Employees across all departments are hungry for opportunities to develop, and the lion’s share is happening digitally. In fact, 59 percent of talent developers are reporting an increased budget for online learning compared to three years ago according to the LinkedIn Learning 2019 Workplace Learning Report. Organizations have an inherent need to grow their employees’ skills, but they also must ensure they’re doing it in a way that’s modern and effective.
Today’s professionals have a host of options for growing their knowledge and skill base, but they often look to HR departments to facilitate these learning and development (L&D) opportunities in a focused way. The good news is that you don’t have to do it alone. There are many resources and services available to help implement digital L&D programs, but there are also some important considerations to be made before diving in.
Discovering the Learning Journey
At Kineo we talk a lot about the importance of a custom learning journey because we know it’s different for every organization and employee. Our main idea is to view L&D opportunities as a series of connected experiences rather than a singular problem. This means thinking critically about the challenges your organization is facing as well as the associated technology components needed to address them.What behaviors do you want people to adopt? How can you drive motivation in that direction? By focusing on these types of questions you’ll better understand the bigger picture before rushing off to find a solution, and it’s worth noting that a good L&D partner will take the time to help uncover these questions and challenges throughout your organization.
System Integrations
Today’s world demands that various system integrations be in place to allow for a seamless experience. That means that your learning management system (LMS) should be able to connect with other systems so employees can locate relevant resources all in one place. Potential examples include a Salesforce integration or a content repository for employees to reference materials outside of the learning courses. You may also want your LMS to have a social learning component. Of course, the exact specs of this depend on the goals and challenges of your business, but integrations are such a critical part of the process.Optimize With Data Science
Regardless of how you approach your organization’s learning journey, you should always be thinking about an analytics component. Key metrics and success indicators for your L&D programs should be discussed early and often. They should also be evaluated after the program is launched to help fine-tune the process and continue the learning journey into the future. The more you track about your users, the more correlations you can associate with success.Data can also inform different development paths or goals within your business, and tracking it from the beginning will help you uncover new opportunities. Many organizations will include an initial skills assessment as part of their training program, which not only provides a baseline for competencies, but also drives engagement and self-awareness among the users. There’s a long-term play here too: With more data on your employee skillsets, you are in a better position to serve focused learning content long-term. By integrating a recommendation engine, you can ensure that employees are getting relevant training right when it becomes available.
Uncovering a Custom L&D Program
As a trusted partner in building out learning programs, Kineo does not claim to be your end-all-be-all solution. Instead, we take pride in knowing how to adapt to custom challenges and bring technologies together in an effective way. HR departments don’t have to facilitate learning and development alone.If you’d like to discuss your organization's learning plan, reach out to us at [email protected].
