In a weeks’ time I will be making my way to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham for the 2017 edition of the World of Learning Conference. I’ve written elsewhere about the line-up for the event which promises to be a terrific mix between thought provoking visionaries and practical, sleeves- rolled-up tales from the trenches of workplace development.
In the early afternoon slot on day two (every trainer’s graveyard slot – thanks team!) I shall be hosting a panel discussion about integrating learning into the workflow. This promises to be an excellent debate involving the CIPD’s Head of L&D content and keen shoe fancier, Andy Lancaster; everyone’s favourite antipodean Paul Matthews of People Alchemy who has developed some interesting technology to support efforts in this area; and podcaster and Learning Now TV presenter Lisa Minogue-White of Pluralsight, whose work in her current and previous roles has focused on bridging formal and informal approaches and making things happen where it counts – on the job.
But one of my concerns about this area of endeavour is that there is tendency towards ‘sunny day’ thinking. What do I mean? You know, those presentations in which the story is told about how every manager is eager to support learning initiatives and ensures that their teams are constantly focusing on improving their skills. Sometimes, presenters tackling this subject seem to believe that no employee is ever change resistant, that no supervisor makes unreasonable demands on his or her people, that technology is always available (and works intuitively) and that finding time to generate content for colleagues they have never met is just one of the perks of the job for the bright and bushy tailed worker. What’s more, once the blog has been shared and the how-to video uploaded it is easily found just when needed by the harassed newbie.
Those of us at the sharp end of performance improvement in organisations know that often our terrific plans and initiatives regularly founder on the rocks of employee indifference, management hostility and clunky tech. Creating the opportunity for people to consult resources to help them learn as they work is not enough on its own. Giving people opportunity to share their experience doesn’t mean they will. And if they do, it doesn’t mean it will be received with unalloyed joy by those who could do better.
To put it in a nutshell, enabling people to learn as they work is far from easy.
There is one exception to this. Teaching people how to cut corners, to do only as much as necessary, to bend the rules, to develop work arounds – that seems pretty straightforward.
But we need to beware.
As business scandal after organisational failure attest – the unintended consequences of some of these work hacks can bite back. (At which point someone will appear on Radio 4’s Today programme and demand better training. But you knew it would be our fault, didn’t you?)
Now I should point out before I leave you with the impression that I think learning on the job is pie in the sky, that I am a solid advocate of learning in the workflow. I think too much L&D effort over the years has been devoted to just-in-case learning rather than just-in-time. I think that taking people out of the workplace to learn skills they need to implement in the real world cannot have much impact unless we support them to use the skills in day to day activities. I think we send people for training courses as a default, when most performance improvement challenges can best be addressed in situ.
I started in this business in the 80’s creating work-based learning initiatives for 16-18 year olds as they made the transition from school to work. As many of them had not been great successes in a classroom environment up to that point, sitting them in rows and telling them how to process invoices, lay bricks or operate a lathe was never going to be particularly successful. Not only that, one of the main challenges that many of these young people faced was turning up to work at the same time each day and playing a positive role in a team comprising adults who expected them to pull their weight. Promoting learning in a work environment has been a mainstay of my practice ever since.
So, I have a request. I think this panel discussion is a great opportunity for you to gain answers to your questions about how you can engage your organisations in embracing and implementing work-based learning. Having assembled such a great panel, my aim is for you to discuss the areas of frustration you encounter and the challenges you face. I want you to be able to gain some insights which will help you make progress in integrating learning into the workflow in your organisations.
What do you want to know? What are the blockages and barriers you face? What are the opportunities which seem just out of reach? What have you tried which hasn’t quite worked as you’d hoped?
I hope you’ll come along to the session, but if you can’t get there at 1.40pm on Wednesday 18th October, you can still join in. Feel free to raise your questions in the comments section of this blog and I’ll put as many of them as I can to Paul, Lisa and Andy. What’s more, I’ll write up and share what they said and what I learned during the session – after all this is my workflow and I’m constantly learning new things as I do my job.