5 Trends Reshaping Workforce Development in the Era of Covid-19 and the Great Resignation
If the global pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that the status quo is no longer acceptable. That’s particularly true for organizations competing for talent amid the Great Resignation. In the United States alone, more than 4.5 million people have quit their jobs as they re-evaluate their priorities and search for positions that offer higher wages and more fulfillment.
As a learning specialist, you need to pay attention. But more importantly, you need to take action. Now is the time to reassess and reimagine your learning and development program so it will meet the needs and expectations of today’s workers.
Your employees want to discover their purpose, grow their skillset, and be part of a caring, high-functioning team. The dry (or worse, hokey) compliance-related training sessions of yesteryear simply can’t offer the support employees need to reach their goals.
It’s time to provide professional training that keeps each learner’s needs at the center of the curriculum. You have the opportunity to shape the future of your organization by offering employees the technology and resources to engage, inspire, and equip them for great work.
Here are five trends to prepare for now if you want to attract and retain the talent your organization needs in the years to come.
1. Remote Learning Will Continue to Replace Live, In-Person Training
The summer of 2021 offered a brief respite to Zoom meetings and virtual happy hours. We gleefully returned to in-person events, team-building retreats, and professional development conferences. However, the rise of the Delta and Omicron variants is upending plans for live events in 2022. As such, you must be ready to offer fun, enjoyable remote learning options while thoughtfully measuring their effectiveness.
You’ll need to gauge more than mere attendance and determine how to assess the degree to which your learners benefited from the presenters, materials, and lessons in your virtual learning spaces. So ask yourself: Do you have the tools to engage a remote audience? Can you track the ways attendees participate in your webinars? Are you able to measure how well they retain salient information along the way?
If you don’t have robust technology to make your virtual learning options data-driven and learner-focused, now’s the time to explore what’s possible.
2. Workers Will Increasingly Pursue Self-Regulated and Social Learning Opportunities
Your employees want to understand how to do their jobs effectively. Beyond that, they’re exploring questions like: Why do I do my job? How do I do it more effectively? What can I learn from others who have experienced this challenge? Is there a better way to reach the result I’m seeking?
The ubiquity of remote work has changed how learners find answers to these questions. Breakroom chit chat, water cooler conversations, and office pop-ins have all fallen by the wayside. These organic means of connection now take place behind a screen — if they happen at all. Employees who aren’t as intentional at connecting with their coworkers via Slack, impromptu video calls, and planned check-ins can find themselves feeling isolated and unmotivated.
Furthermore, many employees no longer keep a strict 9-5 schedule. Instead, they fit work in and around their personal lives more fluidly. Some employees aren’t ever able to fully disconnect from work. Yet they’re simultaneously losing a meaningful sense of connection with their colleagues.
As a result of this new dynamic, it’s crucial to offer employees self-regulated learning (SRL) opportunities that make it easy and enjoyable to expand their knowledge independently. Individual learning journeys can also transform into social, peer-to-peer learning when employees share what they discover with their colleagues.
To make effective self-regulated and social learning possible, your learners need access to a mobile-first, adaptive learning platform. The right technology empowers them to explore content, directly and indirectly, related to their role, bookmark helpful resources, complete learning journeys personalized to their needs, and even generate their own content to share with their team.
3. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Will No Longer Be Optional
Your traditional Learning Management System (LMS) is organization-centered. It delivers the coursework and materials you need your employees to know. There’s a place for that kind of training — but it can’t be the heart of your curriculum if you want to compete in today’s war for talent.
The best way to put your learners at the center of their learning experience is to invest in technology that harnesses the full power of artificial intelligence and machine learning. As your learners engage with an AI-powered learning platform, the algorithm discovers what they’re interested in, tracks their behavior, and infers the optimal path for them. The adaptive learning paths that open up when you have the data and tools to power them will pay dividends in learner engagement and retention.
Once you put the right resources in place, AI helps learners discover all the available content and interact with it, making them more proficient in the areas that matter most. Of course, this learner-centered approach ultimately benefits your organization as well. Because engaged, competent, and well-equipped employees are the key to driving your business forward and meeting your overarching objectives.
Artificial intelligence and machine learning are here to stay. So if you’re looking for a digital solution to roll out at your organization, make sure it’s equipped to deliver a modern, AI-powered, personalized learning experience for your employees.
4. Front-Line Employees Will Expect Access to Mobile-First Learning Platforms
White collar office workers aren’t the only employees interested in expanding their skills and growing professionally. Front-line restaurant workers and employees in other service-oriented industries are also hungry for advancement. They’re also accustomed to navigating the details of their daily lives using their phone or tablet.
To effectively train front-line workers to deliver your brand promise to your customers, you’ll need to provide just-in-time performance support that answers their questions in their moments of need. That means providing an intuitive mobile experience that matches the consumer-grade interfaces they’re accustomed to navigating. Your professional learning platform should be as scrollable, seamless, and engaging as Netflix and Tik Tok — otherwise, it’s just the same LMS experience on a smaller screen.
5. Augmented and Virtual Reality Will Take Professional Learning to a New Level
If you were excited about exploring augmented and virtual reality technology pre-pandemic but had to put a pause on the pilot programs you planned to roll out, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, the workforce development community as a whole lost some momentum in this exciting area due to the chaos we’ve all experienced in recent years.
Now that we’ve become more accustomed to our collective “next normal,” it’s time to explore these innovative learning opportunities again.
Augmented reality (AR), in particular, offers exciting new ways to train and equip employees for success. At SparkLearn, we’re currently piloting a program that will allow a large organization to use AR to help employees visualize product capabilities and possibilities right alongside the other microlearning content in the platform. Our platform will enable workers to see how tools and products function and quickly speed on new features. It’s totally seamless and completely unique.
In the future, virtual reality could bring safety training and drills to life in a host of vivid ways. For example, a VR experience could immerse learners into an active shooter or fire scenario to truly equip them for these rare but urgent events.
Equip Your Workforce for Success in 2022 and Beyond
If you’re like many L&D specialists, you’ve been eager to innovate and transform your professional learning program for a long time. The good news is that Covid-19 and the Great Resignation have served and will continue to serve as catalysts that allow you to make the transformational changes you want to make.
Yes, it can feel chaotic and overwhelming. However, the urgency of the current situation illuminates just how important it is for organizations to level up their learning and development programs. Now’s the time to put your learners first by investing in the technology, tools, and resources that will set them up for success for years to come.
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