Elearning programs usually fail because they deliver the right content at the wrong time: employees do not want to sit through day-long training sessions for seemingly irrelevant material (think Death by PowerPoint).
But employees are eager to seek out training when they need it. They vigorously look for the guidelines or How-To’s when they are given a new project, changing employment status (full-time for consulting, for example), or transitioning to a completely new role.
Shouldn’t training be available on-demand? In today’s dynamic, matrixed work environments, employees should be able to access training content anytime and anywhere, via a range of endpoints and modalities.
A recent article in Chief Learning Officer magazine, ‘Just Keep Learning,’ addresses this concern.
Another argument for employee self-driven learning is staff cuts: in economic downturns, training departments are usually the first group to be shown the door. As a result, companies struggle to stay on top of trends, and more responsibility is placed on the employee to figure things out to do his or her job more effectively.
Individual employees bear more responsibility to stay up-to-date on industry trends and business practices.
—Chief Learning Officer magazine
Therefore, training departments have a unique opportunity to create systems that employees can access however and whenever they wish, thereby injecting further efficiency into the organization.
According to CLO, continuous learning needs to embrace 5 key attributes:
- Credibility. Employees will only learn from trusted, credible sources.
- Variety. Companies that provide a spectrum of options — not simply Death by PowerPoint — will win out. Employees should be given the choice of articles, videos, quizzes, and other content types to further their learning.
- Availability. Training materials should be available on platforms that employees already use, without the need to create yet another account, username, password, or profile.
- Contextual. Companies should communicate why topics are important, how they align with the employee’s job, and further, how they unite with the organization’s strategic initiatives.
- Inspiring. Make learning part of an employee’s everyday job, not just a special situation that disrupts normal day-to-day activities. Content from learning programs can be integrated into business conversations so that the organization is fully aware of the importance of learning.
Cognota®, a learning development tool, incorporates all of these attributes, and is designed specifically for knowledge transfer. The platform captures knowledge directly from in-house experts and creates interactive courses that engage employees, motivating them to perform their jobs more efficiently.
