What's stopping employers from adopting digital L&D more quickly?

“Many of the reasons given for preventing employers from adopting digital learning and development more quickly are perceived problems that have little basis in reality. There can be lots of concerns over introducing new systems, converting content and building new infrastructure, and eventually these all snowball into one huge issue that looks a lot more difficult to overcome than it truly is.

Today’s workforce is accustomed to digital access in almost every aspect of their lives – from shopping, to banking, to dating – and they will expect this from L&D content too. If employers don’t make this available to their staff, they will revert to other digital means in order to self-teach, meaning that anything learned is uncurated, invisible to the business, and organisations will miss out on vital usage analytics - and employee engagement potential.

To get over the first hurdle, organisations should differentiate between “digital learning” and “digitally available learning”. The former should still be the end goal, but at the very beginning employers should prioritise digital adoption instead of total digital transformation. Organisations should begin the journey by focusing on making existing content digitally available, thereby easing the transition and meaning employers are able to take the first step towards the finish line. If the focus is on building something, rather than replacing something, the path ahead becomes much clearer.”

Rebekah Wallis

Director of People & Corporate Responsibility - Ricoh UK

“Failure to have the right infrastructure and hardware in place to support digital learning makes using digital content more of a risk, and a less likely option. When technology fails, learners become frustrated and disengaged, quicker to blame the content for flaws rather than the technology. Search functionality can be a particular issue – if a search for content fails to provide clear, easily accessible results, employees may give up and seek learning through more traditional routes, such as search engines or talking to peers. Given digital L&D can be a costly resource, this can be especially frustrating for the employer, and so it is crucial they invest in technology and content, together with appropriate change management, if they are to encourage and empower staff to learn through digital L&D. If employers think holistically about people, process, workspace and technology, digital L&D can be implemented effectively to upskill employees.”

Chadi Moussa

Non-Executive Director at Wealmoor and Client Partner at Let's Talk Talent

“While costs, technological advancements and resources are all chart-topping reasons preventing the adoption of digital L&D, the real blocker is companies still seeing themselves as education providers. The cold, hard truth is that this notion is dying. And dying fast. L&D Managers and training providers are no longer the subject matter experts and universal fountains of eternal wisdom for every topic in your ‘Learning Catalogue’. Organisations and more specifically L&D teams are now curators and collators of content and the facilitators of experiences that drive learning, performance and engagement. Therefore, the challenge is to develop digital platforms that embrace the new world order of self-driven and directed learning.” 

Bernadette Ude-Wetherell

Head of Learning & Development - Ao.com

“I think cost is one of the barriers. On the other side of things, employers might not understand the power of digital learning if they haven’t worked with it in the past. Understanding the reality and the power of it can be quite a difficult thing to articulate. It’s something that employers have to experience in order to know but also learning technology and digital learning is one of the technical advances that businesses need to make. It may be one of the 20 things on a company’s to-do list, but it is a case of prioritising which is going to add the biggest value
to the business.”