Enterprise Learning Cultures Arent Just Smarter They Outperform All Others

Organizations that understand the technologies, trends and forces shaping learning and development will not only hire and retain top talent, theyll win in the marketplace too.
ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

The research is clear: organizations with strong learning cultures outperform their competitors. Enterprises that emphasize ongoing learning and development also understand that these activities are the primary drivers of increased engagement, productivity and performancethe winning combination in todays highly competitive global marketplace. Judging by their increased training spend, employers are embracing these realities enthusiastically. Despite a persistently challenging economy, U.S.-based employers spent more on training during each of the last two years10 percent more in 2011 and 12 percent more in 2012. These statistics were reported in The Corporate Learning Factbook 2013, published recently by Bersin by Deloitte.

research is clear: organizations with The strong learning cultures outperform their competitors.

According to the research firm, which has conducted studies on corporate learning and development (L&D) over the past several years, organizations with strong learning cultures outperform their peers in several crucial ways:

Given statistics like these, its no wonder employers are spending more on L&Dand ensuring the learning sticks. But these budget increases arent the only development worth tracking. In fact, several noteworthy trends shed light on how dramatically learning continues to evolve within todays organizations and where employers must focus in the years to come.

Whats driving the evolution of learning?

Arguably there are dozens of answers to this question, a multitude of forces at work in shaping and reshaping L&D in the business world. However, the following three forces in particular hold special significance for todays employers.
Theyre faced with the challenge of managing and integrating all of these technologies and the various types of content they deliver. Many organizations are just now beginning to grapple with these issues, and many are coming face to face with the need to find or build comprehensive, integrated learning management systems that allow for traditional training as well as informal collaborative community platforms. True integration will take time, but it will be well worth the effortnot only for the benefits it will provide HR and the L&D function but also for the benefits it will provide to employees. Integration will make it easier for employees to use emerging technologies and to successfully engage with the content their employers provide, two factors that are absolutely critical to drive desired improvements in performance.
ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

The Rise of On-Demand Learning

Thanks in part to the technology developments mentioned above, on-demand learning is becoming increasingly popular. These technologies all facilitate unstructured, untethered, 24/7 learninga factor that has tremendous appeal to a growing segment of todays workforce, especially younger workers. Traditional, structured learning still has its place in most organizations, but more and more employees want the opportunity to control where and when they learnselfpaced learning, as some pundits call it. Indeed, they need this level of control to balance the challenges of their regular business day with their need to enhance their knowledge and skills. Where structured learning programs can actually be disruptive to their day-to-day productivity and reduce their learning retention, on-demand learning can enhance it and improve knowledge retention over time. Video and mobile technologies, for example, are ideal tools for on-demand learning because almost any employee with knowledge to share can become a content creator and the rest of her/his peers can consume the content wherever and whenever its most convenient. They can then comment on and add their own domain expertise to the learning content, creating an ongoing tribal knowledge repository for future talent generations to explore and learn from. We see this happening every day outside of the workplace with individuals creating

Innovation in Learning Technologies

For well over a decade, organizations have enhanced the live, classroom-based learning model with e-learning and other self-service and collaborative social technologies. But the technology boom has never been greater than it is now. The value of todays learning technology market has been estimated at nearly $2 billion. Many progressive enterprises are creating new revenue streams by packaging and selling their industry training materials, including a host of innovative offerings such as interactive video technologies, social learning, social collaboration and sharing forums and user-developed content. The point of all of these technologies, of course, is to facilitate learning. To make it easier, faster and more effective. However, as is so often the case with technology booms, the reality is far more complexespecially for employers.

