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Listen to the Voices of Measuring and Evaluating Training: Mary L. Broad

Mary L. Broad

HRD innovation for substance abuse prevention

As the founder of Velocity, LLC, The Conversation Company™, which emphasizes the art of strategic conversation using 4SConversations, Jill has spearheaded innovative programs for employees from corporations such as American Express, The Walt Disney Company, Elizabeth Arden, L’Oreal, Mary Kay, Donna Karan, Reebok International and Turner Broadcasting. Her approach to employee motivation and wellness has been highlighted at change management best–practices conferences worldwide. Contact her at jill@4Sconversations.net

Jill Miller

Elliott Masie has been the host and curator of many L&D seminars, labs, and conferences throughout the past 30 years. He is a provocative, engaging, and entertaining researcher, educator, analyst, and speaker who is focused on the changing world of the workplace, learning, and technology. He is acknowledged as the first analyst to use the term e-learning and has advocated for a sane deployment of learning and collaboration technology as a means of supporting the effectiveness and profitability of enterprises.He heads The MASIE Center, a Saratoga Springs, New York, think tank focused on how organizations can support learning and knowledge within the workforce. He leads the Elliott Masie Learning CONSORTIUM , a coalition of more than 150 global organizations cooperating on the evolution of learning strategies, including American Express, General Electric, McDonald’s, General Motors, and Fidelity Investments.He is the editor of Elliott Masie’s Learning TRENDS, an Internet newsletter read by more than 52,000 business executives worldwide, and a regular columnist in professional publications, including Chief Learning Officer magazine. He is the author of 12 books, including the ASTD /MASIE Center’s Big Learning Data. Masie’s next book, EveryDay Learning, is scheduled to publish in September 2020.His professional focus has been in the fields of corporate learning, organizational performance, and emerging technology. He has developed models for accelerating the spread of knowledge, learning, and collaboration throughout organizations.He serves as an advisor to a wide range of government, education, and nonprofit groups and has served on the board of trustees of Skidmore College as a member of FIRST Robotics board of directors and Williamstown Theatre Festival. He has served as a pro bono advisor to the Department of Defense and on the White House Advisory Council on Expanding Learning Opportunities as well as a member of the CIA University board of visitors.Masie is known as a highly approachable speaker and trainer who blends humor, applicable stories of best practices, and high levels of audience involvement. During the past 35 years, he has presented programs, courses, and speeches to more than 3,100,000 professionals around the world. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, owns thoroughbred horses, and is a Tony Award–nominated Broadway producer of shows including Kinky Boots, An American in Paris, The Prom, The Cher Show, Anastasia, The Play That Goes Wrong, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical, and most recently, Seared.

