Learning and connection for the future

Redesigning organisations’ employee experience was the focus in Nick Petch’s session. Nick, who heads the Digital Learning Experience & Design Strategy team, pointed out that employee experience is a powerful way to improve organisational learning and, ultimately, the future of performance.

But not many organisations consider employee experience as an essential aspect in the learning and development process. And employee experience isn't just about creating a great experience, it's about establishing a culture and identity of learning and development that is fundamental for an organisation's success.

Every step in the employee journey from onboarding, induction and development will influence an employee’s perspective towards the organisation. When organisations don't design each of these steps carefully, employees will feel that they are not valued, which will lower staff retention rates.

Experience or designing for experience is a systemic design challenge and not a single event. Developing an experience framework represents the very first step of an employee experience.

The panel discussion with Daniel Antman, Managing Director Australia and Ivana Lee, Managing Director Asia, was about measuring results of learning and development objectives. Both agreed that creating meaningful content, where the platform works for the learners rather than the other way around, is vital to ensure that learners can feel the benefit of a Learning Management System (LMS).

In the session, the speakers also pointed out that things are not going back to normal. Adaptability, nimbleness and alignment are the steps that need to be implemented by organisations to stay competitive. For organisations that see themselves as genuine learning businesses, and who are committed to developing and growing their teams, their time has come. They are embracing the technologies that will enable them to deliver learning that is valued by those seeking the development, support and care from businesses committed to them.

Within the discussion, the presenters also answered thoughtful questions from participants. Questions came across on topics like:

• when to start redesigning the employee experience
• how to prepare the workforce with the right skills in the current situation
• the availability of imc Express

Concerning imc Express, which will be rolled out in 2021, the speakers emphasised that this tool will not replace imc Content studio.

Besides this,  there was a question if learning analytic dashboard is a part of LMS. However, this is not the case. Learning Analytics dashboard will be a separate component; it will extract the data from LMS and the business data to produce the result.

The difference between training and development was also raised. This was explained as training is a set of programs defined by an organisation and development being much more an entrepreneurialistic, where people are motivated to learn and to improve by themselves.

Participants had the option to vote in several surveys. The result:

• 50% of the audience were excited with the upcoming challenges in 2021.
• 41% expect that organisations will be doing more learning and development in 2021.
• 58% think that their organisations learning and development objectives are aligned with the commercial or performance urgency.