs. It’s actually
more efficient to train people only on the things they need, rather than on
everything. Additionally, advances in technology make assessing individual
learners’ prior knowledge and competencies easier, as well as giving them
access to the learning they want and need. Artificial Intelligence built
into learning systems (LMSs, LXPs) can serve up personalized recommendations
for learning experiences and intelligent learning paths.
Learning Artifacts - For something completely different, let’s talk about
artifacts. Culture guru, Edgar Schein, wrote about artifacts back in the ‘80s:
tangible things that, when we see them, help connect us to our workplace
culture. Learning artifacts are a twist on this concept: could something that
learners create during the learning experience, either by themselves or with a
team, resulting in a tangible object that serves to remind them of that
experience? That object then becomes a stand-in for or embodiment of the
learning experience.
Here’s an example: in a course
designed for Engineers, a gamification element was added, in that each time
they finished a lesson, they “unlocked” part of the instructions to build a
Star Wars X-Wing Fighter out of office supplies. They LOVED this—took pictures,
posted them on the social learning platform, and every post got great reactions
and comments. And it’s imbued with an association to what they learned, every
time they see it.
Learning Measurement and Analytics -
With the rise of Big Data and data
analytics in all areas of the business world, the tide seems to be finally
turning in L&D, with more of our clients interested in learning measurement
and evaluation. And it looks like we may be evolving beyond the Kirkpatrick
levels and seeing new models emerge. The 6Ds® takes a leap from ADDIE, offering
a model for creating effective, holistic learning that includes measurement
techniques to “prove and continuously improve training’s value”. And Will
Thalheimer’s Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model pays homage to the Kirkpatrick
model and expands the suggested levels to eight, which distinguish learner
perception, knowledge, competence, and transfer
References:
- The Learning-Transfer Evaluation Model (LTEM) (https://www.worklearning.com/2018/02/14/the-learning-transfer-evaluation-model-ltem/)
- https://www.faculty.nl/en/blog/a-new-style-of-evaluating-training-programs-the-learning-transfer-evaluation-model
- https://www.springpeople.com/blog/top-ld-trends-to-adopt-in-2019/
- https://www.unboxedtechnology.com/2019-training-trends/
- Trends 2019: Adapting the Training Function to the Complexity of Today's Business Environment (https://trainingindustry.com/magazine/nov-dec-2018/trends-2019-adapting-the-training-function-to-the-complexity-of-todays-business-environment/)
- E-Learning Trends 2019 - by Docebo (https://www.docebo.com/resource/report-elearning-trends-2019/)
- The Learning Experience Platform (LXP) Market Expands
- People Recall Information Better Through Virtual Reality, Says New UMD Study
- What are the 6Ds? (http://the6ds.com/what-are-the-6ds/)
