Enhancing The Relevancy Of L&D With Digital Empathy

First understand the mood, disposition and experience of the workforce

The pandemic undeniably propelled a digitization of learning and collaboration – not seamlessly, perhaps, but the transformation is here to stay. As learning experts, we know that virtual learning holds great promise for the hybrid work environment. Our learners are already utilizing technology in their professional and personal lives to enhance productivity and social connectivity. Sourdough starters, TikTok trends, and virtual happy hours all burst to life during quarantine, as humanity plunged deeply into connecting and learning virtually, ultimately shaping the new norm. Now, we in L&D have the opportunity to meet our learners along their path with forward-thinking, digitized learning.
 

To begin this journey, we must first understand the mood, disposition and experience of the workforce. Given the collective stress of the pandemic, there is new need to manage the individual and better understand the engagement of a hybrid workforce. At the same time, we need to address serious concerns about employee experience and wellbeing. Tools like sociometric badges can offer a glimpse into social and emotional health. This tech is not just about capturing nebulous data or invasive probing; employee experience technology offers insights into the collective decisions, emotions, and collaboration of the workforce. Non-intrusive measurement techniques have demonstrated still richer data that allows for measurement of real-time experience tracking that supports powerful insights into workforce wellbeing. These insights also offer L&D and Talent leaders more adaptable applications of learning and strategic workforce planning. 

The future of work, learning, and resilience of people and organizations is increasingly defined by the ubiquitous use of technology and how we leverage tech to sustain and enhance collective performance. Though not comforting, if you have recently watched a dystopian sci-fi thriller, the incorporation of machines and technology to augment L&D offers not only greater efficiency, but also the ability to fundamentally shift learners’ perspectives and foster world-class collaboration. The ways we rise to the occasion of meeting post-Covid challenges will be determined by how organizations use learning to reduce the stress associated with change and prepare people to co-create in whitewater environments. Teaching emotional intelligence and the strategic use of empathy to better collaborate will be the key differentiator for organizational leaders—and increasingly, the determinant of fiscal success.

The Rise of Learning 

Ongoing economic and market uncertainty ensures one constant dynamic: the need to internalize and apply learning while simultaneously executing. This requires complementing the realities of learners. Cultivating curiosity and a growth mindset are key facets of this evolution. Leveraging gamification to utilize guided mistakes, active exploration, and user control will enhance motivation and absorption of learning. Further, L&D leaders must ask themselves consistently how to deliver a learning curriculum with effective pedagogy for the new age of hybrid workforces and ongoing disruption, while also creating a greater connection between people. The answer is the incorporation of technology that adds long-term differentiating value to the learning process, rather than cool tech that is ultimately just a shiny curio. 

As we look at emerging technologies, a few stand out as having the potential to add this value—with the right tailoring and positioning. Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality training can be used in real-time situations to deliver training and are easily deployed in remote areas. VR training offers customized and realistic scenarios that create immersive, comprehensive, and gamified training modules. This allows not only for delivery of content, but also accurate predictions of learner mastery and deployment of new skills. 

Continuing to enhance collaboration across dispersed teams is a holy grail for organizations figuring out the future of hybrid work. From project teams to executive teams, enabling groups to come together quickly through ubiquitous mobility platforms and holographic HD conferencing will transmit more of their best ideas, intent, and impact  in a way that creates greater digital intimacy. If incorporated correctly, these platforms will create greater mutual understanding and shared consciousness across remote teams. Ultimately, this will allow for faster and more aligned execution on emerging opportunities and pivots with the market. 

Adults today are more concerned than ever before with the question: "What does the time I spend at work mean?" We're fine-tuning where, when and how we work, and most importantly, what the purpose of our work is. With more people aspiring to flourish in their fields, organizations that commit to employee growth will set themselves apart from the competition. It is also important to consider that employees' tolerance for the “click to the next slide” model of learning has largely vanished.  Further, repeating lessons and modalities that are not relevant in the new world of work is a recipe for energy drain and heavy eye rolls. So, how does learning become more engaging and relevant? Investing in cutting-edge technology or rushing out to buy everyone a VR headset is not necessarily the savviest action in all scenarios, despite the amazing possibilities of VR.  