Elliott Masie

The ATD Talent Development and Training in Healthcare Handbook (ATD Press, November 2021) addresses the many opportunities and challenges TD professionals face in the growing and rapidly changing healthcare space. Effective talent development is the thread that weaves through an entire healthcare organization to ensure it is up to standard with the latest practices in treating patients while providing a safe and engaging environment for staff. TD professionals have the unique role of tying together organizational and employee advancement in healthcare systems—and likewise, this handbook dives into areas for both business and professional evolution.Niranjani Chidamber Papavaritis is the former head of content for ATD's healthcare and government industry verticals, and she was the editor for ATD Talent Development and Training in Healthcare Handbook. In this spotlight Q&A, learn more about Papavaritis and her contribution to the book.What distinguishes or differentiates talent development in the healthcare field from talent development more broadly?Healthcare is a nuanced field that is continuously evolving, innovating (then re-innovating), and one-upping itself with breakthroughs. Provider spaces, specifically, contain multidimensional factors, making talent development priorities one-of-a-kind.Unlike other industries, healthcare deals with the most essential components of the human experience: birth, injury, functionality, physical and mental well-being, and mortality. Furthermore, every component of healthcare learning and development ends up impacting two distinct groups of people: the primary audience of employees and workforces within the industry and a deeper, embedded audience of patients who receive care from these healthcare professionals. That grants trainers direct and indirect influence that can be seen at every turn in a hospital hallway.There’s a quote from the show Scrubs that summarizes how everything a health provider does is done with the intention of staving off injury and death. “You’re in medicine. You gotta accept the fact that everything we do here—everything—is a stall.” (For the record, I don’t refer to this show for medical advice … but it has some great one-liners that aptly describe working in a hospital.) Talent development professionals must train with that ultimate goal in mind—to equip every employee with the right skillset to keep the hospital thriving to provide high-quality patient care.Trainers wear several caps simultaneously, approaching topics from a business perspective, a clinical perspective, an employee-development perspective, a broader organization-development/culture perspective, and a patient-care perspective. Though the multiple ongoing priorities, workforce demographics, job functionalities and concentrations are seemingly siloed, talent development is the glue that brings them all together to form an interconnected, symbiotic business. This handbook provides a comprehensive spectrum of the healthcare talent development landscape, categorized into six broad fields: L&D basics, organization development, employee development, business acumen for the health system, digital transformation and literacy, and patient-centric care.What are some of the challenges or barriers to talent development in healthcare?I recently started Dr. Rana Awdish’s book In Shock (which I highly recommend to anyone in healthcare leadership or TD), and she explains, “Healthcare is exceedingly complex. Errors will inevitably occur at even the best hospitals. What seems different … is the transparent willingness to acknowledge that we are a learning organization.” That resonated so deeply for me.Efficient talent development has a high return on investment (ROI) for any organization or individual’s professional growth. Unfortunately, healthcare has limited resources for talent development priorities, which are typically underfunded and need more support from leaders. Training is an ongoing process—a necessary supplement to knowledge and preparedness gained from medical/business/law school—to allow for continuous growth and upskilling through one’s career and the organization’s lifespan.Challenges arise in delivering more comprehensive training when the workforce does not always work a typical 9–5 day. Non-clinical staff are available at different times than clinicians and nurses, who work shifts spanning all hours of the day. Furthermore, training delivery needs to be easy, digestible, and time-sensitive not to overload practitioners, who already juggle numerous tasks mentally. Current mundane modules or mandatory in-person lessons are not always seen as relevant, but rather as distractions from daily tasks—and that method and perception of training needs to shift drastically.Furthermore, the internal structure of health systems doesn’t lend itself to a cohesive organization; the onus falls on talent development professionals to bring moving parts together. Departments are siloed, functioning independently with its own set of norms and practices. This extends throughout the industry as well. The limited training resources and success stories that do exist are contained within their respective health systems, and they are shared only on a microscale through mediums among the broader provider space network.While there may be differing priorities within specialties, there needs to be uniformity in training practices for interdepartmental collaboration—so that all the moving parts can come together to run as one smooth entity of the health system. And for successful (and unsuccessful) practices to be shared within the industry at large.Continuous education should be a part of healthcare careers and organization culture, and through robust talent development initiatives, practitioners and leaders can stay current with the latest trends such as digital literacy, management styles, and interpersonal skills. The ROI for training needs to be better recognized by those in leadership positions. They have the power of positive influence, the ability to guide decisions for an organization’s trajectory that will better serve employee development and performance improvement.How is the COVID-19 pandemic changing talent development in healthcare? What talent development needs does the healthcare field have as a result of the pandemic?Every aspect of healthcare performance has been impacted by the pandemic; areas of change management, leadership development, and patient care were especially put to the test and continue to be amended on-the-fly. The past two years have changed the entire landscape for talent development, making it evident that the industry needs 1) a more collaborative approach, strengthening teambuilding and interdepartmental collaboration, and 2) a more focused, concerted effort to improve training practices at every employee level and specialty