Learning in the Flow of Work

How to boost employee morale, decrease burnout, and maximize productivity by seamlessly integrating learning into the workflow

Around 85% of the global workforce are either not engaged, or actively disengaged at work, according to research by Gallup.

Rather than being motivated, high-performing, committed, and enthusiastic members of your team, disengaged workers “view their jobs as an exchange of time for a paycheck. They arrive and leave on time, take their breaks, never volunteer for extra work or projects, and do little else in between beyond the minimal effort”, according to the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

In the worst cases, actively disengaged workers make it clear to everyone around them how unhappy they are, and deliberately undermine the performance of their team members by spreading negativity throughout the organization.

The economic consequences of disengagement are hard to understate. Gallup estimates that companies see around $7 trillion in lost productivity per year.

Solve the Problem of Disengagement in the Workplace by Making Learning a Top Priority

Leaders have implemented many different strategies to attempt to solve the problem of employee disengagement, to varying degrees of success. 

However, one of the most effective, yet overlooked strategies is making learning a top priority for the purpose of employee satisfaction, not just talent development. Fostering a culture of learning inside your company can bring many unexpected benefits.

Josh Bersin is a global industry analyst who studies corporate HR, talent, leadership, recruitment, and all aspects of HR and workplace technology. He is the founder of Bersin by Deloitte, a frequent speaker at industry events, and consults with organizations around the world.

Last year, Josh partnered with Linkedin to conduct surveys of 2,049 business professionals. This included employees from the UK, Nordics, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Australia, India, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

What their research uncovered is that opportunities for learning and talent development have become the second most important factor in workplace happiness (after the nature of the work itself).

Source: Linkedin.com

As part of the surveys that were conducted, participants were asked "what would make you leave your job?" The ability to learn and grow was roughly twice as important as getting a raise, and more than twice as important as an employee’s relationship with their manager.

Source: Linkedin.com

According to Bersin:
“In the research we just completed, we found that employees who spend time at work learning are 47% less likely to be stressed, 39% more likely to feel productive and successful, 23% more ready to take on additional responsibilities, and 21% more likely to feel confident and happy. And the more you learn, the happier you become.”

Source: Linkedin.com

Lack of Time is the #1 Obstacle to Learning in the Workplace

While the benefits of learning in the workplace are clear and abundant, the biggest obstacle is that there simply isn’t enough time in the workday for most employees.

A recent LinkedIn Learning survey of over 4.000 professionals revealed that 94% of employees would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career, yet the number one reason employees feel held back from learning is because they don’t have the time.

Source: Linkedin’s 2018 Workforce Learning Report

According to the Harvard Business Review, knowledge workers carve out just five minutes for formal learning each day, on average.

Bersin’s research confirms that employees dedicate only 1% of a typical work week to focus on training and development, which ended up totalling around 24 minutes a week, on average.

Source: Bersin by Deloitte’s “Meet the Modern Learner”

Bersin’s research also found that a quarter of employees are wasting a day a week on emails and messages that have little or nothing to do with their jobs.

Source: Linkedin.com

One of the best solutions that Bersin has identified for solving the lack of time is to enable employees to seamlessly integrate learning into their existing workflows, rather than making it a separate, dedicated activity that employees must interrupt their work to engage in.

Learning in the Flow of Work

Bersin coined the phrase “learning in the flow of work” in reference to the informal learning employees engage in throughout the day that they then immediately apply to the tasks they’re currently working on.

The vast majority of employees now turn to search engines like Google to get answers quickly while on the job, rather than access their company’s outdated corporate learning tool.

While traditional, corporate Learning Management Systems (LMSs) are rarely capable of enabling employees to access bite-size knowledge and acquire new skills quickly and easily throughout the workday, new corporate learning tools are now being developed to make “learning in the flow of work” a reality.

New Tools Make “Learning in the Flow of Work” Possible

Rarely do employees find their corporate LMS to be an exciting, flexible, or engaging way to grow their skills and knowledge.

A traditional corporate LMS is merely a dull, static collection of PowerPoints, courses, and exams. Learners are directed by managers on what course to complete and when. Then, they must proceed through the course in a rigid, linear manner.

Unfortunately, this just isn’t how we, as users, interact with technology anymore when we need to get answers and solve problems quickly.

Thanks to search engines like Google, learning is now seamlessly incorporated into the workflow, rather than being a separate, designated activity. When we need to learn something, we just search the internet for specific topics and find information and answers in the form of videos, webinars, blog posts, graphics, and other online content.

This is exactly the kind of experience that a new kind of corporate learning tool like Raven360 offers to learners. 

With tools like Raven360, learning is no longer sectioned off as its own, separate activity. Instead, your employees, partners, and even customers can search for the bite-sized information they need, at the exact moment they need it. 

