In the summer of 2020, we held an online session to explore the results of the CIPD report Learning and skills at work. Here are our reflections on that event, live-blogged by Ian Pettigrew. Lizzie Crowley (CIPD) shared the results of the learning and skills at work survey and noted that learning was already vital for people but the Covid-19 pandemic and our need to work from home during extended periods has made it even more important.
Learning is getting closer to the business, but many of the roles needed to deliver the shift are missing. Roles such as face-to-face trainer and facilitator dominate the roles, but newer roles (e.g. digital asset creator, community manager) are rarer in L&D at the moment.
Organisations are leveraging technology to support learning, but not enough. Some technologies (e.g. webinars) are becoming commonplace but technologies that can really boost engagement (e.g. AR, VR, games) are not yet in widespread use in L&D.
We can’t just take what we used to do face-to-face and ‘dump it into digital’; we need to truly digitise the learning experience, alongside helping to socialise and humanise the learning
We’re off into breakout rooms, posing some really interesting questions and having interesting discussions:
We then moved onto hear about a case study from Panasonic, shared by David Hayden (CIPD). We heard about how learning was one of an integrated set of interventions to drive the required business change, with lots of emphasis on understanding what is really going on. ‘Performance Consultants’ can play a valuable role in collecting learning to business impact. There is much that L&D can do to support performance, if done well.
David also shared a link to a really interesting video on learning impact:
The CIPD report and case studies are well worth reading for further insights:
And there were some great takeaways/reflections shared at the end of the event:
Blog post author: Ian Pettigrew, Kingfisher Coaching
CIPD Manchester Branch 