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Article courtesy of Jim Bowley, Vice President of Product, Qstream.
Corporate L&D spending exceeds $200 billion annually. Is that investment working? Scientific research (and the business outcomes of too many learning programs) suggest that it isn’t. It’s estimated that $180 billion of annual L&D spending actually goes to waste due to the forgetting curve, which causes knowledge decay in as little as 30 days if information is not reinforced. Complicating matters further is the fact that at least one-third of the jobs that exist today didn’t exist 25 years ago. In fact, the World Economic Forum paper on “The Future of Jobs” reports that 65% of children in primary school today will one day hold a job that doesn’t currently exist.
In order for learning leaders to meet the future demands of customers and businesses to help the workforce obtain the required knowledge and skills needed to achieve performance goals, it’s necessary to transform the learning experience into one that works.
Historically, LMS alienates by focusing on the wrong thing. LMS technology is designed with compliance as the core use case. But for the learning design to work it must be focused on teaching people what they need to know, precisely and in a way that’s easily manageable for the learner to retain. For the sake of having a learning organization that grows employees, organizations are looking away from traditional LMS and towards solutions that are learner-centric, engagement-focused and provide tangible ROI, and these trends will continue to grow in 2020 and beyond.
As we enter a new decade, businesses are starting to pivot away from compliance as the primary training goal. Instead, they are designing learning experiences that fuel engagement and improve organizational performance readiness to exceed business expectations.
Here are the trends that are being made in this transformation:
- Flexible, continuous learning models – shifting from front-loading one-and-done knowledge models to continuous learning that keeps pace with change and innovation.
- Bespoke learning experiences – curating learning that only includes knowledge relevant to the learner, their role and business preventing them from sifting through irrelevant content that leads to learner impatience and burnout.
- Prioritization of engagement – creating learning experiences that are mobile-first, respectful of people’s time, and utilize game mechanics to engage people in their daily flow of work, keeping them productive.
- Aligning accountability with precision coaching – using real-time, individualized proficiency insights to guide precision coaching and encourage respectful accountability.
- Tangible metrics that show ROI – shifting emphasis from the workflow and activity-based measures of the LMS, such as compliance completion rates, to measuring proficiency gains and knowledge gaps against their impact on productivity and performance metrics.
To learn more about how you can adjust your learning and development strategies to keep up with trends and improve employee performance, download our latest webinar with SHRM.
Start a conversation with us at Validity – our team will be delighted to show you how easily, effectively and affordably you can move forward in 2020.
