Corporate learning as we know it is too often “rooted in 20th-century management practice”, reflecting an outdated era of fixed responsibilities and single career paths, according to Deloitte’s Will Gosling.

Today, that model is broken. With disruptive technology now fuelling a rapid change in the nature of all our jobs, skills need to be “far broader, as well as deeper”, as working lives extend, Mr Gosling, partner and human capital lead, argues.

If traditional learning and development (L&D) is already wrestling with a number of practical challenges for the longer term, most notably the short shelf life of skills and the skills gap itself, the biggest obstacle may be cultural.

For while collaborative learning and information-sharing is transforming society as a whole, the top-down, directive learning, which remains the norm in many organisations, strikes a discordant note. To Mr Gosling, the need to engage staff in their own career development has never been more pressing.

“There is great demand for lifelong learning that isn’t being met, particularly for the new generations who may change direction a number of times in the course of a career,” he says.

“That sort of fluidity cannot be met by the old model of 70 per cent on the job, 20 per cent self-taught and 10 per cent hero-based, classroom learning, particularly if it doesn’t tap into the myriad number of disruptive online and mobile content now available.”

If the notion of flipped classrooms and democratised learning may keep more entrenched L&D professionals awake at night, lack of budgets certainly shouldn’t.

But while Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report notes that companies now spend more than $130 billon on training and development worldwide, many “still struggle to provide a modern online learning experience”, it says.

There is great demand for lifelong learning that isn’t being met, particularly for the new generations who may change direction a number of times in the course of a career

Although only 5 per cent of respondents believe they have “mastered the content and technology capabilities needed to make online learning an accessible tool and a compelling experience”, more than two-thirds see this as urgent or important.

For Mr Gosling, budget size masks systemic problems in approach. “A tremendous amount of workplace learning money is wasted by ignoring the sheer power of user-generated content,” he says.

Embrace online tools

By embracing the online tools, which have reinvigorated the consumer landscape, L&D can earn its keep and remain relevant for coming generations, however.

Although inconsistent tracking of data, plus an inability to demonstrate return on investment, remain of concern, Mr Gosling raises another issue.

“Budgets may be healthy, but there can be a problem with choosing the right learning provider and service for the result an employer wishes to achieve,” he says.

While ownership of L&D can also be tricky – should sole responsibility rest with human resources or should the business as a whole embrace the need for learning? – the overarching need to ensure learners are fully on board with a skills programme is surely not.

Yet to Lorri Freifeld, editor-in-chief of the Minnesota-based Training magazine, many employers are still not getting the message that away from the arena of mandatory compliance training, employee engagement is critical.

“Just because companies are spending big money on L&D doesn’t mean they are measuring results, reinforcing messages after the event or indeed using those dollars wisely,” she says.

“They may not be providing the training in the way employees want to learn, particularly millennials, who may prefer on-demand learning via their phones or tablets, or they may not be giving sales employees, say, enough time or flexibility in their schedules to actually access the course.”

While it is vital for trainers to emphasise what she calls the “what’s in it for me?” aspect of L&D and actively market the career-long benefits to staff, it’s important to be realistic about learners, Ms Freifeld believes.

“Even if employees do attend, it doesn’t mean some aren’t checking their email on their phones during the classroom sessions or working on a project while participating in webinar training,” she says.

But if they really want to attend, are happy to work at their skills and genuinely want to learn, L&D has the power to move mountains.

It is a cliché, but it’s true: the world of work is changing at an unprecedented pace. The World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2018 predicts more than half (54 per cent) of all employees will require significant upskilling by 2022 and 133 million jobs could be created through the advent of new technology.

Meanwhile, a 2019 study by IBM’s Institute for Business Value forecasts 120 million workers from the world’s top 12 economies will need retraining by 2021, but warns that training programmes are failing to meet demand. In 2014, it took three days of training to close a skills gap in enterprise, but by 2018 that had risen to 36 days.

At the same time, employment rates in the UK and America are at record highs, giving little scope to bring new employees into business despite the need for continued growth.

It’s this backdrop of volatility and uncertainty that requires learning and development (L&D) professionals to change approach, argues Dr Ben Betts, chief product officer at Learning Pool, one of the UK’s leading learning technology providers.

“Firstly, North America and much of Europe is facing a productivity problem. Growth has slowed and production rates have remained static or fallen into decline. While it’s proving difficult to assess exactly what has caused the slowdown, there is an undertone of workplaces needing to get more out of our people and that they are somehow underperforming and need to work harder or smarter,” he says.

“Secondly, and perhaps more worryingly, there are huge numbers of people who are going to have to retrain to meet the demands of future work, particularly those in routine equipment operation and basic data entry. We continue to lack social, higher-cognitive and emotional skills such as negotiation, problem-solving and creativity, precisely those skills that machines cannot learn.

