Today’s learners want training that is engaging and relevant to their job role — and they want to see how learning can help them achieve their career goals. In other words, standardized, check-box learning is no longer sufficient (if it ever was) when it comes to training the modern workforce.
In this episode of The Business of Learning, we sat down with Parker Donnafield, CPTM, a learning specialist at Canvas Credit Union, and Keri Borba, L&D and talent development director at AAA Northeast, to learn what it takes to deliver personalized learning at scale: Because one size never truly fits all.
Click below to listen for actionable tips around creating and delivering personalized learning journeys, and for a sneak peek inside AAA Northeast’s career explorer program, which leverages learning for career mobility and retention.
Listen Now:
Additional Resources:
- Advancement Is on the Horizon: Charting Your Career Path as an L&D Manager
- How To Create a Learning Journey
- Unlocking the Potential of Individualized Learning
To learn more about how to create personalized learning pathways, download the complimentary infographic below.
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Business of Learning, the learning leaders podcast from Training Industry.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Hi, welcome back to The Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, editor-in-chief at Training Industry, here with my co-host, Sarah Gallo, a senior editor.
Sarah Gallo:
Welcome. Before we begin, here’s a brief message from our sponsor, Training Industry research.
[Ad]
As a training professional, your job is to effectively manage the business of learning. You probably listen to this podcast to gain insights on L&D trends being used by some of the most innovative thought leaders in our market. But did you know that Training Industry also provides data-driven analysis and best practices through our premium research reports? Our entire catalog, including reports on topics such as deconstructing 70-20-10, women’s access to leadership development, learner preferences, and the state of the training market, just to name a few, can be found at trainingindustry.com/shopresearch. New insights create new ways for L&D to do business. Let Training Industry research reports assist you in taking your learning initiatives to new heights. Go to trainingindustry.com/shopresearch to view our entire catalog.
Sarah Gallo:
We’ve come a long way in how we develop and deliver training. In the past, companies may have gotten away with less than engaging training videos, you know the ones, or boring lecture style courses. But today’s learners want and expect more. They want learning that is both engaging and relevant to their job role and they want to see how learning can help them achieve their career goals. It’s definitely a tall order, but learning leaders can meet these needs by developing personalized learning pathways that meet learners’ individual needs and that connect training to their career development within the company.
Again, this is easier said than done, which is why we’re excited to be speaking with Parker Donnafield, a Certified Professional in Training Management and learning specialist at Canvas Credit Union, and Keri Borba, L&D and talent development director at AAA Northeast to learn more. Parker and Keri, thanks for speaking with us today.
Keri Borba:
Sure. Happy to be here. Glad to be here.
Parker Donnafield:
Happy to join.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Yes, welcome. I’m excited for this conversation today. As Sarah mentioned, training has moved away from one-size-fits-all programs to a more personalized experience tailored to learner’s needs. Can you walk us through the shift and share more about this rise of personalized learning?
Keri Borba:
Sure, I’m happy to. I mean, I think of the analogy of when you put on a piece of clothing that doesn’t quite fit, you’re kind of wriggling in it, it might be a little tight, it’s uncomfortable, and you just can’t wait to take it off at the end of the day or to get out of it. And I think learning for some folks feels that way too. Learning is no longer just in a classroom with 25 tables and 25 seats. It happens everywhere. It happens in so many different places and spaces that as learning professionals, we really need to tailor, not only how we’re delivering and where we’re delivering training, but also think about the so many different profiles of learners. We think about generations in the workplace, we think about neuro-divergencies, and how people receive and process information. We think about the different traditional learning styles. We think about diversity and inclusion. And there’s just so much to consider that it only makes sense for us to use different modes, modalities, mediums to be able to reach the different learning styles and the different learning preferences.
Parker Donnafield:
I completely agree, and I think going off of that, it’s more about encouraging involvement with training rather than observing alongside training. And it’s giving people an environment to practice through on the job training and formal structures, that allows them to excel where they are, outside of where learning thinks they should be. And so with that, we’ve really seen an increase, why this change? Learners are demanding roles that encourage them to grow and learning needs to be there to support that in a personalized way.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah, that’s great. How can L&D professionals really identify learners’ individual challenges and pain points so that they can create this more personalized experience that does meet them where they are?
Keri Borba:
For me and for the folks that I work with, it really comes down to observing the learners. Observing them in the classroom, whether that’s a physical classroom or a virtual classroom. Simply asking, doing pulse point questions, or just check-ins with the learners. Often can learn so much from what people say or don’t say. I find too that the technology, especially in organizations that have really adopted virtual classrooms and virtual spaces, is that the use of breakout rooms. Because what’s one great thing about the virtual classroom is that we can open it up to so many more students and in so many more geographies that sometimes learners can get a little bit lost. So using the technology that’s there, like breakout rooms, it allows us to create more comfortable or intimate environments where the facilitator can pop in and pop out of all the classrooms and really check in. And I think last, just being human. Just noticing when someone is really engaged in learning and then all of a sudden just dips. Something happened. Let’s find out what it was. So just being human and being observant.
