Why have training budgets often been cut before any other budgets? The need to 'train' people often has a tenuous link to business improvement or have any level of ROI. But why is this? Often the answer lies in the process of deciding who, how and why training takes place. Commonly personal development plans are paid scant attention until close to appraisals when they are dusted off; other reasons are lack of alignment to business objectives....Training is dead and isolated from the workplace, the doing the conversations the exchange of ideas, the collaboration.The New Order of Learning
Most people if if they do attend training often learn more when they have opportunity to discuss with peers the content and application of the course. It is the interactions, conversations and ultimately the application of the knowledge in the workplace that changes businesses. The sporadic one off input of training rarely if ever achieves this. Yet the training industry (UK) in the private sector is valued at over £2.93 Bn spent a year on training.
Recently we were talking to a large multi-national client about learning; they were interested in the amount of time and energy their people spend after work learning on social networks. What amazed them was not only the amount of time their employees spend on collaborating and co-creating, but the passion and energy they put into it. They commented that if they could harness this they would achieve create a culture of innovation and see record growth.
Businesses need to comtemplate how to harness this but must recognise and plan carefully the cultural change to enable this transformation.
It is a fundamental shift in the way that both learning and working is happening in organisations. The revolution that is social means that people can participate to support their own as well as their team learning, performance and productivity.
This is an opportunity to take on the new challenges it offers, to boldy embrace change and take the first steps in this new order.
It is 'Together Technology' that enables others in the organization work and learn smarter; it is Social Learning.
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ReplyDeleteThe social learning you discuss is very powerful but very different from most organizational training programs. Training usually harks back to he need to get people to do tasks more efficiently and in a standardized way. Today we need less and less of it and the whole standardization can actually be counter-productive to adaptability. The research on adoption of new technology indicates it works better if you give people something real to do with it rather than learning where the button are. Social learning enhances this.
ReplyDeleteBut what social learning, augmented by social software, is to enable implicit learning to become part of one's job not an adjunct task done periodically. If organizations are to be responsive, learning to spot and act on the implications of change needs to happen at all levels of companies.
We have just begun to write some blog posts around learning in an post-secondary setting. We too use terms like collaboration and co-creation. Someday soon perhaps the two worlds of business and education will merge and we can all work to accomplish similar goals.
ReplyDeleteBest regards,
RJ Johnson