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Today’s fast-paced, competitive marketplaces generate a relentless demand for innovation. As Bill Gates said: “Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react and reinvent.” Employees at all levels must be empowered to respond quickly to meet customer needs and anticipate changing circumstances and new market opportunities. This creates a fascinating new challenge for L&D, in which the ‘speed to impact’ of your learning material becomes the most important measure of success.
Recent research by Fosway Group, the HR and learning analyst, highlights that employers are striving to increase learner engagement and create personalised learning experiences, in shorter learning bites, using next-generation searchable content that works on all devices and screen formats. The ‘need for speed’ has created an increased focus on collaborative authoring, rapid prototyping and faster roll-outs of learning.
But L&D teams need to be cautious. It’s easy to be seduced by content providers who offer an extensive choice of thousands of learning options (which won’t get used). You need a solution that will help your learners to quickly develop the skills and competencies they need. However, in today’s agile organisations, those needs can soon change, so your solution not only has to be flexible and adaptive, it also has to constantly delight your learners, whilst sustaining their energy and their enthusiasm for learning.
The starting point is to ensure that your learning support resources adequately cover the core topics that your learners will demand. At Hemsley Fraser, we’ve developed digital learning content that addresses the top 100 learning topics that apply in every organisation, including personal effectiveness, communication skills, digital skills, team performance, people management, performance management, leadership, continuous improvement, wellbeing, customer service and sales. This content ranges from multi-day, expert-led courses to two-three minute micro-learning videos, interactive eBooks, infographics and animations. Individual employees can create their own ‘playlists’ of these resources - effectively, they can create their own library of personalised learning resources that they can dip into, which directly relate to their needs. This makes digital learning more engaging as it becomes more personal for each individual and very specific to the challenge they’re facing.
However, speed to market, competitiveness and the constant search for new ways to improve performance are ever-present drivers in organisations. So your approach needs to be adaptable to meet the changing needs and preferences of your learners. In other words, you need the flexibility to rapidly create and deploy new learning programmes. You can achieve this by mixing and matching our content to excite and engage your learners. You can even combine your own expertise and materials with our ready-made resources, to quickly create brand new content that will drive performance and embed new skills, knowledge and attitudes.
When individuals can more easily access relevant, engaging and memorable learning and support resources, they can become even more effective in their roles - even if those roles, or the demands placed on them, are subject to change. Effective learning can therefore foster greater employee engagement, a more conducive work environment and stronger retention. What’s more, the right learning and development can enhance your employer brand, boost productivity and facilitate organisational improvement.
Hemsley Fraser is a market-leading provider of leadership and management training, soft skills, digital learning and managed learning. If you want to know more about our Core learning resources and Digital Hub, please click here https://www.hemsleyfraser.co.uk/digital-learning.
