Embracing Change
1. Seeing Opportunity in Change:
Change is an inherent part of our world, and the business landscape is no exception. To thrive in this dynamic environment, learning and development and HR teams must not only embrace change themselves but play a vital role in helping the wider business and workforce navigate and embrace change effectively.
At Learning Tech 2023, we witnessed a resounding call to understand, prepare for, and adapt to a constantly changing world, work environment, and learning styles.
We heard from Professor Beau Lotto, leading expert in perception, on how change is the biggest challenge we face – but this poses a problem, as “Nearly everything we do is an attempt to increase certainty. We evolved to hate not knowing.”
Change is inevitable, and it presents both opportunities and risks. The ability to cope with, and learn from disruptions, such as those we continue to experience, requires specific skills and a willingness to challenge ourselves.
As hybrid and remote workforces continue to shape the modern workplace, organisations must acknowledge the evolving nature of work. Achieving equity in experience becomes paramount, encompassing all facets of people management.
As professionals in L&D and HR, you have a vital role to play in helping organisations adapt. Embrace change as an opportunity for growth, equip your workforce with the right tools, and navigate the evolving landscape with confidence.
2. Utilising New Technologies:
Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality, and machine learning are transforming the field of L&D, offering exciting opportunities and challenges. Not surprisingly, this trend appeared in many of the conference talks!
In ‘Emerging Technologies’, David Kelly CEO at The Learning Guild, discussed how embracing new tech is crucial, but how it's equally important to comprehend it’s impact on the wider workforce and proactively prepare your people with the skills to use these technologies.
Adding to this in ‘Lifelong Learning and AI’, Conrado Schlochauer, founder of lifewide learning company novi, asked that we reflect on the statement that “you will not lose your job to AI, you’ll lose your job to someone who knows how to use AI” and what this means in terms of the role of learning leaders.
By embracing advanced technology trends in learning and development, you can equip your workforce with the skills and knowledge they need to adapt.
You must provide learning experiences that empower your workforce to thrive by utilising new technology.
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3. Harnessing Diversity:
The message was clear throughout the conference that organisations must embrace diversity and leverage its power to drive growth. Beyond being best practice and showing care and value to all, diversity and inclusion enable businesses to tap into a wealth of voices and experiences. Njeri Mwagiru, and Robin Teigland stressed that “different viewpoints are needed in the room”.
By actively incorporating diverse perspectives, organisations can increase:
- adaptability
- resilience
- effective change management
Njeri Mwagiru and Robin Teigland explained the need to develop organisational networks and advised, “Talk about where you all see your industry in 10 years. What do you see? This again, is when it is vital to have those different voices. It is not about all having the same ideas, or just thinking about the points you all see in common, it is also about sharing the things you see differently.”
Diversity can create a foundation for continuous learning, foster a culture of innovation, enrich decision-making processes and position organisations to seize opportunities and be better prepared to navigate complexities.
Embrace diversity as a strategic imperative for building successful businesses in a rapidly evolving world.
Shifting the Way We Work
4. Building Connections:
In a world of increasingly dispersed, hybrid and remote workforces, collaboration, networking, and community building are becoming crucial for effective learning and development.
By fostering a culture of learning within organisations, collaboration and community building will become more natural, and enable individuals to tap into collective knowledge and stay up-to-date with the latest industry trends and best practices.
As part of the conference opening address, “Successful living and learning in a world of technological disruption”, Njeri Mwagiru, Senior Futurist, Institute for Futures Research and Robin Teigland, Professor at Chalmers University of Technology discussed with the audience the importance of producing solutions for the collective. It will be increasingly important to work not just for individual gain. They suggested that organisations can begin this straight away, starting small, to develop a collaborative mindset, both internally and externally.
If you aren’t already, be sure to investigate learning and development software that you can leverage to facilitate greater social learning and knowledge sharing for your employees.
5. Cultivating a Thriving Learning Culture:
Embracing a culture of learning empowers employees to take charge of their development, enabling them to discover a wide range of both career and personal learning opportunities.
In their ‘Learning Culture’ talk Helen Robinson (Dunelm Head of Talent) and Fernanda Falci (Global Head of L&D at Teads) outlined how they are building learning cultures within their organisations. Through working on an organisation wide mindset shift they are seeing employees explore self-led approaches and increasingly take ownership of their own growth. They stressed that fostering an individual sense of responsibility, along with empowerment and positive relationships with managers was key.
By actively fostering a learning culture, organisations can create more motivated and inspired workforces. Encouraging continuous learning ensures employees seek diverse opportunities and remain motivated.
To do this, recognising and rewarding learning achievements, integrating learning into performance management, and providing ongoing feedback will be key.