And, if they want to go more in-depth on that particular topic, they have that option as well. Both bite-sized and long-form learning is incorporated seamlessly into the workflow, rather than interrupting it.

These newer and more advanced LMSs create the kind of exciting learning experience that all of your users will actually want to engage with. They will actually enjoy using your learning tool and see it as a useful resource, rather than another chore to get through for compliance reasons.

Enable Mobile, On-the-Go Learning

On average, people in the United States across all age groups check their phones 46 times per day, according to Deloitte.

According to Google, 80% of the global workforce is made up of deskless workers. While these workers may not be doing work in an office from a desktop computer, the vast majority of them are working and receiving communication from their employers using a mobile device.

According to Bersin’s research, people are “increasingly turning to their smartphones to find just-in-time answers to unexpected problems.” Because of this, it’s important to realize that your corporate learning tool must be able to work well on mobile devices in order to engage learners. 

Source: Bersin by Deloitte’s Leading in Learning Report

What learners need in an on-the-go, globally-connected world is the ability to quickly access bite-sized knowledge from their mobile device, as they are used to being able to do with virtually every other service in their daily life. 

Your organization needs to be able to offer access to your library of content (latest training, best practices, up-to-date product information, etc.) whether learners at work, in the field, at home, or on their morning commute into the office.

Fortunately, newer and more advanced LMSs like Raven360 typically excel in this area, whereas most traditional corporate LMSs are obsolete and simply cannot offer this kind of functionality.

Closed Systems vs. Open Systems 

A traditional corporate LMS is a closed system that does not allow you to incorporate learning resources from outside the organization. You are limited strictly to the training resources created by administrators within your organization.

Because it is very difficult to constantly create a vast amount of up-to-date content, traditional corporate LMSs are extremely limited in the value they can provide learners.

In a fast-paced business environment, you need the ability to provide up-to-date information and bite-sized training as quickly as possible. For example, having all of the up-to-date product information in one place not only ensures that your sales reps can effectively sell, but it also ensures brand messaging stays consistent across sales teams.

What your organization needs is the flexibility to create and share training and information in whatever length and format you choose, rather than being limited to the long, rigid, traditional course structure of an LMS.

In addition, both administrators and users should be able to add relevant and useful content from any source, both within and outside the organization. When content can be sourced and curated from a wide array of sources, learning options expand drastically.

Instead of having to create original training on a new methodology or tactic, for example, you should be able to simply add an existing YouTube video, slideshow, or blog article from a third party directly into the platform for learners to review. This ensures that your entire team is using the latest, and most effective strategies and tactics.

In addition, high-performing employees should be able to share their insights, tactics, and best practices with the rest of their teams. The best submissions can then be turned into formal training content.

Lastly, the right corporate learning tool should support any kind of content you already have, and allow you to upload content in any format, such as PDF, video files, Google docs, blog posts, YouTube videos, HTML packages, SCORM packages, and more.

A corporate LMS like Raven360 provides total freedom and control, making learning exciting, engaging, and far more useful.

Why choose Raven360 for your corporate learning needs?

Raven360 is an enterprise-grade, scalable learning management system that helps organizations grow sales and increase customer loyalty.

• Onboard reps faster and train them to close more deals
• Get new customers to succeed with your product
• Certify business partners that will help you grow

Raven360’s secure, cloud-based platform allows you to onboard faster, train better, and retain more customers with these powerful features:

• Upload content of any format: Raven360 supports PDF, video files, Google docs, HTML packages, SCORM packages and more. You can author your own material from within the platform or bring in outside content.
• Seamlessly integrate with your existing tools: Integrate with Dropbox, Google Drive, or Box to access everything you already have from one single dashboard, at the right time.
• Always up-to-date: Upload your training material once and users will always have access to the latest version and you won’t have to update your docs on multiple platforms.
• Accessible anywhere, on any device, 24/7: Allow users to access training on the go and at their own pace. Raven360 works on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux. Users can even access content while offline.
• Dynamic learning experiences: Go from open classrooms where users can access all the material at once to pre-defined learning paths where you dictate how the content is consumed. Manage how you feed your content to increase knowledge retention.
• Self-paced labs: Learners can access a virtual machine instance of your software on their browsers —no downloads, no installs. They get hands-on experience using your tech, without compromising real data or breaking stuff.
• Generate extra revenue: Sell subscription-based trainings through a simple e-commerce platform.
• Keep sensitive information secure: Assign individual and group level access to your content. Prevent confidential information from leaving the platform or landing on the wrong hands, with industry-leading security.

By offering all of these dynamic capabilities in one platform, Raven360 gives modern organizations the flexibility to train a wide variety of users; employees, salespeople, partners, and even customers.

• Employees and sales teams get the training they need to gain new skills and advance their careers.
  

• Partners and vendors get easy access to the information they need to effectively sell and support your solutions.
  
• Customers get their questions answered quickly so they can extract maximum value out of your solutions.