Outsourcing ‘digital’ and not investing in your own digital know-how will put you at a significant disadvantage – and over-reliance on one system will prove to be counterproductive.

Outsourcing ‘digital’ and not investing in your own digital know-how will put you at a significant disadvantage – and over-reliance on one system will prove to be counterproductive.
What is being neglected in this question is what really works: How do people actually develop the requisite ‘soft’ skills they need to be successful in their work and careers?
‘Digital’ may seem unattainable, and almost alien, to a lot of L&D, because we’re so used to using technology in service of our programmes. But it’s actually easier, cheaper, faster, and better.
It doesn’t matter if you’re e-learning is animated, ‘fun’, interactive, or that you get points for completing it (yawn). If it doesn’t solve a specific problem that you’re people – or distinct groups of them – are experiencing then it’s extraneous.
Don’t buy an LMS thinking it will be ‘the answer’. Workers don’t need it and they don’t need content. They need help with their work and career-related goals.
Despite the headlines, attention spans are not reducing but perhaps tolerance for workplace learning offerings is?
What motivates people to learn online at work? Knowing the answer will dictate your approach to digital L&D.
Rather than using technology to scale L&D initiatives, what can be learned from the success of the iPhone in finding new ways of helping workers to do what they want to do, better?
I’ve been in Learning & Development since the popularisation of e-learning in the late-1990s. Back then, it would be ordered from a paper catalogue and arrive through the post on discs! I so wanted every disc […]
Let’s be honest, the best compliment any worker has ever given to compliance training was probably along the lines of: “That wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.” Perhaps it could be likened […]