How will the learning content meet the right people? What are the desires and ambitions of employees and how can we tell if we are aware of them? How can digital tools help to understand their behavior, background, preferences and what challenges them in their work?

Any organization will attest to the fact that employee learning should align with the vision, culture and mission the company has created for itself. To execute this, the company needs to identify skill gaps and upskill when needed. Many companies have development plans and discussions between managers and employees, most often every six months or once a year. However, this may prove problematic as needs may change and learning may happen more organically, for example, based on changing business realities (Covid-19 anyone?). To be proactive rather than reactive, the L&D organization should have real-time data on learner needs. This can be done with the help of digital tools.

Digital Mentor

Firstly, the learning organization can use a “Digital Mentor” to ask the employees themselves. This may be a chatbot that has been trained to ask questions such as “what have you learned today? what problem do you need to solve? or how could we support your learning?”.

Based on this information, more accurate on-demand content can be created and suggested to the learners. In a more advanced version, this bot would learn to cater to the learners’ needs by suggesting sources and materials or even a skilled colleague who could help in solving problems and showing the right resources for the learner.

Transparency

Secondly, learning processes should be made transparent. What this means, is that learning strategies and metacognitive skills should be made obvious and training should be provided on them. The more aware the learner is of their skills and competencies, the more apt they are at finding resources and tools to enhance their learning. This is, however, not a self-evident case in many organizations.

Self-driven and highly efficient learners don’t roam the office corridors in masses, many employees must be taught self-efficacy and learning to learn skills. To boost learning ability, the learning organization could publish a digital weekly “learning strategy journal” as a microlearning piece (a video, an image with a voiceover, a case example). This way a shared pool of learning strategies could be promoted.

Learning organizations can take a marketing approach to learning and development. Campaign tools, analyzing data, training a bot to gauge learner needs, creating job aids (video, e-learning, pdf, infographics) for on-demand learning and most of all, supporting personal growth and professional development in the everyday life of the learner where the messages reach them on their Teams or mobile phones.

Using digital tools to carefully listen to learners and assuming the role of a mentor may just be the ways to the future. Organizations that are obsessively interested in the learning processes and needs of their employees may be on the right track to building capabilities, that not only look into the present, but remain relevant and competent in the future as well.