Whats driving the evolution of learning?

informative, instructive and, yes, even entertaining videos by using their smart phones, tablets and laptops and sharing them on the Internet; the same thing is happening on scores of forums and websites devoted to particular professions, job skills and areas of expertise. Todays workforce is supremely comfortable with using online technologies to find information and learn new skills. Organizations that actively facilitate on-demand learning in their talent management and social collaboration platforms are actually giving employees what they want and theyre building a competitive advantage for attracting and retaining top talent. Bottom line, employers with the right tools and systems in place are able to use L&D metrics and predictive analytics to make better decisions decisions that have real value to the business and its success and the next level of competitive advantage.
ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

The Application of Business Intelligence

The ultimate differentiator today is in the workforce data. Employers have grown far more diligent about applying internal metrics and analytics to various aspects of their business, including the HR business like performance, compensation, workforce planning and L&D. While some organizations focus simply on using hard data to justify their training expenditures, savvier organizations focus on measuring the actual impact of their L&D initiatives, assessing precisely how L&D affects employee performance and the companys overall ability to achieve its business goals. These employers use L&D analytics to drive performance in specific, desired ways. This requires careful planning and the capacity to measure and track results. Robust talent management systems that include integrated learning management modules are invaluable in this regard, and they deliver the detailed and cross-functional insights employers need to take appropriate action to fill skills gaps, resolve performance disconnects and even predict future performance. And now that employers are using more online L&D solutions, their talent/learning management systems are vitally important in helping them assess the effectiveness of these solutions. Organizations are using these systems to determine which L&D offerings deliver the best results and which fail to engage employees in truly meaningful ways.

Five Trends To Watch in 2013 & Beyond

With these three powerful forces shaping HR and L&D today, organizations that adopt them will most likely see their employee retention rates, productivity and market share go up. Here are five specific trends that you can count on in the coming years.
ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

More and more companies will tailor the learning experience to both the needs of the organization and the employee. Companies that want to sustain growth will ensure that their L&D offerings are directly aligned with the organizations business strategy (i.e., driving growth by driving employee engagement and performance) but they also will tailor L&D opportunities in ways that will retain top performers, giving them the skills they need to excel personally in a fast-paced, competitive marketplace. In addition, employees who utilize on-demand learning will seek out content that is relevant and contextual to their immediate needs; theyll want an appropriate amount of information (not too little or too much) delivered immediately so they can put their new skills and knowledge to use once their training session is over. For their formal learning, employees will want a customized development plan tailored specifically to their job requirements and personal career goals.

We Will See More Tailored Training.

Social & Informal Learning Will Continue To Soar.

U.S. companies spent 39 percent more on social learning in 2012 than they did the year before, according to Bersin by Deloitte. And we have every reason to believe this trend will continue. Organizations that wish to drive employee engagement and performance to meet business goals will become increasingly effective at creating and leveraging employee networks, disseminating knowledge across functional areas and throughout the company at large, and effectively creating informal mentoring by linking internal subject matter experts to younger and less experienced employees. Another benefit of social and informal learning is that both can be extremely

Five Trends To Watch in 2013 & Beyond

effective on their own as well as when incorporated into more structured programs (e.g., combining a formal course with a learner discussion forum). Many experts believe that social and informal learning are becoming more synonymous and ultimately will help to supplant blended training programs with learning environments where continuous education and training take place spontaneously. Social and informal learning are all about capturing knowledge and expertise (from inside and outside of the organization) and sharing it with employees with maximum efficiency. Therefore, over time, employers will need to shift their mindset from one of supplying employees with courses and content to one that focuses on expediting the sharing of knowledge and expertise.

Ease-of-Use Will Become an L&D Priority.

ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

SaaS & Mobile Solutions Will Become More Prominent.

To support all of this unstructured, on-demand, social and informal learning, employers will embrace cloud-based solutions and the use of mobile devices to greater degrees. SaaS and mobile are essential for delivering increased amounts of streaming video, digital content and other types of new media. Additionally, the use of SaaS and mobile will give employers access to useful L&D-related data, which their learning management systems will be able to track and sift for useful insights. Employers also will look into virtualization, gamification and 3D technologies, especially as they become less expensive during the coming years. These technologies will help organizations deliver scenario-based learning to better engage learners and grow the skill sets theyll need to keep their companies ahead of competitors. Naturally, SaaS solutions and mobile devices will generate security concerns for employers. In terms of L&D, employers will be challenged with managing the suitability and accuracy of the information that employees create and share. But L&D is just part of the larger picture. Gartner estimates that by 2017 more than half of all companies will require their employees to supply their own smart devices to do their jobs, and by 2018 70% of mobile professionals will conduct their work on personal smart devices. Clearly, the need to secure internal dataeven as it is being shared over non-protected networkswill be a top concern for L&D and the organization in general.

