How Technology Can Help With Employee Education
Technology has promised to radically improve learning and development for employees at companies across the globe for over two decades. However these promises have remained largely unfulfilled. With over 86% of executives reporting a growing skills gap as the greatest threat to business, technology solutions such as Learning Management Systems (LMSs) and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have failed to radically improve how employees learn and its impact on businesses. But does this mean that the challenge of corporate learning and development is unsolvable through technology?
At Pathship, we believe that we’ve barely scratched the surface as to how technology can accelerate learning and development. The strategies being used today have simply not kept up with the latest thinking in technology, design, and education psychology. With technology, companies can help employees grow skills, knowledge, and networks whilst increasing business impact and reducing costs. What stands in the way is the lack of personalization for education, scarcity of resources for employees to embark on their own learning paths with company support, and little flexibility as to how and when learning can be conducted.
One simple way to see how these restrictions manifest themselves in L&D is to see how Uber disrupted the taxi business, which many of us thought already fulfilled a need. Within current L&D departments, for an employee looking to learn a new skill not currently offered by the handful of upcoming learning programs, they would be asked to submit a detailed proposal as to why they need this skill. This would then be passed up to their HR manager who would vet and consider the application, an arduous process that takes at least a month from beginning to end. Assuming that the learning is approved, the HR manager would then have to review potential lesson providers in order to meet the various budgetary and compliance needs, before finally submitting a proposal to someone in Finance for final approval. If, by some miracle, this person still has need for this skill or hasn’t bothered to just organize something themselves, then they might have a fully-approved company learning and development experience.
If we replace ‘learning’ with ‘taxi’, we get what we used to have before Uber came along. Today, it seems ridiculous that someone would have to plan weeks in advance a taxi trip. It requires incredible foresight in anticipating your transportation needs so far out, and a lot of work to approve a relatively simple need. But consider how Uber has simplified this process. Today you can order an Uber in the moment you need it, knowing that there will be a certain quality of service (much higher than most taxi services) and through the process of taking that Uber, a rich data set is created that can be submitted to a company either in real-time or after-the-fact, showing what was spent, where the person drove to, and why. The usefulness of hiring a car through Uber, to an employee, is an order of magnitude greater. For the company, it assures that an employee is where they need to be, when they need to be there, whilst providing data that helps compliance assure that the tool is not being abused. Most importantly, it saves loads of work for the company and the employee.
If we look at today’s Learning and Development environment, none of these principles of ease, expediency, and quality have been applied. Services like Skillsoft and Coursera are more akin to company buses. You know they have defined routes and that they are available to you at designated times. However, they aren’t ready and waiting when you need them most, they are unlikely to take you on the exact route you need in the quickest way possible, and the quality of the service is usually questionable (With the exception of companies such as Facebook and Google, who offer luxury buses fully equipped with wifi, snacks and drinks and executive chairs). No doubt, an Uber (preferably an Uber Black) is the best way to get you where you need to be.
Similar to how Uber takes you from your current to your desired destination, professional development through learning is all about getting you from your current knowledge state to a destination knowledge state in the most optimal path. So if we think about what makes Uber such a great transportation value proposition, we have a pretty similar framework for how to optimize learning for employees:
- Learning opportunities readily available that cater to any potential learning ‘destination’ (On-demand hiring of a taxi to almost all destinations you need to reach locally).
- Data throughout the learning experience that helps you understand how you progress toward your goal as well as your company/management gain insight into your progress (Rich data that provides insight into your Uber trip’s route, costs and quality of your experience.)
- Access to rich learning experiences on mobile, desktop, laptop, etc… regardless of the quality of your connection (Constant supply so that no matter where you are, you can access a taxi.)
- Excellent and personalized learning materials/teachers, and delivery of lessons through a clean, intuitive and adaptive platform (High quality cars and drivers to ensure a pleasurable journey).
Learn more about how Pathship is using technology to improve employee learning today.