area.A very pressing issue, requiring immediate attention, is physician and nurse well-being. With the pandemic raging since early 2020, clinicians are exhausted in every way possible. I’ve read truly heartbreaking recounts from clinicians who are barely staying afloat emotionally, questioning their entire career paths due to how worn out they are. With increasing turnover rates, the acute care infrastructure is increasingly short-staffed, causing more stress and overload.Addressing burnout and tactics to build resilience requires an all-encompassing re-evaluation of leadership development. Leaders who employ adaptive and effective management styles can bring together aspects of teambuilding, organizational safety and reliability, performance improvement, and value-based care to create a long-term, sustainable approach to addressing clinician well-being. To achieve success, focus needs to be brought back to the humanistic elements of the industry—care and empathy—not just for patients, but for the workforce as well, finding ways to better incorporate these qualities in a health system’s culture.I explored some of these trends as shifts were occurring and found that digital transformation was reshaping the landscape entirely as health systems adjusted to remote workforces and provided care through telehealth platforms. New learning technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR) are emerging to revolutionize training delivery, using simulations to create real-life, interactive experiences for departmental priorities.Though the dust hasn’t settled, there has been more time to assess the damage and for talent development professionals to analyze areas for improvement or increased focus within learning and development. Now, more than ever, is the time for TD professionals and trainers to shine.How can talent development help meet the goals of interprofessional education?Effective branding of talent development can provide great opportunities for interprofessional education goals. With broader L&D subject matter experts and healthcare professionals working in tandem, the talent development sphere can help individuals grow in their careers by expanding existing skillsets and/or preparing for new roles. The L&D field holds promise for the growth of the healthcare industry—especially in terms of understanding the neuroscience and behavior of learning to better customize lessons. L&D professionals with expertise in instructional design, training delivery, and continuing education across a spectrum of workforces have great insight and successes that can be customized to the healthcare space.On the flip side, those in healthcare can provide innovative insight to the broader L&D world as well. Practitioners and healthcare trainers have firsthand experience working with tight schedules, juggling multiple priorities, moving on fast deadlines, and dealing with the most crucial kinds of change management and interpersonal relationships through both employee engagement and patient engagement.As mentioned earlier, effective executive leadership is key to forming and sustaining such collaborations. Health systems have a lot to learn from both successes and setbacks of the past 22 months—takeaways that can influence future training for all employees. It’s up to leaders to ensure that talent development professionals receive support to provide interprofessional education opportunities and employees feel motivated to meet such goals for their own growth and performance development.What are your goals for the ATD Talent Development and Training in Healthcare Handbook? What impact do you hope this book has on the field?I can’t tell you how incredibly excited and proud I am that this handbook was created! Having an evergreen resource that can enhance the TD sphere within healthcare has been a long time coming! This handbook is truly groundbreaking and has the potential to positively impact everyone who steps into a provider space.When the book first launched in November, I discussed how “an ongoing emphasis on learning and development is the key to success” for “the constant, multiple moving parts and various groups of workforces (clinical, nonclinical, multigenerational, interdepartmental, interpersonal, as examples) that are engaged daily…”.There are case studies and take-aways from experts that can support trainers and leaders to create a collaborative environment; where systems and priorities don’t need to be siloed, and each part of a health system can come together to create a united organizational culture. Up until a few months ago, there has not been a resource pulling together expertise from multiple healthcare leaders, practitioners, consultants, and innovators. It’s somewhat poetic how the collaboration within this handbook is an example for the collaboration potential that exists within the industry.I am passionate about the intersection of business acumen and interpersonal skillsets within leadership development, as it is the perfect combination for impactful patient care. Healthcare leaders who are reskilled and upskilled to use analytic business acumen, interwoven with empathy, EQ, and compassion, can shape provider spaces into well-rounded care facilities. Because it is the first-of-its-kind, I’m hoping for tangible results in teambuilding, so that existing gaps in interdepartmental priorities can be filled.While the handbook is geared toward talent development professionals, my goal when forming it was to bring out possibilities for improved leadership within each chapter and topic area. I wanted every leader and manager to find tangible advice as they are often “accidental trainers” themselves. This handbook provides countless opportunities for improved training and leadership—for anyone who finds themselves in a training role, including talent development professionals and trainers, C-suite executives, clinicians, and managers or heads of departments, who often find themselves coaching others at various points during their careers.This provides a promise for organizational, employee, and patient wellness not just during turbulence, but for long-term sustainable success within the industry. The wide array of topics covered by some of the best subject matter experts within this book can ideally contribute to increased innovation, collaboration, and organizational culture at micro and macro scales, bringing about interdepartmental successes.As the field continues to evolve with medical breakthroughs, I hope this handbook will help reimagine talent development initiatives for all providers—health systems, the armed services, EMTs, private practices, local state and city departments of health, and more. And ultimately, I hope this handbook brings out the very best in every employee and function so we can better serve our communities with the highest quality of care.