“But we can’t teach all these skills as the demand is too big. Employees will have to get used to helping themselves. What we’re doing at the moment isn’t hitting the productivity bottom line. And, even if it was working, the skills we’ll need in the future can’t always be taught through traditional methods and tools. Workplace learning needs to change.“

Cultural and technological shift

Dr Betts believes that the L&D profession needs to undertake a fundamental cultural and technological shift, moving away from being a manager of learning to a curator of ideas for self-learning to meet the demands of reskilling the workforce.

“When you look at the skills we’ll need in the future, such as better leadership, what we really don’t need is another rehash of a popular leadership model. This content has been done by hundreds of people. Moreover, creating new content for every required skill isn’t scalable for L&D departments, which are already time pressured,” he says.

“Instead, the role becomes about aggregating a range of quality models and opinions appropriate to your people, and then handing it over to them to experience. This can give the internal team more time and space to focus on the deep technical skills that only exist within the company’s context and can be taught using more traditional methods.”

Social learning, experiential (learning by doing) and micro-learning (on-demand, single-outcome focused training) have all grown in popularity as L&D departments have embraced technology. These trends chime with how many employees want to learn.

According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning and Development Report 2018, 58 per cent of employees prefer to learn at their own pace, 56 per cent would spend more time learning workplace skills if their line manager encouraged them to do so and 94 per cent would stay at a company longer if it invested more in their career development.

Dr Betts believes the problem isn’t about where and how employees choose to learn, but how L&D departments can legitimise new forms of learning to the C-suite.

“Engagement of employees in traditional training has been a real focus of learning technology over the last few years, counting the hours people spend on courses. But the bottom line is that people have been learning, regardless of ‘seat time’, they just haven’t been doing it through the tools we put out,” he says.

“Instead, they’ve been talking to colleagues or listening to podcasts. This is still learning, but we are missing a trick by always inventing our own training, instead of augmenting generic content with local context, or examining how someone can apply a thought or a theory to their business.”

Start small and then grow, but start now

As technology develops, there are many ways learning professionals can add value. Providing a forum or space for user-generated or social-learning content, even in the form of a WhatsApp group, can provoke discussion and highlight meaningful contributions.

Capturing more data to measure the effectiveness of learning both inside and outside normal “training” platforms, and working to relate learning’s impact directly to business outcomes – for example, has social grouping impacted the number of sales – can help gain both employee and C-suite buy-in.

Ultimately, business as usual isn’t an option for the learning profession if it wants to succeed. However, changing your methodology can be a gradual journey rather than an abrupt change, Dr Betts argues.

“You don’t have to jump straight in, turn off the learning management system and go self-directed; the important thing is to start the journey,” he concludes.

“Start with some small experiments around social or self-managed learning experiences and measure the results. If it works, go to the C-suite and explain what you’ve done and how it works. Then, with buy-in, you’ll be able to attack the macro issues such as skills and automation. Start small and then grow, but start now.”

According to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), only 22 per cent of organisations are actively trying to improve how they gather and analyse data around workplace learning, despite almost all wanting a better understanding of its impact.

Meanwhile, the ROI Institute found at least 80 per cent of chief executives want to know the ROI of learning and development (L&D), yet few get the figures. Time, costs and measurement metrics are among drivers of this mismatch.

“While ROI can be elusive, organisations that do it well are starting with the business metric and examining performance outcomes,” says CIPD head of L&D Andy Lancaster.

“Data proliferates, but its management is harder as it is embedded across the business, requiring broad stakeholder learning to uncover and analyse.

“There are time and resource pressures; a need to invest new time into this practice may not traditionally have been on the agenda.”

ROI of L&D is critical to ensure money is invested wisely and the programme is open to scrutiny.

There are differences between measuring tangible benefits of workplace learning, such as increased revenue and reduced costs, and intangible benefits, like engagement, resulting in higher concentration, wellbeing and commitment to the organisation.

But, ultimately, all roads lead to the same destination, says Professor David Passmore, of Penn State University’s Workforce Education and Development Center.

“There is a lot of ambiguity and lack of definition of what the investment is meant to produce,” he explains.

“People focus on behavioural issues, attempt to raise scores and achieve certifications. But these are proximal outcomes, not the ultimate outcome. Much human capital investment is not orientated to firm financial outcomes.”

A starting point for measuring benefits of workplace learning in terms of business results is to begin analysis before the training to define goals and strategy.

Start with the end in mind is a great mantra to have

A 360-degree process that embeds thinking about ROI at the front end is essential, says Professor Passmore.

“Examining the value of training before the investment is the most critical time, even though all the information won’t be available,” he points out.