To support the rise of on-demand learning, employers and vendors alike will devote greater attention to making learning tools and resources easier to use. After all, on-demand learning must be fast and relevant from the employees perspective or it simply wont engage them. And from the employers perspective, on-demand learning tools and collaboration platforms must be easy to use and quickly solidify user adoption if they are to successfully convey the knowledge and skills workers need to complete their immediate tasks. In light of all this, an organizations learning professionals will play an instrumental role in determining which tools actually live up to expectations and work best to support learners. Rather than function strictly as trainers or administrators, these individuals will become learning facilitators, even mentors. Theyll evaluate tools and programs, theyll help to identify their organizations subject matter experts, and theyll be responsible for ensuring that employees have access to the right educational content in all the right places and at all the right times.

Five Trends To Watch in 2013 & Beyond

More employers will work to create internal cultures of collaborative learning for three very straightforward reasons: greater employee engagement, greater marketplace success and a stronger bottom line. As mentioned in the opening of this article, organizations that have strong learning cultures outperform those that dont. Employers are waking up to this fact and to the reality that a lot of learning occurs for their employees outside of the organization. This can be good and bad. Employees are just as likely to learn unwanted tactics, skills and habits as they are desired ones. If it remains easier and faster for them to use external resourcessuch as online search engines, professional blogs, public forums and online communitiestheyll keep doing so. Wise employers wont miss the opportunity to mirror their users experience by leveraging these resources and incorporating them into their L&D strategies. Younger generations have done a good job of integrating learning and the technologies covered above into their daily lives. When they want to know something, they instinctively go to the Internet to do research or reach out to their social networks. Results-driven organizations will harness these instincts in their own collaborative social learning communities to support business growth and encourage employees to build strong business networks. In the meantime, the organizations learning professionals will create easier access to corporate data; theyll champion business collaboration tools that make it easier for employees to find relevant content, share their knowledge, and rate their learning experiences; and theyll align training offerings with the skills necessary to achieve specific business goals.

Employers Will Create More Collaborative Learning Cultures.

Learning Organizations Are High-Performance Organizations

An organization with a vibrant collaborative learning culture has one other advantage. Innovation. When employees are learning from each other, it accelerates the creation of new ideasideas that often lead to improvements in products and services, business processes, collaboration and competitive differentiation. It also helps employees feel more invested in the work they do and the teams they do it with, and it inspires a greater sense of loyalty to their employers. Theres no question that high-performance organizations are learning organizations. And its equally clear that, given the technologies and trends shaping learning today, the most successful learning organizations in the years to come will be those that improve their ability to facilitate knowledge sharing and management, social and informal learning, and the application of internal metrics and analytics to guide their L&D decisions.
ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

The question is what is your organization doing to become a highperformance learning organization?

About Peoplefluent
Peoplefluent is the leading provider of talent management solutions designed to support the entire workforce. We provide the mobile enablement, social collaboration, information visualization and the domain expertise required to empower strategic decision-making and true employee engagement. Our talent management software enables organizations to unlock each individuals potential by removing the boundaries that limit the performance and productivity of your workforce. With the most comprehensive talent suite in the industry including solutions for talent management, workforce compliance and diversity, contingent workforce management, analytics and workforce planning, Peoplefluent offers a solution to optimize every step of the talent lifecycle. Our solutions have helped over 5,100 organizations in 214 countries and territories successfully achieve their talent aspirations. Today, 80% of the Fortune 100 relies on Peoplefluent solutions as part of their talent management delivery strategy. For more information, visit www.peoplefluent.com. FIND US
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ENTERPRISE LEARNING CULTURES AREN'T JUST SMARTER - THEY OUTPERFORM ALL OTHERS

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