Powering Productivity & Potential: Learning Trends 2016 by Eudemonia

Powering Productivity & Potential: Learning Trends 2016 December 2015

Learning Trends 2016

Table of Contents Powering Productivity & Potential: Learning Trends 2016 The Year of Enablement ..........................................................................................................3 Trend #1 – Address the Employee Experience ................................................................................ 4 Trend #2 – Embrace the Extended Enterprise ................................................................................. 6 Trend #3 – Facilitate Knowing the Who, Not Just the What .......................................................... 7 Trend #4 – Curate the Contributions ............................................................................................... 9 Trend #5 – The Comeback of Customization ................................................................................ 10

Methodology ......................................................................................................................... 13 About the Author ............................................................................................................................ 14

Eudemonia ....................................................................................................................................... 15

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Learning Trends 2016

The Year of Enablement As businesses gear up for the coming calendar year, a number of factors point to the need for a reassessment of – and recommitment to – organizational learning and development. Unemployment in the United States is 5%, the lowest it has been since April 2008 when the global bank crisis began to emerge.1 At the same time, workforce disengagement is at all time highs. Gallup reports less than one-third (31.5%) of U.S. workers are engaged in their jobs. The majority of employees (51%) are "not engaged" and 17.5% "actively disengaged."2 Perhaps related to disengagement, workforce productivity has plateaued in recent years. Economists are stumped where sustained economic growth will come from if businesses don’t do something about it.3 Not boding well for motivating employees to be more productive nor engaged, the average salary increase budget is expected to be 2.9% in 2016. This is only up slightly from the average budget increase of 2.8% in 2015, according to Mercer’s 2015/2016 US Compensation Planning Survey.4 Mercer commentary on the study noted: “flat budgets have created more reliance on other reward methods like developing career opportunities and creating meaningful work experiences that align with the company’s goals and support employees’ needs." Yet at the same time, the traditional tools and techniques of organizational communications, learning and development, and other workforce applications are being drastically disrupted by new technologies like social, mobile, and video. Finally, four if not five different generations in the workplace adopt these digital solutions and other role and workplace changes at different rates and in different ways, further complicating matters. Simply put, the shrinking pool of people looking for, available, and ready to work means businesses will have to do more to build skills and capability from within their organizations.

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United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Majority of U.S. Employees Not Engaged Despite Gains in 2014.” Adkins, Amy. Gallup, January 18, 2015. “Productivity, The Problem Plaguing the Economy.” The Economist Intelligence Unit, August 14, 2015. U.S. Compensation Planning Survey. Mercer, November, 2015.

Learning Trends 2016

Moreover, the disenchantment of those on the job means companies have to literally re-engage with workers by connecting them with colleagues, communicating company visions and values, and offering career development resources in new, more practical, and personally compelling ways. In light of this complex context, this paper identifies five key workforce and workplace trends and related responsive tactics for organizations to consider as they look to help their workers learn, adapt to change, and develop their careers and personal potential in 2016.

Trend #1 – Address the Employee Experience As marketing has driven new value and growth for businesses by examining and improving the overall customer experience, businesses need to consider the overall employee experience to improve productivity and professional development and related business outcomes today. In a 2015 American Management Association survey of learning professionals, nearly half of respondents (42%) reported that “experiential” learning is the most highly effective form of professional development.5 Yet not enough firms have assessed the holistic learning “experience” they are providing their workforces today, particularly how rapidly-changing technology may help (or hinder) that experience. Web-based learning management solutions (LMS) have been around for more than a decade now, but academic research shows the top drivers of dissatisfaction of online learning are largely related to the employee experience of technology itself. They include solution access, functionality, reliability, and usability.6 With the advancement of user-friendly consumer applications in recent years, employees have been overwhelmed by the proliferation of self-service business applications as well. Yet many have been simultaneously underwhelmed with the actual offerings in workplace system capabilities and ease of use as business investments and implementations fall behind the consumer experience.