CIPD’s Mr Lancaster agrees. “Start with the end in mind is a great mantra to have,” he says, warning against fixating on a one-size-fits-all timescale, rather than considering the organisation’s specific business cycle.

“Trying to measure short-term ROI is prevalent,” says Mr Lancaster. “But it is more useful to examine ROI through the lens of the business cycle. We want instant answers, but behavioural change is not immediate.”

Targeting

At Shell, a cybersecurity training programme was targeted at specific employees after analysis uncovered correlations between certain characteristics and the likelihood of an employee causing a phishing incident or virus download.

This insight meant Shell could target its training programme at around 30 per cent of employees to address half of potential cybersecurity issues.

The positive impact included lowering the risk of security threats, freeing up the IT department’s time, reducing costs by training only employees most likely to breach cybersecurity and improving productivity of low-risk employees not required to complete training.

Accenture bases its learning culture on a one strategy approach, with its business and learning strategies intertwined.

The professional services company wanted to transform digital engagement worldwide, with a future-focused strategy that grew from flexible L&D.

Measuring the success of this strategy was a key action for Accenture, which found revenues from digital, cloud and security-related technologies grew 30 per cent on the previous year and accounted for half of total annual net revenues.

The ROI Institute, which helps organisations evaluate the success of programmes using the ROI methodology developed by its chairman Jack Phillips, found that Global Systems Corporation achieved an almost eight-fold ROI of training tailored to help new recruits enter the corporate world, increase productivity and reduce attrition.

The programme was evaluated at five levels, using focus groups, post-course tests, further focus groups and surveys after six months, and a calculation of financial ROI based on all design, delivery and evaluation costs.

This was assessed against the monetary value of the 10 per cent increase in productivity recorded, as well as a reduction in employee turnover costs, with the total ROI amounting to almost $775,000 (£600,000).

In addition, the Kirkpatrick model, based on the premise that training programmes must derive from the organisation’s primary purpose, such as profitably delivering a product or service to market, has also been used by businesses to gauge the ROI of L&D.

Wendy Kirkpatrick, president of Kirkpatrick Partners, says it shows respect for training departments to be held to the same standard of productivity as other departments.

“For every organisation and any type of training, the same general formula for evaluating the success of L&D programmes applies,” she explains. “The key is to start programme design by considering the organisational-level outcome you wish to impact.

“Many training programmes have intangible benefits that are of great organisational value. Reporting on these outcomes is wise; the more benefit a programme creates, the better story L&D has to tell.”

Technology is aiding and enhancing staff training with a variety of innovative online apps.

1 KPMG uses gamified learning to boost employee knowledge

Globerunner, a web-based, gamified learning app, invites onboarders to gain deeper knowledge about the firm’s 150-plus capabilities on audit, tax and advisory services. The app comes in a question-and-answer format, with single players or teams of learners completing missions, unlocking access to new locations and gaining ranking on a global leader board.

One year after rollout in 30 countries, users had clocked more than one million interactions with the game and recorded a 24 per cent improvement in awareness of the organisation’s range of services.

Higher levels of engagement than other training products were noted, with clear reductions in the knowledge gap between the best and least-informed countries, and across different staff levels.

The absence of a per-user charge makes it a cost-effective alternative to intranet pages, printed documents, on-site programs and product fairs, but KPMG now monitors individual usage of the app to control overuse.

2 AstraZeneca opts for field sales pharma training enabled by artificial intelligence (AI)

A continuous and adaptive AI-powered micro-learning platform has been created to fit into the day-to-day workflow of sales staff based predominantly on the road and with free time between appointments.

It aims to provide personnel with latest data and personalised learning activities in advance of detailed product discussions with experienced medical professionals.

The platform builds a detailed profile for each sales rep, focusing on business-critical areas, such as confidence, knowledge, behaviours and overall business results.

Each learning activity takes just minutes to complete and can be accessed before and between client appointments.

Impact analysis tools suggest that more than 25 per cent of the firm’s sales growth in 2018 was accounted for by the rollout of AI-based training.

3 Verizon learning and development tackles smartphone store theft with virtual reality (VR) simulation

VR and a cast of professional actors have replaced traditional manual-based, classroom training for frontline retail managers vulnerable to retail smash-and-grab robberies at opening and closing times.

The virtual simulation exercise, expected to be rolled out in approximately 1,500 US stores and likely to be extended to include customer service staff, is similar to that used in the FBI’s firearms training and by airline flight simulators.

Having experienced three separate robbery scenarios, store managers are given a dropdown menu of three potential responses before witnessing their own chosen scenario via a VR headset.

After the action has been played out, a detailed debrief tells staff what to look out for to either minimise the chances of their own store being robbed or to help police officers investigate any crime.