Meeting Talent Development Goals in Healthcare: Q&A With Niranjani Chidamber Papavaritis

If you work at an organization with a large deskless workforce, you know just how difficult it can be to upskill and reskill employees. Deskless workers are often on the front lines or hard at work earning revenue for the business. They’re interacting with patients or customers, doing work out in the field, or on the road—delivering goods or offering services. Employers may be hesitant to take them “off the job” for training. Patty Gaul, senior writer and editor for the Association for Talent Development, explored this topic in a recent article.“An L&D leader may learn that a company doesn’t include training time as a bucket of employee time,” she writes. “The organization encourages their managers to hurry their direct reports to their stations or positions (such as the manufacturing line, cash register, or delivery route) rather than giving employees the time to learn how to do their immediate work well. This negatively affects workers’ knowledge and, in the end, motivation.” Research shows that poor training also puts staff in danger—instances of human error causing occupational accidents are more likely when workers are under-skilled.There’s an opportunity cost as well. Gaul writes: “Too often, leaders train these workers only when there’s a problem, not taking advantage of the opportunity that development affords.” Employers that do not invest in training may be leaving productivity gains and a competitive advantage on the table.With all the benefits L&D offers—and all the challenges it can help your organization avoid—how can you train your deskless workforce in the most effective way possible? Giving learners more options to complete their training can help. Employees don’t have to be chained to a desk or sitting in a classroom to learn and develop. A little bit of L&D creativity can go a long way. Read on to discover four strategies to motivate your deskless employees to fit training into their busy schedules.1. Give Learners the Flexibility to Learn Wherever They Happen to BeMost workers want to learn new skills and are intrinsically motivated to improve and develop. A recent survey shows that seven out of 10 workers feel more connected to their organization when they’re learning. A further eight out of 10 say learning gives them a sense of purpose at work.Giving deskless workers the opportunity to access this kind of purpose can drastically improve their job satisfaction—and extend their tenure too. Research shows that having a strong culture of learning can improve employee retention by up to 57 percent. Some employees may associate learning with taking notes in a lecture hall, or sitting in front of a computer—but “studying” shouldn’t have to equal “desk.” The solution to helping deskless employees learn and develop is already in their pockets. When staff can complete their training right from their mobiles, wherever they happen to be, a whole world of opportunity opens up to them.Did you know that Bridge LMS, an all-in-one solution for training and upskilling staff, comes with the intuitive, user-friendly Bridge Learning app as standard? The app, available for both iOS and Android, makes it simple and easy for employees to complete their learning, whenever, wherever.Learners can even access content without Wi-Fi. This makes the learning experience seamless. They can start their training in a break room, for example, and effortlessly keep their momentum going when traveling to a field site. They’ll have key insights on the topics that matter to them at their fingertips—even in the most remote locations. With Wi-Fi-less learning, a bus, a train, a factory floor, their kitchen, and even the most far-flung location can instantly become an inspiring classroom.2. Help Staff Keep Their Learning on TrackResearch shows that there’s a strong correlation between motivation and learning outcomes. Setting smaller goals and steadily working toward them can help people stay committed to their targets. Breaking a big learning target down into less intimidating, achievable goals can be tremendously helpful. This is particularly true for deskless workers who may work in isolation or don’t get much contact with leadership. Boston Consulting Group stated that: “[A] major issue is the limited access deskless workers have to corporate communication systems like email and intranets. These tools are often designed with desk-based employees in mind[...]This communication gap can lead to a sense of isolation, making these workers feel disconnected from the organization’s broader goals and culture.”Choosing an LMS that helps you keep every learner on track, wherever they happen to be, can make all the difference. With Bridge Mobile, push notifications remind learners when a course is due. This relieves them of the cognitive load of managing their own learning and development schedule.Admins can easily track enrollments, missed deadlines, and course completion rates. They can generate intuitive reports in a few clicks and share data-powered