BEST PRACTICE

ave you ever paused to consider just how fast the world is changing ? On one of our leadership programmes we invite leaders to identify some of the changes in the workplace that have stood out and had real impact over the last 15 ­20 years .

The exercise usually generates a lot of laughter about “ life BG ” ( Before Google ), the internet and the smartphone …. and then the implications of working in a 24 / 7 , “ always on ” environment slowly dawns and we are left with a yearning for that life that seemed to move at a more reasonable pace with fewer distractions .

And there are certainly plenty of studies to support the reflections of our leaders . Research from Bersin by Deloitte tells us that people today are on the internet 27 times a day , unlock their smartphones nine times every hour and report that they get interrupted as frequently as every five minutes .

Amid all of this distraction we are told that our overwhelmed employees have only 1 % of a typical workweek to focus on their learning and development – that ’ s about 24 minutes !

This presents a sizable challenge for Learning professionals . It certainly indicates that our traditional approach to people development simply won ’ t work in a context where our average full time employee works 42.7 hours ( unpaid overtime contributing £ 29bn to the UK economy every year ) and where taking time out to attend a one or twoday workshop just feels like a huge commitment .

Things are changing .

Trends that we are tracking here at the William J . Clinton Leadership Institute are telling us that the Learning and Development function is undergoing a major reboot .

Learning professionals are beginning to move away from the traditional classroom / workshop as the sole building block for people development . In the new world of work , development solutions need to be focused on the learner experience ­ and

Alanna Cooke , Programme Director , Willam J Clinton Leadership Institute

we know that our learners are overwhelmed , distracted and impatient .

Some of the shifts we are seeing are in the table .

Self­curation is seeing employees manage their own learning . I use Degreed and Anders Pink to create my own learning playlist . Degreed is a career­long learning platform that helps organizations and people target learning at their skills gaps — however and wherever they build their expertise ( videos , books , articles MooCS , live events , webinars , online courses ).

They integrate everything people need to build their expertise – all the internal and external systems , content and experts , including the world ’ s largest collection of free and low­cost open learning resources .

Similarly , Anders Pink is a very smart social content curation tool that enables any user to create a topic or in their terminology “ a briefing ”.

A briefing can be on any topic at all and at a very minimum , I can type in a relevant title and hit publish and the briefing will be created . I will almost immediately see a list of relevant articles displayed in a user­friendly list . The briefing updates with new content every few hours and alerts are sent to my email inbox on a regular basis .

I can even develop my own briefings and share them with my team without L & D being involved . For me personally , the tool drastically reduces the number of apps and places that I have to visit to consume content . This saves time and energy .

Other shifts listed above show how leading companies are moving to a continuous learning environment delivered digitally . Platforms that feature video­sharing support opportunities for employee­driven learning across the whole organisation .

Local companies like Secure Broadcast enable employees to capture , edit , enhance and distribute video in ‘ real­time ’ within the confines of a Secure Digital Ecosystem .

In their first year of using video more than 30 per cent of GE employees developed

content and shared it with their peers . And that sounds like a lot of learning and collaboration – the building blocks of a high impact learning culture .

So where does that leave instructorled learning ?

The findings from a Bersin study indicate that instructor delivery is shrinking in volume but growing in importance .

It is being offered in a more targeted way , when collaborative learning can be used to help people network and learn from peers facing similar challenges .

And that is certainly supported by our experience of developing leaders here at the Leadership Institute .

Leaders tell us they really appreciate the time away from all the distractions of their day­to­day work to think and problem solve with peers . Unlike individual learning , coming together with others to share resources and skills creates new understanding and meaning – something more than the sum of the parts . In a 24 / 7 “ always on ” work environment that ’ s got to be valuable .

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