Embracing future technologies to innovate L&D
There’s no shortage of great technology ready to meet all your business needs. But rather than looking to one source of truth, it’s essential to look to multiple platforms – the data they provide is invaluable. In this episode, hear how Dave Barone, Consultant at Josh Bersin Academy, embraced technology to build an experiential onboarding platform for 25,000 employees a year. Find out why it’s so important to get to grips with your L&D data. Explore what meaningful measurement looks like. Finally, discover how engaged managers will drive real business impact.
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Top tips for maximizing the impact of future technologies
Don’t have time to listen now? Here are some top tips from Dave:
- Plug and play the best tech: No one platform will solve everything. Embrace the latest tech. Use the platforms that will best meet your current needs.
- Own your L&D data: Don’t leave L&D data management to IT. Use a Learning Record Store (LRS) so it’s at your fingertips. Tap into this data to make learning that’s truly people-centered.
- Get meaningful with your measurement: Move from measuring completion to learning experience. Use your data to demonstrate employee skills.
- Drive manager engagement: Engaged managers lead to engaged employees. Use technology to drive manager engagement and you’ll see real business impact.
1. Plug and play the best tech
The world of L&D technology is increasingly fragmented. Over the last two years, we’ve seen a 48% increase in learning technology solutions. There’s no perfect platform that will solve everything for you and the LMS isn’t your one source of truth. You need multiple platforms that you can adapt and swap out over time.
For Dave, it’s all about plugging and playing tech to best meet your current business needs. At Comcast, this meant building a portal to improve the new hire experience for the sales team. Onboarding 25,000 employees a year, this platform contains around 100 learning journeys – from product launch to leadership. It brings together classroom and online activities, as well as offline and on-the-job development – integrating systems to create engaging, seamless learning experiences.
2. Own your L&D data
All your systems will be capturing vast amounts of data. If you’re going to innovate L&D at your organization, you need to harness the power of this information. This isn’t something to leave to your IT department. Unless you own your L&D data, it will get lost amongst everyone else’s.
Dave sees an LRS as the key tool for collecting and analyzing your learning data. Pulling together information from multiple systems into one place. Allowing you to get hands-on and mine your data. It’s only with these valuable insights that you can transform your learning activities – moving from transactional to truly people-centered learning.
3. Get meaningful with your measurement
With so much data at your fingertips, it’s time to decide what to measure. Previously, you were limited to recording completion and scoring. But with 80% of learning happening on the job, that meant you were only capturing 20% of the data.
Comcast’s experiential onboarding portal captures what people have learnt, formally and self-directed. But it also creates an ecosystem where they share what they’re doing with their managers and peers. Allowing them to get feedback along the way. Dave is clear that you won’t be effective unless you can measure these kinds of activities. And, with an LRS, capturing meaningful learning experience data is easy.
4. Drive manager engagement
Manager engagement can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of your work. From coaching sessions to supporting social learning, managers play a huge part in the development of your employees. You need to make it easy for them to play their part.
Very early on, Dave learned that they had to get managers engaged in Comcast’s onboarding. They decided to use the portal to drive this engagement. Keeping it simple with a dashboard that easily tracks progress. Instead of managing completion, managers support people’s demonstration of skill. And the results speak for themselves.
A quick recap
Dave has always embraced technology to create unique genuinely people-centered learning experiences. He has four strategies for maximizing the impact of future technologies. Plug and play the best technologies that will meet your business needs. Get hands on with your L&D data using an LRS. Make your measurements meaningful by recording learning experiences. Drive engagement with your managers to see real business results.
Want to find out more? Check out the full podcast.
About Dave
Dave started his career as an engineer at a nuclear power plant before moving into L&D. He spent 13 years as a learning leader at Comcast supporting the learning and development needs of over 100,000 staff. More recently, Dave has been speaking to hundreds of people to develop new perspectives on the future of learning technologies.
You can find out more and get connected with Dave on LinkedIn.
On Dave’s reading list
Find out which book is Dave’s current must-read for L&D innovators.
If you want to build effective training, you need to connect with the next generation. This book explores how to create data-driven learning experiences that align with and engage your new and future employees.
Looking for more reading tips? Check out our book blog.
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