Capturing Learners’ Moment of Need

The solution demands simple design thinking and a strong sense of empathy for the learner. Though L&D leaders commonly perform needs analyses, this stage-setting rarely results in sufficient insight to truly empathize with the learner. Capturing these insights requires a few key actions. First, define your learner—not their demographics, but their persona. Spend some time with them, sit in their environment, ask questions, and observe their day-to-day work life and team dynamics. Use everything you've learned about them to create a set of personas that will allow you to make informed decisions going forward. 

Next, using the established learning objectives, learner personas, and contextual insights, define the learners' “Moment of Need.” The Moment of Need is the answer to questions like: “When, where and why do our learners need to learn this?” Here's where you can get extremely specific. Where does the learning fit into their flow of work? Is it more important for them to have something quick and tactical, or something more in-depth and theoretical? What technologies are accessible? Could you leverage the technologies they're currently employing? What has made them feel eager or compelled to engage in this learning? 

For example, our team at Mars was working on a recruitment module to assist managers in understanding the procedures needed to get from an open position to the first day of work for a new hire. The proposal was for a “gamified, interactive simulation.” Sounds awesome—however, as we challenged the utility of these concepts considering what we knew about the learners, this brilliant idea fell apart. The manager was under a resourcing crunch, and the vacancies needed to be filled NOW. Additionally, we realized many of these sales managers spend a ton of time on the road behind the steering wheel – not a great place for playing games.

According to “The Moment of Need,” practical job aids that explain tasks, along with podcasts about the theories of interview skills and competency assessments, were considerably more useful than a gamified simulation. When we identified the Persona and combined it with The Moment of Need, we arrived at a critical juncture that directed us to construct a more appropriate approach. 

To customize your L&D strategy to conjoin the Learner Persona and the Moment of Need, start your prototype with two simple questions: Where would a learning fit with the persona of your learner, and how could it fit into their flow of behaviors throughout a day? Without a clear sense of these two streams of information, where they intersect, and where they do not, learning programs will be hit-or-miss in terms of their relevance and impact on learners. By targeting this intersection, we can develop a fit-for-purpose solution that elevates competence and skills, while remaining both accessible and empathetically astute to professional priorities. Imagine a future in which workers can learn exactly what they need to learn, when they need to learn it, and in the ideal format. What new ideas may be spawned—not to mention transformational change and enhanced business models. 

In a post-Covid-19 world, distilling the lessons of the pandemic to deploy agile hybrid workforces is going to be key. Further, the use of the tech and learning design techniques outlined above will give executives a clearer sense of their people’s needs, promote relevant learning, and ultimately translate that learning into employees’ behavior. The total impact is an organization where learning changes the way people think through challenges, and the best ideas drive the enterprise into the future.  

Summer Davies is currently the Global Senior Manager of Leadership Development at Mars, Inc. and the author of the blog “Dinner Table Conversations.” Summer is known for pioneering innovative talent development programs aimed at enriching the capabilities and performance outcomes of organizational leaders around the globe. She is passionate about conceptualizing and deploying diverse leadership development solutions that make work mean more. Visit www.mars.com  Connect Summer Davies

Beau River, Psy.D. is a Partner at Vantage Leadership Consulting. Beau is passionate about helping organizations promote human development in a way that drives business growth. This is a core tenet of his work, from helping design and implement competency models and leadership development programs to supporting long-term succession planning and due diligence as part of M&A. His coaching is fundamentally focused on bringing the best out of people by accelerating the development of individuals and their teams. His professional experience reflects his appreciation of diversity, with clients from the middle market to family-owned/privately-operated companies and Fortune 500 organizations.  Visit www.vantageleadership.com Connect Beau River, Psy.D.