As noted before, many factors have made it harder for L&D professionals to know their learners really well. This means that L&D initiatives are more exposed to guesswork and questionable opinions of other business stakeholders about what good learning looks like e.g. “the way I learned this was” , “the way that my kids are learning is all video on mobile phones” and what learners want e.g. “we need a different solution for digital natives”. A path to greater clarity and real consensus is to provide evidence. Here are three charts and their key implications.
Meet the Modern Learner Infographic (Bersin by Deloitte, Nov 2014)
Key take outs
- Learners are immensely time-poor (don’t take it personally if indifference is the default response to the L&D initiative that is super important to you)
- Learners want learning in short chunks that fits in with their workflow
- L&D needs to work hard with its marketing to gain and retain learners’ attention
In-Focus: Driving the New Learning Organisation p24 (Towards Maturity, May 2017)
Key take outs
- Learners generally do want to learn (much of this activity may be invisible to L&D)
- Online learning offers the opportunity to learn at point of need
- As learning assets get shorter and increase in number, findability is a big and growing problem for learners
Google it! The secret online lives of UK managers p7 (Good Practice & Comres, Nov 2016)
Key take outs
- People rely on personal experience (great that they’re confident, but bad news if they’re unaware of something they should be complying with)
- People are more likely to use Google than to use L&D (HR) as resource to solve problems
- L&D provides better information than Google (that’s a relief…)
I trust you find these evidence points helpful when developing and implementing your learning strategy. If you have more useful other charts/resources please feel free to add links in the comments.