insights with the wider organization. This empowers managers to intervene with support at the right time. Regular contact from well-informed managers means reports feel less at sea and more empowered to meet the development goals that matter to them.3. Be Realistic About Learning Challenges and Prepare for HiccupsAs useful as remote training is, it does come with challenges. If it’s not properly managed, it can open the door to miscommunication or inefficient learning. Workers may encounter technical difficulties, for instance, and feel that these headaches are a significant burden after a long shift on their feet or on the go.Tech challenges can have a big impact on morale, even among younger generations. Research shows that just under 50 percent of young graduates surveyed across the globe feel their level of technical expertise has left them unprepared for the workforce. As many as one in five young workers say they feel “judged” when they don’t know how to solve a tech issue. Tech headaches can be exacerbated for deskless staff who work far from a central IT team and may not have admin time built into their schedule. The key is to accept that challenges may arise from time to time and prepare for them in advance. Your first line of defense will naturally be to choose a mobile LMS with a very simple, clean interface, and intuitive, user-friendly features. Bridge Mobile offers a straightforward experience with uncomplicated dashboards. Learners can easily navigate between their courses, learning libraries, and agendas. User-friendly design isn’t the only factor though. Choosing an LMS provider known for meticulous onboarding and responsive customer service can also help you stay ahead of tech challenges. The last thing you want is for a learner to lose their motivation for good because of a minor technical hiccup that could be solved with a few simple instructions. This is why Bridge offers comprehensive onboarding. Our expert teams work with your admins to make sure they fully understand our app’s capabilities. When admins know features inside out, implementation is easy—and they’re empowered to help their team as and when required. It’s thanks in part to our outstanding onboarding that we recently achieved a customer satisfaction score of 93 percent. We also offer tech support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This means deskless workers with unusual hours don’t need to fall behind on their learning just because they need a bit of extra support. We have an excellent service team—and we’re proud to share that our customers love us for it. A representative from US-based construction and engineering company Rudolph and Sletten said: “Bridge LMS is exceptionally user-friendly, featuring an intuitive and clean interface that simplifies navigation for both administrators and learners. The customer support is outstanding—easily accessible and remarkably patient in understanding and resolving even the most challenging scenarios.”4. Offer Accessible, Engaging, and Personalized Learning for AllWhen staff feel that instructions are passed down from some invisible authority, they may feel less motivated to learn. On the other hand, intrinsic motivation—wanting to complete a task because it is fun, interesting, or helpful—can be a crucial factor for successful learning. Employers can promote intrinsic motivation by making employees feel competent and autonomous.To achieve this, personalizing learning is key. Especially when you consider the type of tasks deskless workers tend to do. Deskless workers are the lifeblood of many organizations. Every hour away from their daily tasks is an hour away from crucial activity that drives their company’s revenue or underpins their organization’s ethos. When the stakes are this high, cookie-cutter learning content can feel like a waste of time.Bridge Mobile can help you steer clear of one-size-fits-all courses. It empowers you to deliver personalized learning journeys for every employee. Managers can assign courses that align with specific, individual targets—and employees always have a clear view of their progress over time. This means that they’ll have a little bit of motivation to keep learning, and easy access to that learning wherever they are.Because the app stores tasks, ideas, achievements, and due dates all in one place, employees have their own, personal space to work toward their goals. This can help them feel like your organization is invested in improving their experience at work, instead of just forcing standardized training en masse.Crucially, Bridge also makes content more accessible for every learner. The app supports 20 different languages, so you can keep your employees of all backgrounds engaged and inspired. It also complies with WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) at AA-level. This means:It’s easy to use with assistive technologies, like screen readers.There’s good color contrast between any text and background.Content is organized under clear headings, in a logical order.Navigation buttons or elements are consistent across the app.

