Across the board, organizations want to provide innovative and effective learning and development opportunities for their employees. This leads to a more talented workforce and better business results; not to mention money saved by reducing employee churn.
The question is: how? How do we promote learning in a way that resonates with employees? As the world of work evolves around us, the way that we deliver learning is going to have to evolve as well.
In this webinar we hosted, Andrea Lum (Viva Learning product team) and Laura Becker (Viva employee experience analyst) share Microsoft’s latest research on the future of employee learning and tips for driving a modern learning strategy.
Watch the webinar on-demand (link here).
At a summary:
- The learning solutions market is hot, with record-breaking venture capital investments and several recent acquisitions in the market in an attempt to innovate.
- Learning is crucial for employee retention and satisfaction. Employees consider learning and growth opportunities to be the #1 driver of a great work culture.
- Meanwhile, people don’t feel that their learning and development is being prioritized at work; 48% of all employees feel that neither their manager nor leadership at their company prioritize learning and development.
- Companies need to build learning into their culture in a way that resonates with employees. They can do this by leveraging experiential and social aspects of learning along with formal learning investments.
- People that see how learning applies directly to their work are 2.2x as likely to engage in professional learning and development. Companies must bring learning into the context of work activities. Project-based learning and microlearning (in the time of need) can help here.
- Companies must give space for employees to become creators of learning content and knowledge. With the explosive popularity of the creator market, people expect corporate learning to follow suit.
- Social learning is one of the most effective ways that adults learn. Companies should leverage peer-to-peer recommendations and cohorts in their learning programs (and invest in learning systems that incorporate this). In other words, companies can’t rely on employees to be motivated by corporate-assigned learning courses to upskill!
- 61% of employees would be more engaged with learning if it was intertwined throughout their work and collaboration platforms. We must incorporate learning into the tools that people are already using at work (“learning in the flow of work”). This eliminates barriers to accessing learning, like taking time to navigate to a separate platform or browse through cluttered content libraries.
- Viva Learning was built with all of this in mind. As part of an employee experience platform, it is centered around the employee’s wants and needs by blending formal and informal learning sources into one platform. It’s built directly into Microsoft Teams (collaboration platform) – and by extension, the employee’s work activities, groups, and interactions.
- Since rolling out Viva Learning to Microsoft employees, Microsoft’s HR department has seen a 58% increase in engaged learners at the company.
For a snapshot of all of Microsoft’s learning research, check out the Future of Employee Learning Infographic.