“More Global Leadership Development Please.” Chief Learning Officer Magazine, Guzman, Viviana, December 2015. “Sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with a learning management system in post-adoption stage: A critical incident technique approach.” Computers in Human Behavior. Islam, Najmul. February 21, 2014. 6

Learning Trends 2016

No where is this more prevalent than the learning and development arena. The renown Sierra-Cedar 2015–2016 HR Systems Survey White Paper report notes the top solution for learning today across companies of all sizes is “Other.”7 That is, none of the major commercial software solutions have captured the largest share of the market. Companies are using a diverse and disparate set of solutions to support their organizational development efforts. Case in point: the group head of learning at a 112,000 worker pharmaceutical company is currently rationalizing more than 30 different learning-related systems. He ran a focus group with employees and found they want a solution they are actually aware of and that is easily accessible. They also want one clear and consistent in its content and objectives. Similarly, the head of global learning and development for a 70,000 employee information technology company noted his firm is taking a step back and completely rethinking how the learning function supports the business alongside reexamining its learning and human resource software solutions. In recent years it had been billing its disparate business units for training support, but it is considering restructuring to both better serve the organization as a whole and individual employees. Everyone complained the majority of long-course offerings did not meet practical nor strategic needs. Employee feedback shows neither business leaders nor workers want big ticket training classes but more micro-bursts of content, consumable on the go. They also want a reassessment of the leadership content as many feel the current approach actually reinforces differences instead of creating an inclusive environment, a strategic board and senior executive-stated goal. To directly address the employee experience, some firms are employing “Design Thinking,” which is a solution development approach that begins with the goal in mind, a “better future situation.” 8 In this case, the goal is an excellent employee experience of learning and development. From the workforce’s perspective, learning management solutions have made tremendous strides to improve front-end user experiences in recent years, as advancements such as mobile phone and tablet access, video content production and delivery, and massive online open course (MOOC) capabilities bring new consumer experiences to professional learning and career development.

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Sierra-Cedar 2015–2016 HR Systems Survey White Paper, 18th Annual Edition. Harris, Stacy, and Spencer, Erin. October 2015. Design Thinking. Wikipedia.

Learning Trends 2016

On the back-end, ease of use enhancements such as single-sign on capabilities across workforce applications and more standardization of system integration approaches have improved learning and development application uptake and relevancy as well. These advancements also bring improved abilities to aggregate user, system, and business data to analyze program effectiveness. It is important to note, however, the employee experience of learning solutions today is not just the digital dimensions or user interfaces of applications. It is all of the strategy, program policies, and solution implementation service and support the workforce gets around the technology too.

Trend #2 – Embrace the Extended Enterprise Alongside assessing the traditional employee experience, organizations have to consider other external constituents they need to include in their organizational education and development offerings today as well. Economists consider key markets like the US, Germany, and the UK at full employment, but sustained economic growth is uncertain globally. This means many firms are seeking to remain agile and turning to third-party partners, contingent, and remote labor to better scale the business and mitigate hiring risks. Evidence of this, Forbes reports new businesses account for nearly all net new job creation and almost 20 percent of gross job creation.9 Additional verification: Kelly Services 2015 Free Agent survey documented that nearly one in three (31%) of the global working population today classify themselves as free agents.10 Also worth mentioning, telecommuting has grown 103% in the last ten years, according to data analyzed by Global Workplace Analytics.11 In 2014 alone, telecommuting grew 6.5%, and telecommuting continues to be the most popular and sought after type of flexible work.12 These facts require companies to overtly address how they incorporate “outsiders” – literally and figuratively – into their firms’ learning and development programs. This includes partners, contractors, virtual workers, and even customers.

The Surprising Truth About Where New Jobs Come From. Forbes. Denning, Steve. October 29, 2014. Agents of Change: Independent Workers are Reshaping the Workforce. Kelly Services, Inc. 2015. 11 GlobalWorkplaceAnalytic.com 12 Survey: 76% Avoid the Office for Important Tasks. FlexJobs 4th Annual Super Survey. Reynolds, Brie Weller. August 28, 2015. 10

