Keeping it on the DL - Guest Speaker LPI Chairman Donald H Taylor
Shall we jump right in? Are L&D teams relevant anymore?
Given the steer towards customised, personalised learning do you still need an L&D team. Well, we are walking into this vlog with a bang. It is a crucial question and the elephant in the room that we should all be asking ourselves. LPI Chairman and Guest Speaker for this month’s vlog Donald H Taylor cleverly approaches this question. So, the answer is yes and no.
Unfortunately, you cannot measure learning, but most learning takes place outside what L&D does. We live in a world where people can increasingly access information themselves and there are so many options on the market that it is no longer sufficient to just rely on L&D functions. L&D needs to adjust to this new world and as we have experienced previously, they are not the sole gatekeepers to knowledge anymore. However, they can make themselves an essential cog in the machine. The scope of what L&D should be doing has increased and it needs to adapt so it can help individuals reach their potential.
Let’s face facts, Covid-19 has given people the time and determination to take up learning on their own. Upskilling was already a huge priority pressing on people’s minds prior to 2020 and as we move to a remote world, online learning is not only essential but the default option.
The elephant in the room
We might as well jump into the looming topic … 2020. Although we have had to deal with a brutal year it has also been a god send for innovation. Companies have had to put their money where their mouth is and step up to the plate for embracing technology, that was previously seen as a luxury and not a necessity. The move to accelerate technological bravery.
2020, our vlog panel discusses two things. Will we go back to how things were before? Firstly no.
“What is extraordinary about Covid-19 and this is in no way a new observation. But it has been a catalyst that has accelerated existing things changing. Around January 2020, roughly half of the delivery of training in most organisations was done online and half of it was face to face, which is a very rough statistic. Given that the term eLearning was coined in about 1999, this was 20 years of work to get to a place that learning was 50% online, and within 4 months it jumped to 100% of delivery was online. That is a VERY rapid acceleration.” Donald H Taylor, LPI Chairman
March – June was simply getting emergency solutions adopted. ‘Oh, my goodness I have to get things in place no matter what!’
We realised after that adaptation period that there would be a new future approach to how learning and development needed to do things. A world that was originally physical first as the default, is now digital. A low cost, low friction, low interruption solution. It does not mean it will always be the right answer, but it will moving forward be the natural response and a hard habit to break given the benefits that have been discovered.
A huge discovery in 2020 and the reaction we did not expect in the digital learning world … an increase in motivation.
As you can see, it is incredibly difficult to fit all the insights found in this vlog into one blog piece and we would not want to deprive you of the pleasure of hearing how Donald H Taylor, Spencer Holmes, Sarah Vaughan, and Robin Ridgley discuss these topics. Take your time enjoying each installment and let us know your thoughts that we can direct to our hosts and guest speaker.
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