Many learning conferences this year, called digital transformation, a fundamental necessity for organizations. L&D teams across organizations striving hard to help organizations embrace their digital future. But to ensure it, they must undergo a transformation themselves first.
However, digital transformation is not a recent phenomenon. The practice of leveraging human effort with digital technology has been around for decades. But what is new is how fast it is happening today.
The Upskilling Imperative
The evolution and intervention of digital technology is dominating our daily lives. Whether you employ a digital transformation strategy at work or not, your people are witnessing it in their personal lives.
The use of smart devices and mobile apps have taken over the life at home. With the onset of the pandemic, digital automation has become necessity at work places too. So, both work and workplace learning are now heavily reliant on digital technology.
And if you don’t provide your people with timely resources, they will move on.
A Deloitte report on Human Capital Trends report in 2019, stated that L&D is responsible for creating “work centered learning programs, helping people consume information and upgrade their skills in the course of their day to day jobs.”
Organizations across the world have already caught up with the trend before the pandemic. In 2018, World Economic Forum reported that 84% of organizations have increased their investment in re-skilling programs. The report also predicted that organizations may consider an extra 101 days of learning in their business calendar. According to Deloitte, organizations are preferring re-skilling over hiring the skills they need (Figure 1).
New Ways of Learning Demand New Skills
Digital learning isn’t just limited to digital content. It provides a blend of learning that enhance a broad range of skills in your learners.
But the outdated methods of learning measurement— registrations, attendance, completions, and training hours — will not be adequate. So, your L&D teams must connect the dots between your people’s learning behavior and performance. This will require skills in analytics and the ability to tell the story behind the numbers.
With personalized learning taking center stage, measurement has become much more granular. Using Experience API (xAPI), you can capture any kind of learning data, including mentoring and experiential learning.
To provide adaptive learning, you need deeper analysis than our legacy gap analysis techniques provide.
Above all, L&D must collaborate with operational management to evaluate and report the impact of learning transfer on job performance.
Like any other organizational function, L&D leaders and professionals must now make better and faster decisions using their learning data. CEOs are also eager to know about the impact learning within the organization to align their re-skilling efforts for future needs.
Achieving that requires L&D leaders to master their tools and resources to develop data collection, analytics, and reporting capabilities.
if you are starting out on your transformation journey, here are a few things to consider.
Learn to Use the Tools You Have
Most learning platform vendors provide in-built reporting and analytics features, but L&D leaders often lack the expertise and resources to make the most out of them. If you want to expand your capability, consider using a combination of these four options:
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Upskill your staff even though it takes some time
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Hire a data scientist, data analysts, and report designers. As per the current job scenario, that could be expensive.
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Let marketing or analytics team, or another segment of your organization take up the task. It could but short-term solution, but you will not have enough control over availability.
Get Connected
Collaborate with your organization’s Chief Data Officer to establish data governance and management system in L&D.
If you don’t have a CDO, connect with your Chief Information Officer and the Data Governance Institute to implement a data governance management system in your organization. Sometimes, your CIO may also turnout to be your CDO. They can help you find resources you are looking for.
What you learn from them can help you lead the digital transformation journey for your company.
Share Your Discoveries
Accurate and insightful reporting kills skepticism and builds trust with in your circles. When you discover new information, present it with well-designed data visualizations. Share those designs to the people in your organization who can benefit from your discoveries. If they need such information on a regular basis, pin it to their dashboards.
As the roles of digitization and data analytics grow within an organization, your L&D team’s ability to deliver the right learning at the right time also improves.
Chasma Place, is an independent source for solutions that will help you keep pace with changes in the way your people work without ripping and replacing your existing systems.