The future of L&D
There is unanimous agreement that there is a need for ongoing learning based on evolving work demands and skills requirements. Find out from learning and development experts what those learning interventions should look like.
The following quote by American philosopher Eric Hoffer captures perfectly the dynamic shift in the future world of work and indeed the need to improve learning and development to be able to adapt to it: “In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
It is also quite telling that this is the number one trend in the Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends 2019 report, with 86 percent of respondents to the largest longitudinal survey of its kind rating the issue as “important” or “very important” and only 10 percent of respondents feeling “very ready” to address it.
Similarly, research by LinkedIn which surveyed 2,049 business professionals (all roles, including 624 freelancers, project workers, and entrepreneurs) in August 2018, found that employees who spend time at work learning are 47 percent less likely to be stressed, 39 percent more likely to feel productive and successful, 23 percent more ready to take on additional responsibilities, and 21 percent more likely to feel confident and happy.
However, while there is unanimous agreement around the need for ongoing learning based on evolving work demands and skills requirements, the challenge is in how learning should be taking place to be most effective.
“The way in which Imran currently deliver learning is no longer relevant.”
It’s not about getting a promotion
Ster-Kinekor head of L&D Sifikle Zondi says it would be irresponsible for corporate organisations and learning institutions to persist with current learning frameworks.
“The way in which we currently deliver learning is no longer relevant. If you are an employee or business leader and your learning interventions require you to attend classes or complete some kind of curriculum on an assigned learner management
system or online course, your organisation is going to get left behind very quickly,” says Sifikile.
“It’s an approach that still ascribes to the notion that people only engage in learning because they have an expectation that it will result in a promotion and/or higher salary but that’s not going to be the case for much longer. In the future, individuals will not be motivated to learn based on recognition. They will be motivated by the need to complete their knowledge in a particular field to be able to deliver more value.”
Uberisation of learning
MTN iLearn is a leading local case study on how to approach the future world of work in so far as it encapsulates and breeds a culture of lifelong learning, which MTN head of global learning and development Imran Cassim says is no longer a nicety but a necessity. Through their platform, MTN has introduced gamification through which users choose how to consume the learning material, whether it’s in the form of a video or an article, and also earn badges for completing the content to eventually become an expert in a particular area. Once they are recognised as an expert, other people can reach out to them for support based on that ‘expertise.’
Speaking at the Davos of Human Capital 2019 event hosted by Duke CE, Imran said the platform was tantamount to the ‘uberisation’ of learning.
“It’s very easy to get a platform and shove a tone of content in there and tell employees to go crazy but that’s not useful. When you first log in to MTN iLearn, it asks you what your interests are. You can say you are interested in leadership, agile or SCRUM, whatever, and then it asks you what your career interests are. Thereafter, instead of you having to go and look for it, content that is tailor-made for you is delivered to you using the same elastic algorithm that powers platforms like Netflix and Facebook. And the more it learns about you the more it sends you content that you will enjoy in the format that you enjoy it most,” said Imran. “If you like to read, it sends you more articles, if you like to watch, it sends more video and if you like to listen, it sends you more audio. We build data analytics into it so that we can garner insights into what employees are enjoying and consuming most. Our next objective is to create a plugin for Google whereby the first page of results that show up in a search will come from content that is already in our platform. So we will be driving traffic into our platform so that we can garner even more insights
into people’s interests can create better learner journeys based on those insights.”
Commoditisation of knowledge
The Internet and multimedia have made the world of information available 24/7 to anyone with a smartphone, and the commoditisation of knowledge has meant virtually anyone can become an expert at anything. This presents a very specific challenge to learning within an organisational context.
“It’s an approach that still ascribes to the notion that people only engage in learning because they have an expectation that it will result in a promotion and/or higher salary.”
Speaking at the recent ClarkHouse Data, Digital and Talent thought leadership event, Deloitte's chief digital and innovation officer Valter Adão said that, with the plethora of online learning platforms, organisations will not be able to keep up with the learning needs of individuals. As it stands, employees don't necessarily depend on organisations to provide learning and development. It therefore, makes more sense for employees to rather be given a stipend from the organisation so that they can get their own learning sorted out, whether that be through LinkedIn, the
Khan Academy or other platforms.
"But with individuals not being able to disconnect from their work, they are going to have to also learn to separate time for learning from their time for work," said Valter.
Given this plethora of learning platforms, Discovery group head of leadership development and learning Trevor Kunda says there is no need to be locked into a particular platform or technology provider. What’s important is for the technology to provide good quality foundation data on which to base decisions, and to generate insights into current skills, future capabilities and what’s required to close the capability gaps.
The much bigger question, he says, is around qualifications and accreditations and the criteria for recognising corporate learning.
Rebates and grants need to be revised
Says Trevor: “I have been speaking to a couple of my professional peers to ask how we get over the
problem of formal qualifications and SAQA accreditations as the primary way to recognise learning and to realise value from the skills levies we pay. This is a framework that was designed to solve the formal education problems of the 70s and the 80s, however, the world has changed quite drastically and the way in which people learn has also changed. Formal qualifications are not the only way in which people learn, and yet our regulatory framework isn’t reflecting the changes we are seeing in corporate learning in South Africa and across the world.”
He says that we need to ask why the need for heavy certification and accreditation for certification? “Certification just for certification’s sake doesn’t serve any need – not for the individual, not for the organisation and not for industry. It makes sense to have certification requirements in areas that are technical and constantly evolving to ensure that people demonstrate understanding and skills application. The Python programming language is an example of a discipline that requires people to remain up to date as the technology field continues to evolve. However, there are many fields that don’t require the same level of qualification or certification
“With the plethora of online learning platforms, organisations will not be able to keep up with the learning needs of individuals.”
rigour and we should have more freedom to deliver corporate learning in different modalities like digital learning channels and still realise full benefit of skills grants and rebates from the levies we pay.”
He says that the importance of this dialogue needs to be raised because no single entity will solve the challenge of modernising how corporate learning is delivered and recognise alone.
“This will require a collaborative effort between corporates, education institutions and the regulatory bodies to find a joint solution. It also requires shifting our paradigms from the old assumptions we hold about learning, and to look at it in terms of what the future demands.”
The entire training and development ecosystem will have to catch up to the evolution taking place in this space to deliver adequate recognition and support for those who are ready and willing to upskill themselves in unconventional ways and who are, indeed, the agile and adaptable individuals the future workforce needs.