People love to predict the future. It can be fun (and scary) to talk about the many ways that technology will shape our lives in the years ahead. The same is true in the workplace, as analysts try to predict the skills people will need over the next 10 to 20 years.
The thing is, we will never actually reach the “future of work” that influencers love to talk about. Like our everyday lives, work is constantly evolving based on prevailing social, technological and economic conditions. This means learning professionals must be experts at dealing with uncertainty. Chief learning officers must enable ecosystems that help people get ready for whatever comes next. The future of learning isn’t a technology or strategy. The future of learning is the future of work.
Nowhere is this more true than on the front line. The workplace changed for everyone in 2020, but the front line faced the pandemic head on in ways their corporate counterparts were lucky to avoid. Most office-based employees went home and adopted slightly more digital ways of learning and collaborating. The front line kept clocking in for their shifts to make sure grocery shelves were stocked, hospitals were staffed and orders got delivered.
Nearly half (46 percent) of front-line employees took on new tasks as a result of the pandemic while 23 percent filled new positions altogether, according to “The State of Frontline Employee Training 2020” research report from Arlington Research and Axonify. They didn’t have a choice. They had to keep pace with change in order to keep businesses moving forward while keeping themselves, their peers and their customers safe. The collective effort made by global learning and development teams to enable the front-line workforce may very well represent the largest workplace learning initiative ever.
L&D can learn a lot from the front-line experience — regardless of industry or audience.
L&D must be built for skills
Skills have been a popular HR topic for several years. However, the conversation has typically been vague and future-based with statements such as, “By 2032, employees will need 45 percent more human skills.” The pandemic made reskilling an overnight priority on the front line. Bank tellers became contact center agents. Grocery cashiers became personal shoppers. Furloughed office workers became fulfillment operators. People had to rapidly learn new ways of working to simply stay safe and keep their doors open.
An organization can only move and change so fast. Business agility is rooted in human skills. Therefore, companies must maintain their focus on rapid upskilling, reskilling or cross-skilling by embedding learning within the workflow. Front-line-focused organizations were prepared for disruption because they had already shifted their mindsets and prioritized learning as part of everyday work. L&D must provide every employee with a balanced development experience so they have the resources needed to solve today’s problems while constantly building the skills they’ll need in the not-so-distant future.
Microlearning is a skill gateway
Front-line employees didn’t have time for retraining sessions this past year. New employees couldn’t sit through three days of onboarding. They had to learn and get on the job ASAP. Microlearning played a crucial role in helping front-line workers adopt new behaviors and reinforce new habits. Content was focused on just the knowledge and skills required to execute new tasks. Microlearning could also be delivered in three- to five-minute sessions, meaning employees kept learning and practicing every day despite their hectic schedules.
L&D should expand microlearning adoption as a primary means of fitting targeted, results-focused training into the daily workflow for every role. Topics could introduce and reinforce immediate business priorities, such as product knowledge, process updates and safety concerns, while also providing access to resources on prevailing skills, such as collaboration, adaptability and emotional intelligence. Because it’s primarily focused on brief, digital assets, microlearning is also a great enabler for a “bring-your-own-device” strategy.
Digital learning is more than online courses
Corporate learning went digital in 2020. Classroom sessions became Zoom meetings. Job training became online courses. However, just like in formal education, most of this digital transformation was based on necessity, not strategy.
On the front line, managers quickly realized that bad technology inhibited their ability to reach people with timely, consistent information. However, they didn’t install traditional learning management systems and build e-learning modules. Instead, they expanded the definition of “digital learning” to include everything from video and text messages to microlearning and performance support.
As organizations find their next normals, L&D must seize the opportunity to assess the digital learning strategy. This should reach beyond the LMS to include the full workplace ecosystem. CLOs must partner across the business and empower their teams to explore the full potential of technology to help people do and be their best, including the role artificial intelligence will play as the foundation of modern digital learning.
L&D must be able to measure what does and not work
HR budgets are always tight. Disruption usually makes them tighter. CLOs must justify investment in talent development just like any other business unit. L&D has to be able to figure out which solutions provide value and which do not. This is especially true on the front line, where time is limited and stakes are high. The only way to get people to focus their limited time and attention on learning is to provide training with obvious value. If it doesn’t help people do their jobs better, they won’t do it (at least not willingly). Who can blame them?
Learning measurement is hard. Not everything can be measured, especially in a corporate environment where people do very specific jobs. However, L&D must find ways to connect their solutions to measurable business value. They must challenge stakeholders to clearly define their problems as well as the behavior changes they expect from training. L&D must partner with data experts to craft measurement strategies that work for their organizations. After all, if L&D can’t measure the impact of their work, how can they justify added investment?
The front line makes up 80 percent of the global workforce. They have difficult jobs and continue to face unenviable challenges. Yet they keep learning. They’ve managed to keep pace with unprecedented disruption to keep people safe and communities moving in the right direction. They’ve shown us what it takes to get ready for whatever comes next.
Is L&D ready to learn from their experience?
