COVID-19 forced a physical separation of the workforce. Today, many employees are still working remotely, at least part of the time. This hybrid work environment is an open door of opportunity for implementing workflow learning and development practices that enable learning while working. Right now, this door is wide open, and learning leaders need to step through it and bring their teams with them. Here’s why:
On any given day, all employees face one or more of the following 5 Moments of Need® while they are working.
Unfortunately, most companies lack any intentional support when these 5 Moments occur. As a result, employees are left to learn on their own at these moments through trial and error. This is highly ineffective and costly. The most significant cost occurs as employees stop working in order to figure out how to do their work, adapt to change, solve a problem, and/or recover from mistakes they make. There is also a high probability of failure, which compounds costs when employees are working alone. The following figure shows a formula for estimating work stoppage costs.
It shows the actual data from a recent manufacturing client. Note that the cost of wasted time is “only” 12 million dollars. Work stoppage costs for knowledge workers tend to be much higher. As a learning leader, do you know your organization’s work stoppage costs and how to reduce them?
This is the sweet spot of workflow learning. Regardless of where an employee is physically located, we can intentionally enable their ability to learn while actually working. This shouldn’t be confused with faux workflow learning practices where workers simply access traditional micro-learning solutions that still require stopping work to learn.
True learning while working requires “an orchestrated set of technology-enabled services” at the job-task level “that provide on-demand access to integrated information, guidance, advice, assistance, training and tools,” “to enable high-level job performance with a minimum of support from other people.”
Today, any time these capabilities are orchestrated in a way that meets all 5 Moments of Need, regardless of the technology used to do so, we call that a digital coach. When it comes to workflow learning, a digital coach is the game changer.
A digital coach makes it possible for employees to learn while actually performing their jobs because it provides them with two-click, 10-second access to just what they need in the form that they need it to:
- Close personal skill gaps in real time by accessing and completing, over time, the steps and supporting resources for every job task.
- Immediately access the specific resources they need to solve problems whenever they perform unsuccessfully.
- Adapt how they work through ongoing reinforcement of changes in how they perform a job task.
- Learn something new or more about a skill and how it fits into the broader performance landscape.
In the context of workflow learning, a skill is the ability to successfully and consistently perform a job task (whether procedural or principle-based) with the supporting knowledge a performer needs to:
- Make decisions.
- Adjust job performance in response to the changing nature of real-world work.
- Generalize rapidly to other similar but different skills.
Job skills can be fully developed and sustained over time in two ways. The first is via a blended formal and workflow learning approach using a digital coach. The second occurs solely within the workflow using a digital coach.
A blended formal and workflow learning approach incorporates the digital coach into the formal training experience. It provides learners with the scaffolding they need to continue their learning — at the moments of apply, solve and change in the workflow while working. When disbursed learners need to learn at the moments of new and more, knowledge learning can be effectively addressed via virtual synchronous learning sessions and through asynchronous adaptive e-learning. But not so for actual job skills development.
Job skills development requires a different blend of learning. On the formal side, job skills can still be introduced in a virtual learning session, but usually, the best place to practice those skills is in the actual workflow, with the help of a digital coach. While working, learners can apply (practice) what they learned. Work output can then be reviewed with appropriate feedback. This is superior to face-to-face training, which is even more costly for disbursed workers.
Virtual reality and simulations can also play a role in this blend when there are skills for which the critical impact of failure is significant to catastrophic or they don’t readily or safely occur in the workflow (e.g., extinguishing a fire).
Most often, some skills can safely be learned and mastered exclusively in the workflow, while working, with the help of a digital coach. For over 20 years it has been our experience that, on average, half of the skills in any given course can be learned safely and exclusively while employees are working.
In your role as learning leader, it’s vital to understand the fundamental difference between stopping work to learn and learning while working. The technologies that support skill development fit into the two camps of formal training and workflow learning. The separation between these camps is straightforward. Even if learners are in the workflow, if the technology requires them to stop the work they have been hired to do, then that technology belongs squarely in the formal training camp.
If instead, the technology allows employees to learn while they are actually performing their jobs, then it’s a workflow learning technology. It is possible for a technology in one camp to be a supporting technology in the other camp. For example, a digital coach can provide access to a micro-learning burst in an LMS. Bottom line? No organization can ever hope to realize the benefits of workflow learning without technology that supports the functional requirements of a digital coach.
As mentioned above, although a digital coach requires technology, its effectiveness is determined by its design. It must be aligned with the workflow at the job-task level with intuitive access to all the supporting knowledge and reference resources employees need to learn while working. When this is done properly, the organizational costs of work stoppage to learn new, more, apply, solve and change drop dramatically. This is a worthy pursuit for every learning leader interested in increasing effective job performance in an everchanging hybrid work environment.You don’t need to figure this out on your own. There are learning leaders with deep experiences and compelling successes.