6. Agile and Unified Planning:
Gone are the days of static learning solutions! Learning and development must be viewed as an ongoing process that continually evolves alongside the changing needs of the organisation.
Kevin M Yates, the L&D Detective, made it clear that it's essential to link L&D goals to wider business objectives, but as well as this, he stressed that taking a comprehensive approach across all learning and development related initiatives should be considered.
Organisations must foster an environment of synergy and collaboration across departments, and individual projects around areas such as:
- onboarding
- mandatory training
- employee engagement
- career development
To unlock the full potential of all such initiatives, organisations must shatter the silos that hinder collaboration and adopt a holistic approach through clear processes, clarity and alignment. On this theme, when it comes to technology trends in learning and development, it’s important to look at solutions that can support your goals holistically or are scalable for the future.
Consider researching providers who can offer breadth and depth of learning solutions to allow you to execute holistic strategies.
The Right Tools and Strategies to Make it Happen
7. Measuring and Analysing Impact:
One of the top trends in learning and development is the need to overcome challenges in measuring the impact of initiatives. Harnessing the power of data was a focal point at the Learning Tech 2023 Conference.
During the 'Emerging Technologies' presentation, Dani Johnson, Co-founder and Principal Analyst at RedThred Research, emphasised that analytics and measurement stood out as the foremost priority when considering the key areas that learning solutions should address in 2023.
Measuring the impact of L&D programmes is crucial for aligning functional goals with overall business objectives, as we were reminded by Kevin M Yates in his session ‘Solving the mystery of impact measurement’. However, it is clear that organisations face a significant challenge in extracting and utilising the necessary data for analysis.
This hurdle can hinder:
- understanding what initiatives are working and why
- effective data driven decision-making
- the demonstration of programme value
To address this, organisations must invest in robust analytics tools and enhance data literacy within their HR and learning and development teams.
8. Developing Skills for Organisational Agility:
HR are prioritising effective skills management, seeing it now more than ever as essential to the wider people strategy. Addressing skills gaps is therefore a top priority for systems investment and one of the key technology trends in learning and development in 2023.
When discussing this in the ‘Emerging Technologies’ talk, Dani Johnson outlined ‘4 functions that skills tech provides one or more of’:
- Collects information about employee skills
- Organises skills data
- Provides information about skills in the labour market
- Makes it easier to use employee skills data
There is a challenge here for users, as not many digital learning providers cover more than one of these skills functions.
It’s clear that investing in technology that helps align employee competencies with skills requirements to enhance talent development and retention is more important than ever. By leveraging the right technology to assess skills, track development and create personalised learning plans, organisations can bridge skills gaps and protect themselves for the future.
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9. Advancing Personalised Learning:
Establishing a clear and comprehensive understanding of personalised learning across the company is crucial to unlock significant business value. Personalised learning offers employees the opportunity to stay current and future-ready. The need for personalised learning experiences is ever growing, as employees expect their learning to be fully relevant to their personal needs, and as tailored and slick as the tech they consume outside work.
It is vital to tailor learning experiences to employee needs and skills gaps to maximise engagement and performance. In this way business can provide targeted upskilling and agility in response to industry shifts.
Look into leveraging technology-driven solutions, such as adaptive learning paths, online assessments and progress tracking, to tailor interventions and unlock the full potential of your workforce.
Read more about the power of personalised learning in the guide, ‘Career Development: Empowering Your Talent’.
10. Nurturing Self-Directed Learning:
Democratised, self-directed learning and providing the right tools for this is essential – but so is teaching the skills of how to learn and how to use these tools. At the Learning Tech 2023 Conference we heard how this is becoming increasingly important in modern workplaces.
Conrado Schlochauer stated that “Ai is a tipping point for lifelong learning” with a key role to play. In order to benefit from this, businesses need to loosen their control of learning and teach people how to learn by themselves.
On his talk “The neuroscience of perception, creativity, bias and learning” Professor Beau Lotto stated that “there’s never been a more important time to be good at learning” because there is so much disruption, so much change, but also, so much opportunity.
By fostering self-directed learning, companies can instill a culture of curiosity, adaptability, and resourcefulness. Teaching employees how to learn and to effectively utilise the digital learning tools you provide enables effective navigation of the ever-expanding sea of information.
This approach promotes continuous growth and development, empowering individuals to embrace new challenges and seek out knowledge in an ever-evolving professional landscape.
Consider how you can nurture a workforce full of effective self-directed learners to allow both individuals and your business to thrive.
Partnering with a learning software solutions provider can enable your business to access relevant and critical learning, develop essential skills like adaptability, resilience, and creativity, and deliver learning that aligns with the needs of a rapidly evolving workforce.
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