Learning and Development is broken. Let’s fix it. Together.
We are at a crossroads when it comes to Learning and Development, affectionately known as “L&D” by most. Why? Because there are less people to do more work. Therefore, both leaders and employees are being pushed to the brink, stretched to the max.
How do we fix it? Let’s break it down for you.
- Break learning into “bite size chunks”. Let’s face it. The days of being sent to one- or two-week onsite training events is a thing of the past. Why? It’s not cost effective, efficient, or plausible. Hiring managers need “bodies” to get things done. A two-week onboarding or new hire orientation is not going to prepare someone in full. Instead, we suggest microlearning lessons broken out a little at a time. This allows for a gradual build of knowledge, skills and abilities instead of a “fire hose” approach typically associated with the longer term training events. Self-paced microlearning provides the learner with a clear learning path to follow and allows them to take it at their leisure, when and as time allows.
- Encourage live interaction with like-minded individuals. A shorter, facilitator-led session is suggested to visit and review outcomes from the microlearning lessons. This allows for collaboration, engagement and confidence building. Participating in a “learning journey” with others helps connect dots of the experience and tie concepts to workplace demands and expectations.
- Support learning with active, supervised, asynchronous blogging. The facilitator of the learning event provides prompts to the learning group to help them apply principles covered in the microlearning lessons and live sessions. This further pushes the participants to customize and apply the experience directly to their given situation.
- Make the learning interactive, experiential and fun. Putting participants in a realistic situation and having them learn through a simulated environment brings it to life for participants. Doing so makes it more relatable to their situation.
Why are we suggesting the above as an alternative method to building and deploying L&D going forward?
- Time savings: Microlearning lessons can be developed in minutes or hours, instead of weeks and months it takes to create more sophisticated elearning and formal instructor-led solutions. In addition, it can be modified or customized real time to address updates or changes to the business. Finally, learners can consume the content easily, whenever and wherever they want.
- Cost savings: Because traditional L&D solutions are time intensive to build, they eat up budgets, resources and calendars. Microlearning is cheaper, faster and more streamlined. It’s been proven to address targeted needs and gaps more effectively.
- Increased impact: Timing, relevance and community collaboration drives greater business impact at the individual, team and organizational levels.
So…what are you waiting for? Interested in saving time, money and resources to build a better, more relatable L&D solution that will drive greater engagement for your learners? Let’s get started today…