Talking to the Business about L&D: How Can Technology Help?

Undoubtedly, the Coronavirus pandemic had a huge impact on the digital transformation of many organizations and their functions. L&D saw a big shift from relying on traditional face-to-face classroom training to online learning experiences. Whether the need is to maintain compliance training requirements or onboard new employees, the help of online learning platforms and talent management systems rapidly became mission critical to the business.

Finding the right tool for the job

For the L&D industry, it’s easy to get lost in a world of buzzwords and acronyms like LMS, LXP and LRS. For some, it may seem impossible to establish what your business actually needs. For most, the budget available will determine what tools and technologies you choose to implement but there are other elements worth considering:

• Are time constraints a big challenge for your learners? When it comes to the challenges of time effectiveness, embedding L&D into the daily workflow and just-in-time learning, digital learning platforms have become one of the biggest enablers. 
• What do you have in terms of internal resources? Does your L&D team have the scope to produce learning content/activities in-house? If not, off-the-shelf collections could be a real time-saver. 
• What are your reporting requirements? You may wish to go beyond the simple completion rates of learning activities and find out more about when/where/what your employees are learning. 

Using data

Digital learning produces reams of beneficial data that can strengthen the value being measured down the line. We know that learning that is personal and purposeful—such as adaptive training modules that measure results in real-time, adjusting the learning to give users more help in areas where they might be struggling, or reducing time to complete for those demonstrating mastery of the materials—produces better and longer-lasting results. This improves the effectiveness of the learning so that when someone is faced with a crucial, potentially bottom-line-impacting decision on the job, they’re more likely to make the correct choice.

Second, training data combined with artificial intelligence and integrated with other HR data sources can be used to track and inform future learning and opportunities for skills development. The system can then automatically send employees additional learning resources to boost their skills. What is certain is that using intelligent data to know and grow the skills of your organization’s most valuable resources can provide limitless returns on the investment of investing in your people. 

Data and analytics

Organizations measure their learning for many reasons. The most common is to improve the effectiveness of the learning programs. But fewer are measuring for more strategic reasons, such as creating a better link between learning and individual or organizational performance. This means that most learning measurement tends to be inward-looking, rather than focusing on the learner or the business.

According to the 2022 Brandon Hall Group Learning Measurement Study, these are the top five drivers of L&D measurement:

• Improve the effectiveness of learning programs
• Strongly link learning and organizational performance
• Strongly link learning and employee engagement 
• Determine the ROI of learning programs 
• Strongly link learning and reduced turnover 

Download our ‘Talking to the Business’ eBook to discover some tried and tested strategies for changing attitudes to L&D across your organization.