Learning Trends 2016

Indeed, integrating disparate individuals into common correspondence and collaboration helps create a communal culture, increasingly cited as key to successful partnerships.13 It also demands establishing access to informal as well as formal information sharing, coursework, and certification programs. A 17,000-employee management consulting company has partnered with leading business school learning content providers to redevelop its own internal leadership development platform. The consulting firm, in turn, is adapting versions of the solution to share with clients. In this way, the company is keeping current with leading academic thinking about adult learning, as well as creating an entirely new scalable commercial offering. As more firms differentiate themselves on their service and expertise, extended enterprise learning can be a new profit center opportunity for all. Existing case in point, the information technology firm cited above sees considerable revenue generated from its technical training offerings and is using its learnings from this commercial business and paying customer feedback to inform its internal staff leadership and development program strategy work across the firm. Additional benefits of thinking more broadly about learning enablement beyond the employee experience to all constituents that may want or need to be educated about an organization’s mission, vision, values (as well as operational realities and requirements) can be better customer and partner satisfaction and sustained growth. If done efficiently and effectively, extended enterprise learning can also enhance existing profitability. It can make more support available to more people for less direct and indirect cost, such as travel expenses, and decrease the need and cost to address customer support incidents and issues.

Trend #3 – Facilitate Knowing the Who, Not Just the What The rapid rise of social and mobile technologies has made the pervasive “sharing” and collaborative contribution to information creation and dissemination inescapable. Yet this poses learning functions the challenge of establishing who is saying what to ensure the credibility of information exchanged.

“Successful Partnerships: A Guide.” Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Learning Trends 2016

The blistering pace of change and often instantaneous information obsolescence also makes addressing and adopting individual subject matter experts with “just in time” insight into topics and techniques a key part of modern agile learning and development. Indeed, the Sierra-Cedar 2015– 2016 Survey White Paper puts “learning communities” as the second most valuable solution after video/virtual classrooms for development programs today. Of note, the most prevalent mechanism to support social applications in business now are collaboration solutions, in place at 62% of firms, with a further 8% implementing them to strategically support the enterprise this year.14 Key to this social shift, learning management systems are incorporating collaborative and social functions, from participant chat and video capture contribution to live streaming video meetings. These are helping to literally facilitate both the absorption and application of development concepts and content. The global management consultancy mentioned above has an explicit social component to its new leadership learning platform, although the partner in charge of leadership development for the firm notes: “People learn from each other. Social learning is not new.” An online social profile and collaboration mechanisms facilitate virtual connections and discussions, while group project assignments and live teaching assistants to provide one-on-one interactions, coaching, and support. Online and offline social aspects are equally important, the partner noted. Rigorous analytics also underpin learning development efforts, including metrics tracking completions and collaboration so teaching assistants and managers can step in and discuss with individuals how to complete course work and contributions in the context of their client commitments. In this way, the firm is using modern online social technology to facilitate and encourage live human interactions, and enhancing how it does manager feedback as well. A well-known industrial conglomerate employing more than 300,000 people is embracing social to drive a cultural shift to be more innovative and iterative in the ways it goes to market and attracts and retains talent.

Sierra-Cedar 2015–2016 HR Systems Survey White Paper, 18th Annual Edition. Harris, Stacy, and Spencer, Erin. October 2015.

Learning Trends 2016

This involved deploying a single online platform worldwide to solicit workforce input into its new company “beliefs” messaging, as well as conducting on-going social “jams” to drive home the idea that the firm is now operating in a “digital culture.” It is also addressing social changes in the physical world, revamping its famous corporate training campus to be more informal, both in formats and networking aspects. It has replaced its lectures with prototype team project work and its traditional evening cocktail bar with coffee nooks and breakout workspaces that are more conducive to its more diverse population today. The firm is even experimenting with literal experiential team building exercises, such as sending employees to training sessions with limited information on participating colleagues, location, and resources to get there. There are only clues to their ultimate destination, peers, and objectives. “How can you manage the chaos? is the question our people are struggling with,” said a regional learning leader for the firm. “How to ‘figure it out’ together is what we’re trying to teach teams.” In the face of pervasive social technologies, a large East Coast creative agency employing 650 staff reinvigorated its career development efforts when its many Millennial demographic staff said they spend too much of their time online. They asked for more personal interaction and in-person networking to advance their careers. The result was casting cohorts of young professionals into project teams cross-pollinated with senior leaders who can give them career advice and sponsorship as a part of the exercise. Charged with creating compelling digital media presentations and competing with colleagues in monthly sessions, groups gather to present face to face, then celebrate with a happy hour social. It has embraced the fact that its typical entry-level tenure is three years and that it should not try to retain workers who simply do not plan to stay with the firm. It is banking that the social connections that it makes as a part of the new career development efforts as well as its commitment to nurturing professional relationships will make participating workers consider returning after assignments somewhere else. Of note, this firm recently decided to simply turn off its automated annual performance review system and plans to use manager and executive leadership observations of the cohort activities to inform performance and promotion discussions throughout the year. Participating in the development program becomes the performance process for all.