4 Ways to Effectively Train Your Deskless Workforce 

Often when we’re frustrated at work, it’s not so much because of the company we work for, but rather the specific role we’re in. Personality type, as described by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument (MBTI®), offers insight into certain preferences—particularly for how we take in information and make decisions,  which heavily contribute to on-the-job satisfaction. The more we work within our preferences, the more energized and less drained we’ll feel. As discussed in my previous post, your current job may not map well to your preferences. However, if the broader company culture is more in line with who you are and your personality, pursuing a new role within the organization might be preferable to looking elsewhere for employment. Just as personality types describe human beings, you can in fact “type” a company, department, or role by observing how information is gathered and decisions are made.. Use personality type as a guide for determining a better fitting role—looking at what is not only required of an individual, but also what skills and attributes are most sought after in various departments. Identifying What You Really Want to Do Children are often asked: “What do you want to be when you grow up?” In seeking a new role within your company, a better question to ask yourself is: “What do you want to do?” By discovering the kinds of tasks and responsibilities that line up with your core motivators, you can more accurately identify a more satisfying role within your current company. According Allen L. Hammer in “Introduction to Type® and Careers,” you can begin by asking yourself:What do I want to do on a day-to-day basis?Where do I want to be in one, five or ten years?What kind of people do I want to work with?What kind of working environment do I find most comfortable?What kind of working environment allows me to be most productive?What motivates me to do my best? Regarding this last point, while preferences for Thinking (T) or Feeling (F) describe how we make decisions, Sensing (S) and Intuition (N) describe the types of information that we base those decisions on, and the combination of these indicates what will most motivate us at work:ST:  achieving bottom line resultsSF: offering practical serviceNF: making a meaningful differenceNT: improving the system. Research shows that people actually self-select into occupations that coincide with these middle letter preferences. For example, if you have an F preference, you may experience great satisfaction in a role where you get to help or support other people. This can manifest itself in a number of ways—helping customers, mentoring, serving on an advisory board, improving society, or making the world a better place. Additionally, for those with a preference for Feeling, keep in mind that the overall result of your work can also affect your ultimate level of job satisfaction. For instance, you may find that even though you’re not spending as much time performing “helping-type” tasks in your day-to-day activities, you could still be energized by a job that ultimately contributes to a greater good for people. If you work for Habitat for Humanity or at a university, even though your day-to-day activities might not involve direct “helping” activities, knowing you’re a cog in the wheel that makes a difference in peoples’ lives may be enough to keep you energized. Molding Your Own Role If you have a preference for Sensing and Thinking, yet find yourself in a position that requires a lot of one-on-one counseling, you may want to seek out a position that allows you to conduct data analysis with an emphasis on the here and now, or even seek out these types of responsibilities within your current job. For example, I often work with career counselors who have preferences for ST, but their profession requires them to frequently use their non-preferred Intuition and Feeling functions. Although they usually report that they like their jobs overall, they also say their jobs are very draining and frustrating when they spend too many hours in a direct helping role. However, if they’re able to seek out activities that allow them to work within their natural preferences, such as analyzing career assessments, critiquing resumes, running the office operations or managing departmental technology, they can achieve a renewed enthusiasm for their roles. In general, if you can cherry pick enough activities that match your own preferences and integrate them into your daily role, you will be much more satisfied and energized in your current position.  Having the Patience to Work Your Way Up Sometimes there’s not an immediate solution because developing the skills and expertise to operate in certain roles takes time. If you have a preference for Thinking, for example, you may enjoy logical objective decision making, and like to look for what is wrong with the system so you can fix it. The question is, are you far along enough in your career to initiate and implement change? Let’s face it, most teams don’t take well to junior-level employees telling them what’s wrong with what they’re doing, regardless of how on-point their advice may be. In some cases, you may have to stick it out for a while, building your level of expertise and influence before you are able to take on more of a “fixer” role. You may experience frustration along the way, as you’ll likely witness incompetence in both leaders and peers that you would like to “fix,” but don’t have the power to do anything about it, yet. Instead, use your current position to gain the expertise and, eventually, the level of authority to implement change, so you can grow into a role that you’ll find very satisfying and allows you to do what comes most naturally.

Frustrated at Work Part II: Using Personality Type to Find a Better Role at Your Company

In 1996, Abraham Maslow (best known for his theorem of the hierarchy of needs in psychology) quipped that “I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” Two years earlier, the American philosopher Abraham Kaplan made a similar observation: “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.”This adage came to life in my own family recently, when we learned that our future daughter-in-law found her new car covered with a half inch of ice after an overnight storm. Not sure what to do, she found a hammer in the trunk and proceeded to use it to smash the ice loose from bumper to bumper. Predictably, it was difficult to convince her insurance carrier to reimburse her for the multiple broken windows and sheet metal dents. (I’m sorry to confess that she will fit in nicely with our family!)What does this have to do with business and training? A great deal. Let me explain: Recently, I have become concerned that the “hammer du jour” in our metaphoric trunk is high technology.First, let me say that this article is not a Luddite rant against technology per se. This new millennium has brought to our training tool boxes a host of promising, wonderful technologies like web-based training, virtual instructor-led classrooms, simulations, gaming, and social media, to name a few. These tools make it easier to deliver training to more learners, less expensively, more consistently, and across broader geographies and time zones. In short, we can get more done with less as a result of the technology advances that have emerged.However, there is a tendency for people to use these technologies like the proverbial hammer. Some organizations have pushed forms of e-learning into cultures with little online learning interest and/or infrastructure. Others have insisted on taking an exclusively “high-tech” approach to teaching “high-touch” skills such as coaching and conflict resolution.More recently, the universal technology panacea in some quarters seems to be the application of new social media technologies to learning (a.k.a. “Learning 2.0”). The notion that most people learn better and enjoy it more in a social environment is inarguable. For that matter, the traditional classroom (when led by an interactive teacher or facilitator) can be a very social milieu within which to learn, particularly if the learning objectives are focused on human skills, such as leadership.The DownsideThe social media buzz, meanwhile, is about technology-based interactive experiences including blogs, chat rooms, and discussion forums, not to mention the wildly successful commercial social platforms—Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Yammer. Clearly, these tools can be harnessed within our organizations to make learning more interactive, involving, and spontaneous, while also spanning geography and generation, and capitalizing on the collective wisdom of groups.However, some of these platforms can be risky for organizations in terms of security and legal liability. Technology can sometimes be surprisingly difficult and inconsistent. Corporate firewalls can be fussy about what they let through. And technology is always changing, which is good for progress but frustrating for infrastructure investments.In addition, corporate cultures differ, just like people do, and what is easily adopted in one organization may be ineffective in another. And finally, there are regional and international variances in uptake, technology, and governing laws and institutions. Thus, the promise of social media is tempered by the complexities and uncertainties experienced by organizations to varying degrees.Force-Fitting Doesn’t WorkUnfortunately, some learning and development professionals have tried to force-fit social learning tools and platforms into topics and cultures, whether or not they are necessarily well-suited. And regardless of the tools in our tool box, a few maxims about effective learning systems haven’t changed. Next week, I’ll post these tenets of learning systems design that are key, despite mode or technology. I’ll also list a few guiding principles for using social technologies.

