During the event, specially invited LEO Learning customers and industry experts gathered for the workshop, including L&D professionals from ASOS, British Council, Ford, HSBC Bank, Humanitarian Leadership Academy, Nationwide Building Society, Nissan, PepsiCo, Shell, and Weetabix.
In addition to insight from LEO Learning experts, attendees benefited from sharing and reflecting on stories from learning leaders across a range of sectors. There was also exclusive thought leadership from the world of marketing, with Adam Gray from Digital Leadership Associates (DLA) discussing social selling and how to drive behavioral change. This session yielded lessons that rung true with the L&D leaders in the room.
Creating a Blended Learning Framework That Works
The day kicked off with an exploration of innovative and integrated blended learning strategies. Andrew Joly, LEO Learning’s Director of Strategic Design, explored key trends and lessons learned from working with hundreds of clients in this area.
Topics from the kick-off talk included social learning, blended learning journeys and gamification (amongst many more). These subjects were then discussed in small workshops, with attendees exploring how these concepts already influenced—or had the potential to benefit—their organization’s learning experiences.
Throughout the day there was an emphasis on reflecting on where we’re at and where we wanted to be as an industry, but also acknowledging that each organization will be at different stages of their own learning revolution. The end-goal was to see how cultures and behaviors in organizations could be moved to drive performance.
By exploring exciting concepts that LEO is already pioneering, attendees gained insight into the exciting future landscape of learning and behavioral change. The power of measurement, design-by-data, and zero-waste learning were just some of the areas covered, with real anecdotes and case studies bringing these stories to life.
“People were really engaged throughout the whole day. We heard some real stories, some real problems and challenges that they were facing within their organization. Together we created a model that we could use to solve their problems.” – Patrick Billingsley, LEO Learning Consultant
Knowing Your Learners
Concepts around behavioral change are of course only effective if you can relate them to real-life scenarios—specifically, to your learners.
Our workshop asked ‘What does the perfect learner look like?’, but also dug further and asked our L&D leaders ‘What was needed to support our learners and enable behavior change?’
Our attendees suggested key starting points should be engaging with trust factors, leadership-as-role model behaviors, peer-to-peer coaching programs, champions and open recognition and reward for sharing and support in practice.
This shared insight into learner behavior was then looked at in the context of the future workplace, incorporating the latest learning technology trends, and growth areas such as artificial intelligence.
Exploring Future Learner Behavior
“The future of work will involve a very different mindset shift as jobs are transformed. The need for agility and reskilling the workforce will become a keystone of the organization’s growth strategy,” said Nicola Amiss, Services Sales Director at LEO’s parent company, Learning Technologies Group.
“The perfect learner—as articulated by the learning leaders in the room—has a growth mindset, embraces change, demonstrates learning agility, is curious, self-reflective and seeks out knowledge. The future workforce will rely on life-long learners focused on continuous development and growth.”
This vision led the strategic insights that were developed throughout the day. Understanding your learner has always been key to effective learner design, so informing your future vision on the latest learner insights is key to developing future strategies.
Future Blends & Tangible Takeaways
The future possibilities and shape of learning are changing at an incredible rate. It was fitting, therefore, that the grand settings of The Royal Institution reflected the themes of the day: collaborative thought leadership, innovation, and embracing technological advances.
While our attendees certainly left with an exciting vision for the future, it’s important to note that there were clear and fresh takeaways relevant to each participant. These takeaways were born from critical analysis of existing issues across a range of sectors. Some actions could be worked on straight away, while some would start the discussion to develop future learning strategies.
The takeaway was in the shape of a ‘Future Blends: Future Behavior’ model, the culmination of a learning thesis developed throughout the day. The model neatly captured a methodology that blended the smartest learning design and strategies with a focus on enabling behavior change.
A particularly exciting aspect of this workshop was that the learning model had inputs based on real experiences, real learner behaviors, and real business challenges experienced by our group of learning leaders.