Learning Trends 2016

Trend #4 – Curate the Contributions The upshot of constant collaboration and content contribution is colossal content. This makes it imperative that learning professionals today provide their organizations the strategic guidance on what to focus on and how. Business networking Website LinkedIN’s $119 million acquisition of SlideShare in 2012 and $1.5 billion acquisition of Lynda.com in 2015 clearly put a premium on learning content in recent years, but arguably the sites still struggle to make that content relevant and meaningful to end-users’ employers. Just as ubiquitous access and ease of distribution of email produced unwarranted and unwelcome “spam” for businesses, the plethora of content available today both inside and outside of organizations can distract from the ultimate end-goal of training and development: to impart knowledge efficiently. The flipside of so much open source information is too much noise and not enough signal. Therefore, learning and development need to take information and make it applicable, literally and figuratively, more so than ever before. As a part of learning systems rationalization, organizations are indeed re-evaluating content, including content production tools and third-party content providers. Less is proving to be more to most development programs today, and more capabilities can be found in a single system. The hard human work is identifying the appropriate skills and competencies to develop, the most effective format for delivery, and measuring the outcomes for staff and the business. It is also important for development professionals to lead the business in collecting the right data and metrics that illustrate workforce progress. “Productivity is negative if you change technology and don’t change the organization,” said the head of learning for the pharmaceutical company. “Simplification is the measure of our success.” Ultimately, as more and more work traditionally done by organizational development professionals helps establish and sustain the more meaningful company cultures and experiences that workers seek from their employers today, learning functions will play a key role in capturing the right institutional knowledge to support and scale extensive virtual organizations and operations worldwide.

Learning Trends 2016

Trend # 5 – The Comeback of Customization The incongruous impact of these trends is that companies need to simplify the tools and messages to workers at the same time they differentiate themselves as distinct employment and customer brands. This ultimately means they need to create unique learning development offerings and experiences that reflect both who they are as organizations and who their people are as talent. To this end, the head of learning innovation for a 60,000-employee financial services firm reports that it is launching a new global learning platform but it is allowing each country and region to determine what works best for their businesses and individual employees as they roll it out. Despite careful consideration of the overall employee experience of a single solution, the firm acknowledges the success of the solution will come from local embracement and adoption. A significant US federal government agency is approaching simplification and customization at the same time. By using a single LMS, it is able to create and present consistent content across its nine units, complete with enterprise-level reporting. Yet it is also able to offer each unit its own instance of the software that can be customized for the audience, such an “academy” approach for a division with an established training legacy in that formal format. On the extended enterprise front, many advocates of learning management solution training to customers, partners, or franchisees note that they must customize their offering to reflect the brand values and look and feel of their firms. While strict software as a service (SaaS) “cloud” learning management firms have touted their ability to innovate and scale their offerings by not allowing customizations, this standardization primarily helps their business efficiencies, not the customer experience. Uncompromising cloud vendors determine system best practices at any given point in time, with new feature and function requests going into a development queue. These are then prioritized by assessing the whole customer base’s interests. Yet customization is king to those seeking to offer compellingly unique and differentiating learning and development today, particularly those delivering a branded extended enterprise experience.

Learning Trends 2016

A boutique consulting firm that increasingly needs to deliver information and advice to its clients on an on-going basis noted that it had to select a learning solution it could “white label” under its own name. It found it has helped with system adoption and firm recognition at its customer base. The firms managing director noted that client executives and employees were not distracted by a third-party logo’d system, and he believed his branded solution actually helps drive intended business results: the absorption and application of the content, not just learning system usage. Said another way, the employee experience of learning becomes transparent to the objective, which is to impart information and advance professional learning and career development in a rapidly changing world. This is the perennial mission of organizational learning and remains so in 2016 and beyond.

