In LEO Learning’s new ebook, we take a look inside the learning revolution and explain the four key ways we believe it’s having the most impact on our industry. This blog gives an overview of what’s inside the ebook, which is available to download on the Resources section of the LEO Learning website.
At a time when every sector is experiencing unprecedented change, the use of innovation is the key differentiator for L&D teams seeking to achieve the best results from their learning strategy.
Innovative learning strategies don’t just create savings or deliver the most value for money from services. As technology causes major change in the learning landscape, we are seeing a learning revolution that can add real value to businesses with learning strategies that adapt and are ready to embrace new possibilities.
In LEO Learning’s new ebook, we take a look inside this learning revolution and introduce the four key areas it’s taking place in.
1) Creating learning for new audiences
The Learning and Development ‘audience’ is changing – training departments are no longer just delivering learning programmes to internal staff. This has created the need to address new audiences effectively. In marked contrast to traditional learning programmes, these learners now include:
- Internal staff – such as training employees to follow best procedures for cybersecurity
- Customers – for example, training customers on how to use treatments
- Resellers and partners – including how and when to sell particular products
- Recruiters and prospective employees – such as enhancing the initial understanding these groups have of an organisation
Perhaps the group that is bringing about the most change in L&D approaches is Millennials, who will make up three-quarters of the global workforce within the next five years. You can read our previous ebook, ‘The Millennial Challenge: Can we make them stay?’, to find out more about how your learning can target Millennials effectively.
Improving the learning experience
Workforces tend to be time-poor, compounded by an era when we are all facing ‘information overload’. This makes it even more important for learning programmes to be accessible and immediately impactful if the content is to really land.
The good news is that revolutionary technology is increasingly providing new ways to meet this challenge – our experts are seeing technologies such as VR, AR and 360-degree video become increasingly commonplace and effective.
In this ebook, we talk about how their applications for future learning can be game-changing, and how great design and technical thinking are critical to learning strategy success.
Rather than ripping up existing content, the focus should be on updating and enhancing existing material in order to create a desire among your audiences to repeatedly return to training and improve their knowledge and skills.
Smarter outsourcing in the learning revolution
As part of our look inside the learning revolution ebook, the new buzzword is ‘rightsourcing’, which is the best way for organisations to plan bringing in outside support to help their core team on specific workstreams.
Rather than seeing elearning providers as vendors, we draw on existing research to emphasise that their relationship with businesses should be a partnership. Deciding who to work with – and, at the outset, whether to complement your existing internal capability – can be tricky. For L&D to succeed, it’s vital to work with the experts at helping internal teams to increase their skillset and ‘rightsource’ wisely.
Quantifying the value offered by L&D
LEO Learning has released several handy insights on how to measure the business impact of learning, including research with around 700 organisations on measuring learning’s impact. One of the key findings was that L&D is the last predominantly unmeasured spend in business. That’s in the process of changing, though.
Once senior executives see the value of L&D initiatives highlighted in areas such as behavioural change, they’re more likely to sanction a greater spend on learning. With a clear measurement strategy, organisations can begin to harness the insights of big data and truly understand the impact learning is having across all areas of their business.