Sep 5, 2013 | Blog

Supporting the Increasing Demand for Learning in an On-Demand World

Optimize Your Talent Strategy

In today’s on-demand learning environment, professionals are faced with the challenge of sustaining learning concepts. Formal learning environments, like training programs, provide in-depth information, but studies have shown that 60% of learning materials are forgotten by the learner within 24-48 hours after the class. Companies are faced with the challenge of keeping their employees current with the necessary training and development, while accommodating the varied learning needs of individuals who range greatly in experience.

 

One way in which companies are addressing informal ways of learning is by making information available for employees when the opportunity to use it arises. It is now possible to not only put relevant information where employees can easily access it, but also present it in a way that reaches members of a widely distributed workforce and make it part of the everyday workflow.

 

“Informal learning design needs to be driven by the learner’s workflow,” a Chief Learning Officer article from January 2012 stated. Thus, if a person is given information in a way that they can relate to the task at hand, then learning retention will be dramatically improved. This is because problem-based learning is how people learn best, and it is how people can best assimilate learning into their workflow.

 

In order for learners to benefit from the tools and resources that aid any given learning experience, three questions must be addressed:

 

  • WHO: Support for social media within the learning environment that provides peer-level contextual insights on the most helpful assets to employees, turning the "who" in learning from the individual to the community.
  • WHEN: Access within the workflow to increase the retention of knowledge and skills gained via informal learning, turning the “when” in learning to when it is most needed.
  • WHERE: Allow contextual learning to happen anywhere via mobile devices, turning the “where” in learning to where it is most needed.

 

Consider an employee who has been tasked with giving an important presentation, and wants to brush up on his or her presentation skills.  If the company has integrated a resource like Leadership & Management Learning Center (LMLC), learning competencies can be mapped to information, directing the learner to best practices and information on communicating effectively in a presentation. This may include journal and magazine articles, videos and summaries of business books that contain key information on the topic. The employee can then be confident they are accessing the most up-to-date and relevant content from leading resources, rather than doing a general web search that may produce less reliable and less authoritative information.

 

Additionally, the individual can be assured that the information can be accessed quickly, easily and seamlessly via mobile devices. Post-presentation, the employee can further the discussion by adding comments to particular content items to make the learning experience a more collaborative one. By accessing the learning content when they need it, where they need it, and how they need it, the learner will improve on-the-job performance and increase retention.

 

Besides the improvement in performance and retention, there are a number of other benefits to using a solution like LMLC. Unlike classes that may be limited because of size or funding constraints, there are no limits to how many people can use LMLC. The information can be made available to everyone in the company in a cost-effective way. It does not seek to replace formal learning efforts; instead it complements formal learning by providing a way to sustain formal learning efforts throughout the year. As the need for on-demand learning increases in a world that requires on-demand access to information, imagine what this resource could do for your company.

 

 

Tad Goltra is VP of Product Management at EBSCO where he leads the development of learning and reference products for corporations and government institutions. Prior to EBSCO, Goltra held senior product management and marketing positions at Salary.com, Monster and Hewlett-Packard, among others. He can be contacted on on Twitter @EBSCO_Learning and through LinkedIn’s EBSCO Corporate Learning Group.