Some 85 per cent of course learners said they were now “significantly more confident” they knew what to do in the event of a robbery, understood the need to keep calm and agreed a manager’s prime responsibility was to care for themselves, their customers and employees, rather than the merchandise.

4 Paychex plumps for just-in-time human resource management training

Paychex offers a company-wide, career-long and on-demand approach to learning via easy-to-access, just-in-time virtual training materials, plus instructor-led sessions at a state-of-the-art learning facility at its New York headquarters.

Twelve training libraries, a professional development programme and Paychex TV’s in-house collection of more than 500 training videos aimed at all levels of knowledge and experience are available.

The individual employee development programme is closely aligned with external recruitment campaigns, enhanced customer service drives and overall business success.

A Developu leadership tool for new managers provides ongoing, targeted development focused on core competencies and with strong emphasis on organisational values and culture.

Paychex delivered more than one million instructor-led, virtual and self-study training hours to its 14,000 employees last year and has created a cloud-based learning management system for 650,000 payroll clients.

5 AT&T prioritises internal upskilling over new telecoms recruitment

A need for rapid migration from legacy hardware to the internet and cloud focuses on the development of internal talent and a culture of perpetual learning.

More than half of 280,000 employees have completed 2.7 million online courses in areas such as data science, cybersecurity, agile project management and specialist IT topics.

Some 177,000 virtual “badges” have been awarded to 57,000 employees on successful completion of courses and almost 500 enrolments on Georgia Tech’s online computer science Masters programmes have been recorded.

Staff undergoing retraining in data science, computer analytics, app development and cloud computing are twice as likely to be hired for mission-critical roles of the future.

External contractor recruitment is being scaled back as the organisation concentrates on reskilling the current workforce for the future of global telecoms and video services.

Personalised development plans (PDPs) are an effective way of fostering a culture of accountability, along with recognising and rewarding staff for exceptional learning and development (L&D) efforts or achievements.

So says Maria Ho, associate director of research at the talent development organisation ATD, who notes that PDPs are a “best practice we have identified as being associated with business and learning success”.

Armed with fully personalised, relevant, real-time learning, human beings should continue to outperform machines.

However, if the panacea of self-directed learning is to become a reality, corporate training must become truly employee centric, as Will Gosling, partner and human capital lead at Deloitte explains.

“To me, flow of work – where you equip your people with the precise information they need at any given point during the day – is the vital next step,” he says.

It’s about empowering employees to become equal partners in the learning process and using all available delivery mechanisms

A good example would be giving contact centre staff live access to relevant video tutorials while they’re actually talking to customers; an innovation which would make the call more satisfying on both sides.

“It’s about empowering employees to become equal partners in the learning process and using all available delivery mechanisms, such as phones or webchats, to deliver flow of life and flow of work learning in tandem,” says Mr Gosling.

While the emergence of learning experience platforms as the natural successor to more formal learning management systems are expected to play an increasingly important role in removing existing barriers, some platforms may be more welcome than others.

Although Mr Gosling believes a more user-friendly approach, such as gamification, may earn its place in the L&D toolkit of the future, he believes the notion of playing games at work is still a stumbling block for many corporates.

“Gamification has difficult connotations, but it’s already being successfully deployed in the recruitment sector, where the desire to compete against other people is proving very effective at testing job candidates’ skills of problem-solving, for example,” he says.

“I believe there’s every chance L&D games will become more important as they evolve further.”

Training tussle

Despite the much-debated tussle between “chalk and talk” and online collaboration, Ms Ho does not see a mismatch between classroom and virtual learning.

“There is evidence that the two forms can, and currently do, coexist and in fact we find over half of formal learning hours are still in the traditional live classroom,” she says.

“However, what we are seeing is more and more classroom training either blending classroom and online modules or being supplemented by technological tools. For example, bringing virtual reality into the classroom or following a live class with social-learning among participants.”

While the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide “intelligent” feedback to learners is now well established, its role in L&D has to date been more weighted towards technical training than building softer skills, but this too could change.

Mr Gosling predicts AI will be used to build the human skills, such as team-working and empathy, which will become yet more important over time.

While a more nurturing role for robots is still on the drawing board, the US military already uses avatar technology in job interview coaching for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, he notes.

Research shows that organisations which promote, maintain and invest in a perpetual learning culture tend to be rewarded with higher levels of employee engagement and lower staff turnover.

But as with so many things, leading from the top is crucial. “While top-down L&D can certainly be a barrier to learning, I believe that when senior business figures lead by example, participating in training themselves and acting as mentors or coaches, there can be a clear impact on attitudes to learning at all levels,” Mr Gosling concludes.

“Leaders can foster the democratisation of corporate development simply by passing on their own learning discoveries through the organisation.”