- Now let's talk about learning and development.
This is at the core of what HR does,
which is to enable employees to be able
to do their jobs better and more efficiently.
But it's also as a way to develop that relationship
because we know that as people,
we want to be able to continue to grow and to learn
because that's how we develop as people.
So how is learning and development
changing because of digital?
I think there are three ways.
First of all, learning used to be episodic.
There'd be a time and place
where you'd sign up for a course,
you'd go into that course,
and you would go and do it.
sometimes in a classroom, and increasingly online too.
But I think digital, now,
has a chance of making learning more continuous,
making it built into the context of everything
that we do everyday.
So what's better, signing up for a course
that you may or may not use in the next day,
or having learning delivered to you
in the context of when you have a problem?
So because so much of what we do is digital today,
could an artificial intelligence, learning engine, identify,
wait, you're having a new project that you have to do.
You've never done this project.
Here are three courses that might be really helpful to you.
So it's placed in front of you,
and highly relevant to your background.
Or you're running into a problem,
you're going in to search
and you're searching for some question.
Again, the answer might be there on the page,
but maybe this is a skill and capability
that you want to learn.
So we're talking about learning on demand,
truly on demand on a continuous basis
putting context of your needs.
The second way that learning is changing
is that it's becoming atomized.
Instead of a long course for a half an hour, an hour,
or even a day that you sit on,
what if it was minutes?
We have atoms and little modules and segments.
I kind of think of it as the Snapchat of learning,
where we know people's attentions are very fragmented,
so let's deliver learning at that fragmented level,
where we know we have a full attention for minutes,
and we know that learning can be absorbed that way.
And the third area that digital can impact learning is
that learning used to be this isolated experience.
You go into a room and just learn on your own.
But now learning can be social,
where you're learning these new capabilities and skills
with another cohort of people.
And because of social tools,
it's not just networking with each other,
you're actually showing
what are the challenges you're experiencing,
what are the new things
that you're learning and experiencing,
what is this new area that you're moving into?
And to be able to go through that journey of learning
with other people is such a better way to learn,
and it reinforces the way that you learn too, as well.
And takes advantage of this continuous and atomized way
that content is being created.
And what's really interesting about the way
that social happens is that the learning content is
co-created by that same community.
So learning happens on multiple levels, and therefore,
is deeply ingrained inside of those employees.
So I think it's a very exciting time
where you can also think about how digital is
transforming this core area of what HR is responsible,
the learning and development of employees.