#SAPRadio What You Missed on Workplace Learning Revolution: Developing 21st Century Leaders

Learning at work has never been so crucial for the individual employee and for the organization. At a time in history where information is at our fingertips, workers now have the choice – and the motivation and tools to proactively steer their own career growth by acquiring the right skills needed for advancement. It’s just a matter of what information to learn, how to acquire it, and who will shoulder the bill. But there is no free lunch. And when it comes to paying the bill, do organizations have enough incentive to invest dollars in their employees’ learning? The bottom line: by attending a company-sponsored course, are employees actually contributing to a richer, stronger organization? “So what?” commented one HR Trends with Game-Changers Radio panelist, in regard to the value of learning  anything.

Corporations today need a return on investment in order to invest in educating their workers. Luckily, for both companies and employees, old learning methods are on the way out. The emergence of disruptive technologies is bringing about a transformation  in teaching methods – including interactive video and gamification – that are helping to optimize learning. How can a company measure the impact of these new types of advanced education? Using predictive analytics, for example, you can chart employee success and streamline corporate education material to foster desired career paths, so no training investment is ever unjustified. Adopting these new methods of workforce teaching will ultimately have tremendous implications on your company’s ability to survive, whether an employee is engaged and will stay, and how “smart” and valued each worker can be for decades to come. 

Want to hear the exciting panel discussion on this disruptive learning revolution that is to change everything? Listen to panelists Malcolm “Mal” Poulin, Senior Director of Product Strategy for ANCILE; Jill McGillen, Founder, Next Turn Consulting; and Jenny Dearborn, Chief Learning Officer and Senior Vice President at SAP on the full on-demand podcast here.

Top memorable insights heard on this episode:

1. Corporate learning needs to embrace change – shed the norms and expectations of the past. Bring life into learning. A bunch of people took the class. So what? What does it mean? Did it make a DIFFERENCE? How can you measure that? –Jenny Dearborn  @DearbornJenny
2. “Best Place to Work” study: The response across the board was, “Ask your employees what they want.” Employees are asking for mentors, continuous learning. Part of a good culture to want that – to make the ‘best places to work’–Jill McGillen  @jillmcgillen
3. No one should ever wait to get what they need to be successful. Employees should always be proactive. Take ownership. If you [as a worker] are really proactive, you can create your own luck. You just have to work a lot harder to get what you want out of work. –Jenny Dearborn  @DearbornJenny
4. Start respecting the way the learner learns. Boomer vs. Millennial, different learning methods. –Jill McGillen @jillmcgillen
5. [The learning transformation] is more of an evolution of instructional design. The ability to adapt and understand human behavior better. Gen-X/Boomers saying, “I’d like that too. I’d like to have a game in how I learn.’ An online social community. –Jenny Dearborn  @DearbornJenny
6. We need learning to enable process of enablement and we need to invest very intelligently, not for facts and figures, but for retention.  –Mal Poulin  @malcolmpoulin
7. Companies have to show that learning will guarantee success to attract this new generation (millennials), as well as recruit and retain them. This new generation flooding in is asking, “What are you going to do to invest in ME?” –Jenny Dearborn  @DearbornJenny
8. Provide the stage for learning. Knowledge is the asset and needs to be curated, shared, deployed – exploited. –Mal Poulin  @malcolmpoulin
9. I make it all about business results. When you invest in assets, business results are better. We have to talk to corporations 100% in business terms. Don’t use the ‘softer’ words of training, learning – And I’ve ever had an executive turn me down. –Jenny Dearborn  @DearbornJenny
10. Do execs want to invest in training? NO. Invest in their people? YES. Execs want to invest wisely in how they teach a worker to do their job, and at the end of every stage they’re improving. –Mal Poulin  @malcolmpoulin

Top #CrystalBall Predictions for the year 2020:

1. Mobility will standardize. On-demand. Anytime-Anywhere. Online. Off-the-shelf, seminars, global walls will decrease. –Jill McGillen @jillmcgillen
2. All about people strategy, investment and governance. Let them do what they need to do, help them do it as best as we can. Learning? NO It’s NEVER over. Our solutions can solve it, but we need to strive everyday. 5 years? No different. –Mal Poulin  @malcolmpoulin
3. There will be content ubiquity. A panic in corporate. They’ll try to figure out how to lock down and control this. And you can’t. So embrace it. Be transparent. THE PAST: Framework of past was about controlling info. Command THE FUTURE: Democratization – Anything can be searched. –Jenny Dearborn  @DearbornJenny

The next episode of HR Trends with Game-Changers Radio explores The 2020 Leader: Leading in the New World with a panel of HR thought leaders and experts. Stay tuned and please follow us on Twitter at #SAPRadio.