Learning Trends 2016

Methodology To outline the challenges and opportunities facing businesses in providing workforce education and career development in the coming year, Eudemonia reviewed existing industry information and research as well as drew upon a series of discussions with professionals familiar with the issues facing organizations in learning and professional development today. These individuals included subject matter experts at Meridian Knowledge Systems and its competitors. Eudemonia also conducted confidential primary research interviews with learning and development practitioners from a variety of companies and public sector organizations to understand the trends affecting them in their businesses, operations, and industries. This work identified common themes among approaches in responding to workforce development challenges and opportunities across industries, which were then validated with the practitioners and specific examples generated. Individuals remain anonymous and organizations are only identified by size and industry. Where specific examples or comments are referenced as agreed with research participants as a condition of sharing their organizationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s strategies and initiatives. Participants received no remuneration for participation but some were promised to receive a copy of this paper. We would like to extend appreciation to participating professionals and special thanks to Meridian Knowledge Systems for recognizing the challenges to and significance of workforce learning management today, its support of this research, and providing access to its staff and customers. Information on learning management software and services from Meridian Knowledge Systems can be found online at http://www.meridianks.com.

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Learning Trends 2016

About the Author Christa Degnan Manning founded and leads workforce support research firm Eudemonia. Based on more than two decades of business-to-business market research, operational leadership, and global workforce experience, Christa has identified the need for a new category of technologyenabled business service capability: workforce support services. Inspired by marketing's successful championing of the customer experience, Christa seeks to help businesses align their own workforce support service strategies and models with the right third-party software and service partners to deliver functional capabilities and employee experiences that support productivity, engagement, and workforce efficiency. Prior to this work, Christa served as an Innovation director in the Advisory Services consulting unit of American Express Global Business Travel, leading the EXPERT INSIGHTS research and Applied Business Intelligence consulting practices. Before American Express, Christa spent a decade as a business process and technology analyst and practice leader with the Aberdeen Group (establishing indirect procurement and spend category management coverage) and AMR Research/Gartner Group (covering human capital management software and services providers), following five years as a business journalist and media professional with Advance Publications and Ziff Davis. Cited throughout her career in leading business and industry media and contributing thoughtleadership commentary to podcasts and guest blogs worldwide, Christa has been most recently featured on HCI.org, HR Examiner, HR.Com, HR Tech World, The Bill Kutik Radio Show, SHRM.org, The Company Dime, Workforce, and WTG Events. Christa has a Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University, including studies at University College, University of London, and a Master of Arts from the University of Massachusetts. She has also completed on-going professional development course work in business metrics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She can be reached at christa@eudemonia.work and on Twitter @ChristaDegnan.

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Learning Trends 2016

Eudemonia From the ancient Greek word meaning "human flourishing," Eudemonia is a new type of systematic research firm focused on the organizational constructs, collaboration strategies, and workforce and talent management solutions that support people in driving positive outcomes for businesses operating globally today. Specifically Eudemonia focuses on understanding evolving human resource (HR) and information technology (IT) service delivery models and evaluating the solution providers that provide digital automation and staff-based service capability to support workforce enablement and organizational effectiveness business functions and shared services organizations. With particular attention on maturing software as a service (SaaS) delivery implications, research and analysis includes organizational support models, HR and workforce-related software and service provider selection criteria, and implementation best practices including on-going innovation consumption, managed services capabilities, and partner ecosystems, such as consulting, systems integration, and business process outsourcing (BPO). Clients Eudemonia serves include investors, operational professionals, and solution provider organizations through annual subscription and ad-hoc advisory services. It also conducts projectbased research and due-diligence to provide education and guidance on workforce support issues and initiatives. Through this work we hope to validate the value of the human contribution in the workplace to justify those investments that will collectively help businesses expand and improve our communities and society through greater distributed and shared economic prosperity worldwide. For more information or to make an inquiry, please visit http://www.eudemonia.work.

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