How To Build Your Program On Solid Foundation
As discussed in the eBook Release: Beyond Buzzwords—A Three-Step Guide To Simplify Modern Learning, your commitment to building a modern learning culture means being able to reasonably prove that your efforts drive outcomes like better employee performance, more consistent customer success, a more energized culture, and reduced risks for the company. You want to align learning with the goals of the business.
Regardless of what types of courses you create and deliver, what LMS you use, and what devices your learners prefer, there are at least 3 pillars that must be in place to support a modern learning culture—and meet the needs of today’s workforce.
Understanding The 3 Pillars
These 3 pillars are the foundations of a modern learning culture. Understanding the reason they exist is key to the success of any L&D program.
Modern Learning Should Be Continuous
Delivering on the promise of ongoing learning is more attainable than ever because we have the technology to make it possible—and possibly even easy. We can integrate the LMS with other platforms to weave learning into people’s day-to-day workflows. Training no longer requires breaking away from your “real focus” to develop an isolated skill. Now, it can be experienced within the parameters of a job function, while still expanding expertise in that very function. Continuous learning is also simply a sign of the times. Technology has pushed the pace of business to unprecedented speeds. Professionals in any role and in any industry can attest to needing to know more new things faster than ever. If people don’t continuously learn, their skills become stale—or worse, obsolete—at an unprecedented rate. Further still, when people stop learning, motivation can significantly decrease. L&D departments need to keep teams equipped to meet these changing requirements and to prepare people for ongoing success.
Modern Learning Should Be Content-rich
A variety of technologies now make it not only possible but also easy to offer engaging off-the-shelf content that you didn’t create yourself. Why reinvent the wheel developing courses on common topics like policy and compliance, customer service, sales mastery, leadership and management, and many others? You can purchase professionally developed, video-based content that covers your bases without wasting a second attempting to animate a single graphic. What’s more, utilizing prebuilt content frees you up to work on the proprietary stuff. Inevitably, every organization will have some amount of company-specific training that must be created in-house. The key point, however, is that a modern learning culture should shift the balance away from creating and more toward curating. It’s putting yourself and your learners at a disadvantage to try to shoulder the entire content burden without third-party help.
Modern Learning Should Be Immediate
While traditional L&D models pushed courses to people and required them to be completed within an assigned timeframe, today’s learners are taking control of their own development. They’re reaching out for new information on a daily basis. We’ve all become accustomed to—and quite enamored with—a “search engine mindset.” When we want answers, we want them now. There’s no turning back on this reality. L&D departments must throw out old ideas about only making information available as it’s ready to be “pushed.” The new norm is to provide access to a rich library of on-demand content.
A modern learner is someone who is in an environment where content changes fast and learning needs change even faster. Modern learners want answers right away and rely on a wide variety of sources to find the answer. In other words, almost everyone today is a modern learner!
In Conclusion
There is much more to modern learning than just the 3 pillars. Download the eBook Beyond Buzzwords: A Three-Step Guide To Simplify Modern Learning and learn more about how to battle outdated learning beliefs, assess your learners, and embrace a modern learning culture.