It should be. Your company vies for talent in order to remain competitive in the marketplace. Providing rich, meaningful learning experiences to train and retain these employees is your role as an L&D professional. A skilled, engaged, vibrant workforce ensures your company is successful in the marketplace, so your learning strategy must be every bit as competitive as your HR department's recruiting strategy.
It's likely you have five generations in your workplace. It's also likely you have a good many millennials in that mix. It's critical to your success as an L&D professional to not only understand how this vast spectrum of adults learn, but why and how learning technology is critical to the success of these employees. A thoughtful and effective learning strategy is critical to the success of the company. The L&D organization has never played a more crucial role in attracting and retaining good talent thereby keeping the company competitive.
It's likely you have five generations in your workplace. It's also likely you have a good many millennials in that mix. It's critical to your success as an L&D professional to not only understand how this vast spectrum of adults learn, but why and how learning technology is critical to the success of these employees. A thoughtful and effective learning strategy is critical to the success of the company. The L&D organization has never played a more crucial role in attracting and retaining good talent thereby keeping the company competitive.
Curation, social learning, working out loud, gamification, interactive virtual learning are just a few of the latest strategies and technologies that are used to enhance the skills of today's workforce. Each has its pros and cons and few stand on their own. Learning management systems (technology nearly two decades old) are being reinvented or replaced. Employees and business segments within corporations are taking learning into their own hands if the L&D org isn't keeping up.
The good news is that any L&D team can wisely navigate the alphabet soup of acronyms (xAPI, MOOCs, LMS, LCMS, LRS...), keep abreast of the latest available technologies, and apply basic critical thinking skills to create an appropriate comprehensive learning strategy. A savvy L&D team keeps up with learning trends and know how to tell the story to the C-suite, advising decision makers on the best approach for an organization or company as a whole. Solutions do not have to be expensive, they don't have to be painful, and change does not have to happen all at once. But it does have to happen!
There are nearly as many approaches to implementing or upgrading your learning architecture as there are ways to design and develop learning resources. If you have a great IT department (and a good relationship with them!) you can implement a lot of these things internally. If not, there are great SaaS (software as a service/solution) platforms to consider. Of course you can opt for a hybrid approach. If this is new territory for you, there are great resources available at your fingertips and learning strategists and technologists willing to assist.
No matter how you approach the game for your company, L&D MUST be in the game. Sitting on the sidelines will do nothing to help your company win.