You may pack your courses with tons of relevant content and awesome visuals, but if they don’t make a dent in the learner’s mind, they have failed in their purpose. It's time to STOP spending long hours working on courses that learners forget the moment they complete the course. You pour much love and sweat into the course creation. Your courses need to acknowledge the habits and tendencies of how people learn, so the experience becomes relevant, lasting, and useful to the learner.

In the ever-changing corporate world, where new technology one day becomes an ancient relic by the next, companies need to establish a culture of Lifelong Learning. The old days of training your workforce one time and then never developing their skills and knowledge again? Those days are fading fast into the sunset! "Employees who don’t spend at least 5 to 10 hours a week developing new skills will obsolete themselves with the technology,” - AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson In response, companies are looking for ways to reinforce continuous learning in their workplaces.

A fat paycheck? Yes, but not always. The corner office within the next five years? Yes sure, but what about now? 401(k) plan. Health and dental insurance. Paid vacation. Well, these would be nice. What do you think is the single biggest factor that motivates employees to work at a company? According to Bersin by Deloitte’s research with Glassdoor, learning, and career opportunities are mentioned as the highest priorities by employees. Employees know that in an ever-changing and volatile workplace, there is only ONE way to make oneself indispensable. Keep growing. Keep learning. Innovate consistently. Companies like Yahoo, BlackBerry, and Blockbuster failed to keep up with the times. The result: they continued to lag till the day when they were forced to give up. Innovation is the game-changer. It is true not only for organizations but also for individuals. This is why companies are able to lure valuable employees away from their rivals with the promise of training opportunities. As an HR or training professional, you have to keep your employees engaged in working for the company by providing them with ample learning opportunities. They need to improve their skills, increase productivity, and be on top of their game, so your business can out-innovate its rivals, tide over disruptions, and respond to market changes.

Self-directed learning (SDL) is on the minds of many L&D professionals right now. Training managers, HR professionals, and instructional designers want to promote this strategy at the workplace because it facilitates the creation of a robust and sustainable learning culture in the organization. In this post, learn about the features and benefits of SDL and how you can implement this learning model at the workplace to turn reluctant and dispassionate learners into dedicated and inspired ones.

Lifelong learning is now more important than ever. Technology has brought about many changes in the workplace, and those companies that don’t adapt at the speed of change risk being left behind. The Future of Jobs 2020 Report by The World Economic Forum revealed: Skills gaps continue to be high as in-demand skills across jobs change in the next five years. The top skills that employers see as rising in prominence in the lead-up to 2025 include critical thinking and analysis as well as problem-solving, and skills in self-management such as active learning and flexibility. On average, companies estimate that around 40% of workers will require reskilling and 94% of business leaders report that they expect employees to pick up new skills on the job, a sharp uptake from 65% in 2018. A significant expansion of remote work is expected in the next few years— employers see the potential to move 44% of their workforce to operate remotely. Since the pandemic started, online learning is on the rise. There has been a four-fold increase in the number of individuals seeking out opportunities for learning online through their own initiative, a five-fold increase in employer provision of online learning opportunities to their workers, and a nine-fold enrolment increase for learners accessing online learning through government programs. 50% of employers will speed up the automation of tasks, while over 80% are set to expand the digitization of their work processes. In other words, jobs will disappear, and new jobs will surge. Specifically, they predict around 85 million roles are set to be displaced by automation and 97 million new jobs will emerge by 2025. All these shifts happening so fast require employees to take greater control over their learning journey and at the same time, require leaders to act fast to ensure workers have the right information at the right moment. A lifelong learning approach cannot be forced. That's why there's a huge opportunity for leaders in companies to focus their L&D efforts on empowering employees to embrace lifelong learning and promoting self-directed learning. In the end, not only companies are the ones that will receive benefits for this... lifelong, self-directed employees are the ones who will thrive in a rapidly changing world. Prioritizing self-directed learning and embedding it into a well-integrated ecosystem is key to developing adaptive and flexible workers that are prepared to navigate uncertain times and the future of work. A lifelong learning approach cannot be forced. Lifelong, self-directed employees are the ones who will thrive in a rapidly changing world.

Tom sits down to do his sales training online. He has been asked to complete three lessons each week adding up to 30 minutes of online training. Tom is dreading it, but he is delightfully surprised at how quickly he can navigate the page and how well the content has been paired with the graphics and features. He gets through 4.5 of the lessons and leaves the 5th lesson bookmarked for the next chance he gets. Mary has been trying to find the lesson that the Fraud Department has assigned her. She has barely gotten passed lesson one in the time she had expected to complete at least 3. Her screen has frozen a few times on the graphics, she has had to re-read some of the text-heavy slides, and isn’t sure if the lesson she is on is going to help her with the issues she is meant to address. Which of the two people mentioned above had a better user experience with their eLearning course? Who is going to continue with their eLearning course?

When was the last time you took a long hard look at your company’s training strategy? If employees forget things you taught them back in onboarding or, worse yet, they’re leaving in droves to seek other opportunities — chances are your outdated training program needs to change, and fast. So, how does your training strategy stack up? Is it stuck in time? Or are you keeping up with the ever-changing needs of today’s modern employees? Let’s find out.

The modern work environment is very different from what it was just a year ago. Companies are now challenged to offer more and better eLearning programs that adapt to the new context and workforce needs. Without a firm basis in the needs of their workers, eLearning programs don’t succeed—in fact, some completion rates for online courses are as low as 4% because of this reason! How do you make sure your employees, with their 21st-century attention spans, are finishing learning effectively, and actually enjoying your courses? Be sure to pay attention to these trends. As technology advances, employee employees, and the business context also continue to evolve rapidly, forcing companies to continually revamp and adapt their existing eLearning courses.