During the evening event, specially invited LEO Learning clients gathered for a series of presentations featuring L&D professionals from Fidelity International, Jaguar Land Rover, Blue Prism and PwC.
They discussed their experiences tackling the challenges many L&D teams face: the rapid pace of digital transformation, making sense of new and innovative technologies, culture change, and learning measurement.
Digital Transformation, Automation and How to Support Digital Entrepreneurs
Alex Bentley is Director of Customer Insight & Innovation at Blue Prism, a global software company specializing in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA provides organizations with a digital workforce of ‘software robots’ who can automate a wide range of business processes and tasks.
LEO Learning worked with Blue Prism on a series of customer-facing learning modules, created to help relieve pressure on Blue Prism’s busy sales team.
Blue Prism is now focusing its learning efforts on supporting its customers to make the most of their RPA software. They realized that delivering learning and enabling cross-customer knowledge sharing was the key to helping customers get the most value from their RPA investment.
This might seem like a highly-specific problem to Blue Prism’s business. However, many organizations face the same challenge: how to support the ‘digital entrepreneurs’ in their business who are implementing innovative technologies and changing the way they—and their colleagues—work.
Alex offered his insights on how Blue Prism is working to educate customers with a range of different tools and strategies:
eLearning
Blue Prism is delivering video-based, easily consumable training which gives customers the flexibility to create their own learning pathways.
Tools and accelerators
A key challenge for many of Blue Prism’s clients is understanding which processes are most suitable for automation, so they created an interactive step-by-step process for customers to use.
Customer communities
Alex noted that creating communities—both online and offline—that enable customers to share best practice has been their most successful method for raising adoption and driving engagement.
Delivering ‘Effortless Experiences’ and Making the Right Learning Technology Choices
David Saunders worked extensively with LEO Learning during his time at Jaguar Land Rover. He now works as an independent experiential marketing consultant.
David’s talk focused on offering his insights and tips on how L&D teams can harness technology in a way that best supports their business. Working in the automotive industry has given David a unique insight into this challenge, as technological innovation is a major differentiator in the market.
Central to David’s approach is the idea of ‘effortless experiences’. While many businesses focus on delivering the latest tech to their customers, it’s not what they value the most. Research has shown that it’s actually getting the basics right that keeps customers loyal—rather than the latest bells and whistles.
In L&D, our customers are our learners. So, for L&D teams the priority should be focusing on delivering high-quality, effortless learning experiences, with zero friction or frustration—rather than giving learners the latest ‘fads’. This is the key to long-term engagement.
But David was also quick to say that he’s not anti-technology or innovation; it’s simply that it needs to be used for the right reasons. For L&D teams, it’s critical to evaluate whether the latest tool or technology really has a valid use case for their learning goals in order to make wise investments.
Driving Culture Change in a Rapidly-evolving Organization
Fidelity International’s Richard Pedley has been working closely with the LEO Learning team on a major new learning program, the Retirement Academy.
Fidelity has been in the process of transitioning its business from a traditional asset-management firm to a retirement business. Their core aim now is to help customers save for their retirement.
But this transition required a cultural shift within the business. Staff needed to think differently about their customers and understand the concerns and challenges that come along with planning for retirement. Fidelity also faced a challenge to change their learning culture in order to successfully deliver training that would enable this cultural shift.
So how did Fidelity tackle these challenges?
To drive culture change they’ve worked with LEO Learning to produce ten hours of story-driven digital learning, housed in the Retirement Academy. Realising that generating empathy and connection was key to success, the LEO Learning team created a video drama focused around one family and their challenges around retirement.
Implementation of learning analytics platform, Watershed, has also been central to a strategy focused on creating a learning culture where learners are empowered to learn in a more exploratory, self-directed way—rather than being forced to complete training, as had been the case previously.
Richard and his team have been analyzing learner data from their LRS (Learning Record Store) to understand how learners are interacting with the Academy content. Based on these insights, they’re now developing different strategies to sustain learner engagement, including personalized emails and gamification techniques.
For Richard, the new program has successfully enabled him to move towards ‘getting a seat at the table’, with L&D now occupying a more prominent role in the business.
Leading the Charge With Learning Analytics
The last talk of the evening featured Alex Crispin and Steven Tomlinson, both Senior Global L&D Managers at PwC.
They’re in the final stages of implementing a Learning Experience Platform (LXP), which is harnessing xAPI to deliver detailed learning data on both formal and informal learning events.
For Alex and Steven, this has been an ambitious project (by June 2019, it will have been rolled out to 98 percent of learners globally) but they have learnt a lot along the way. They shared their top tips for other L&D professionals thinking of embarking on a similar measurement journey:
- Start small, then grow: It’s impossible to achieve all your measurement goals in one go.
- Focus on business questions: Don’t work in isolation from the wider business.
- Tell ‘the data story’: Present your insights in a way that will make sense to senior stakeholders.
- Understand the difference between implementation and BAU: Their project has had a two-year implementation phase and it’s important to realise that a program on this scale takes time to get right.
The Evolution of Learning: The Future Is Bright for L&D
The evening’s talks demonstrated that L&D is an exciting place to be at the moment. L&D teams are now prepared to take on the big challenges facing their businesses and solve them with innovative digital learning programs.