Training, Technology, and "The Law of the Hammer": Part 1

We all do it. We cram as much content into a training course as we can. Why? Because once we get an employee’s attention, we have to take advantage of that time; otherwise, we may not see these learners again for some time to come.But what if we could do it differently? What if, instead of providing learning assets that employees use only once every few months (see How the Workforce Learns from Degreed), L&D provided learning assets that learners were more likely to use every week or every day?To be more supportive and involved in employees’ work lives, try providing learning assets\* that match the moments when learners want or need to learn. This is the essence of the Owens-Kadakia Learning Cluster Design (LCD) that we developed and share in our new book Designing for Modern Learning: Beyond ADDIE and SAM. It leverages current learning theories like Mosher and Gottfredson’s 5 moments of Learning Need to advance the L&D field into today’s digital world.We see L&D’s new job as targeting on-the-job behavior change. To do so, we developed a strategic model to identify and design learning assets that match moments of learning needs for diverse learners across their flow of work. Now we can break massive learning content into just the right size for the learner and put the learning in a place where employees can find and use it. While larger classes and courses are part of the strategy, meeting the day to day needs is included in the mix.Picture this example:Maria, an employee who has never worked remotely, is attending a Zoom meeting for the first time. She gets an email link inviting her to the online video team meeting. Her company knows about the five moments and includes several links in their email invitation template. The links include information for first time users and meeting leaders as well as about how to get more out of Zoom. The links take her to the company LMS where she finds content she feels most anxious about on Zoom. Maria feels confident that, because it’s on Zoom’s website, it will be more up to date, and because she found the link on the company LMS, it’s relevant to her. She reads the content, takes the recommended actions, and has a great meeting experience.A few days later, Maria gets an email via the LMS asking her how her Zoom experience was, if the training material was helpful, and if she would like to get a Zoom user badge. If she wants the badge, she should click a link to an online quiz. Passing the quiz gets her the badge.Can you envision a more traditional experience? Maria may have accepted the invite but not known where to go for assistance, felt anxious about trying new technology, and had no choice but to wait until the moment of the meeting to discover issues. By having a simple “learning asset” of links on an email invitation template, L&D has empowered Maria to learn her way through her first Zoom meeting within the flow of her work and without attending a course.What’s the difference between designing training and a learning cluster?When we design training, we tend to set up individual programs that are typically one-and-done. With a learning cluster, we have the luxury of setting up a group of learning assets that:Provide a large swath of content, but in smaller segments.Target particular groups of learners with content adjusted for their needs.Help learners easily find content when they want or need to learn more.Allow for spaced learning.Avoid the “stuff everything in” approach so that it’s easier for L&D to design.For a learning cluster to be effective, the related learning assets are designed as a set and managed so that learners can find them when, where, and how the employee needs to learn. This may be a different way of distributing your L&D content, but we think it’s worth it.After all, wouldn’t you rather be helping employees learn daily instead of just once every few months? Let’s start getting the business impact we want and start designing learning clusters that surround our learners with meaningful learning assets rather than one and done training.Learn more about the LCD model through the book and by connecting with us at lcdworkshop.com.\*Learning asset: A broad term describing a wide range of things that help people learn, including reading material, online searches, classes (F2F or virtual), discussions, video, or even a motivational poster. It can be as small as a 30-second audio recording or as large as a three-month class.

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