Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011 - (Page 15)

LEARNING 2020 | LISA BODELL INTEGRATING TRAINING INTO DAILY ROUTINES CREATES OPPORTUNITIES. A MICRO-MODULE A DAY E ffective training is not easy. How do you engage today’s multi-tasking, hyper-busy employees? How do you create a process for applying new skills to real-life challenges? As we look to the future of learning and development, it’s obvious these issues won’t simply fade away. For those organizations looking to be leaders in their fields, it’s critical to transform training from a perceived “time-waster” loathed by employees into a resource valued as an integral part of their daily work-lives. Employees are busy. Some just don’t attend training sessions—or if they do, they’re checking email throughout, stepping out to make phone calls and generally focused on something else. It’s hard to blame them for not simply dropping their day-to-day responsibilities at the behest of the HR department. But here lies one of the most important shifts that will take root over the next few years: making learning and development part of the everyday. It’s not enough to make sessions engaging, fun or even useful. If an employee can’t fully focus due to work-related distractions, any innovation in the style or content of that session is futile. To account for this deficit of attention and focus, organizations can implement daily micromodules that offer training in short increments. Imagine employees spending 10 or 15 minutes per day in an eLearning module, with the freedom to work it into their schedules whenever they choose. No more “I really don’t have three hours today for training.” Plus, integrating training into their daily routines creates opportunities for immediate ap- plication, reinforcing new concepts. By building an environment of continuous learning, trainers can move progress into the real world of functional tasks, instead of preaching it in the classroom as an idealized process. Of course, there are benefits to gathering a team together face-to-face, and most organizations will never fully replace workshops with eLearning. In an article titled “Getting More From Your Training Programs” in the October 2010 McKinsey Quarterly, the authors are quick to point out that “The most significant improvements lie in rethinking the mindsets that employees and their leaders bring to training, as well as the environment they come back to afterward…” These types of micromodules, paired with classroom sessions as part of a blended-learning approach, will reshape the “post-training environment.” In fact, perhaps the post-training environment will cease to exist, because training will be continuous. It will be like checking email or taking a lunch break—a basic part of everyone’s workday. These trends and others are creating opportunities for smart organizations to leverage training as a competitive advantage. Those that get it right— and do so more quickly than their counterparts— will be the ones to see learning and development play an ever-greater role in their success. Lisa Bodell is the founder and CEO of futurethink, a globally recognized innovation research and training firm. E-mail Lisa. 15 TrainingIndustry Quarterly, Spring 2011 / A Training Industry, Inc. ezine / www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ http://www.trainingindustry.com/TIQ

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011
From Where I Sit
Contents
At the Editor’s Desk
Performance & Productivity
Learning Technologies
Technical Training
Learning 2020
Developing High Impact Academia Partnerships
Sustainability – The Next Corporate Challenge
The LMS Evolution: Revolutionizing Form and Function
Video: The Next Hot Learning App?
Jackson Hewitt
Pay Attention to Knowledge Retention
Closing Arguments

Training Industry Quarterly - Spring 2011