Parker Donnafield:
Absolutely. And I think from a perspective of metrics and measuring success, it goes really hand in hand with being human. So looking at pre and post surveys for a summative and how-did-you-feel evaluation, alongside pre and post assessments that show formative where are you currently with knowledge, not so much feelings, but what you know. On top of that, looking at 360 surveys and getting the full picture of how someone is doing in their role is really key to figuring out the pain points and individual challenges to create that personalized learning experience. And so, looking at financial institutions as well as insurance, I know we’re heavily regulated industries, and so that means we have a lot of compliance to do, that you can only make it so much fun. How do you create a consistent onboarding program with a personalized experience within that, using both the human side of things like Keri spoke on, but then also looking for the metrics within those as well is the key to alleviating those pain points and really first identifying them.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely. That’s such a good point, Parker, about that assessment piece and really figuring out where learners are and what their skill gaps and proficiency is, to tailor that training to them, to meet those needs and close those gaps is really important. With that, what challenges might organizations face if they don’t take the time to develop and deliver learning that’s catered to employees unique needs?
Parker Donnafield:
Absolutely. I think the main ones, looking at turnover, lack of employee retention, increase in organizational errors, which many organizations cannot afford to have too many of. But then you also look from the employee relation side of things and we’re going to see a lack of upskilling. If you fail to create these unique needs and solutions around those needs, your employees are going to stay stuck and that kind of hurts the organization as a whole. On top of that, you see a lack of scalability within programs and that makes it difficult for your organization to measure success of them. And more than anything, I think you lose some insight into how your culture as an organization is and what drives excitement for your learners to be there.
Keri Borba:
Yeah, I think those are all terrific points, Parker. I see too, the big picture is disengagement. So if I’m not tailoring learning that’s maybe more elective or more skill-based or career development focused, if I can’t get folks engaged into those types of learning interventions, there’s no way I’m going to get them to complete a compliance course. So I totally agree with the regulated industries and understand. So I think the more that we can demonstrate the personalization in every single course, or workshop or intervention, the more likely our learners will be to be compliant when it comes to taking all of those required courses, that just about every organization and every in industry needs to be focused on.
Absolutely.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. Great. And along with personalized learning, we’ve also seen the rise of what we refer to as learning pathways. Can you both share more about how your organizations are creating these types of learning pathways and really connecting learning to employees career advancement within the company?
Keri Borba:
Certainly. We run a program here at AAA Northeast called the Career Exploration Program. And we run two cohorts a year. We have about 50 to 60 participants in each cohort. And for us, our organization is like a business of businesses. So many members know us for roadside assistance, but we’re also an insurance agency, a travel agency. We have a retail environment. So a series of branches. We do driver training and so, so much more. So what’s incredible about the organization is that someone can join as, let’s say a call receiver, a frontline employee, and then in a matter of a year or two, they can be enjoying a career in a professional role, for example, an insurance agent or a travel advisor.
And so the career exploration program is a six month program where each phase is focused on something a little different. So the first phase is about looking inward and self-assessments and some formal learning. The second phase is all about the different business lines, and we bring in what we call or who we call career storytellers to share all about their career in the organization, especially ones that have gone from one business line to another. The third phase is about preparing employees for the career journey. We help them write their resumes, we have them practice interviewing as an internal applicant. And then in the fourth phase of the program, we have them present back their reflection of learning as well as their career journey.
And what’s great about this program is we’re measuring success. So six months after graduation we’re measuring both retention as well as promotion. Two control groups, so we measure against those two control groups. And in our first cohort alone, we had 100% retention after six months as compared to our controls, which were at 84 and 82% retention. As far as promotions, we saw that participants in our career exploration program were promoted 28% higher than or more than our control groups. We’re now going into our fifth cohort of this program. So each cohort, as we’re measuring, we’re seeing incredible success in those two metrics, retention and promotion.
Parker Donnafield:
That’s amazing. For my organization, creating these personalized learning pathways is crucial through the structure within our LMS, our learning management system. We offer organizational tours with other departments, which are not on a six month basis, but it’s like a afternoon, spend time with the team, and figure out if it is something you want to pursue. We also offer organizational wide leadership development courses as well as critical thinking courses that set the learner up for success regardless of what their career looked like outside of our organization or hopefully within it.
We also have clearly defined prerequisites for what you can and can’t do within time and that really helps set the stage for we care that you’re getting successful in your current role before starting to look into other ones so that we know we are setting you up for success and our organization for success. So that kind of allows us to strategically align our business and our learner goals. Again, all through the LMS, which is a fantastic utilization of a resource that we have and we need to use.
And we also focus very heavily on performance within the organization. So we do personalized monthly or bimonthly reviews that the learner completes and the leader signs off on, so no one is confused about their performance within the organization, which is really a special thing for creating a personalized experience alongside how you’re doing in your role.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
That’s great. I love hearing what your organizations are doing to create those learning pathways for employees. And that’s really great. What advice do you have for other learning leaders who may be listening who want to begin creating learning pathways in their own organizations? Where can they start?
Keri Borba:
I had a manager years ago that would say to me, “Keri, go where you’re wanted.” So I would have the same advice. Go where you’re wanted or where you’re needed. Look for areas in the organization that have high turnover or roles that are difficult to hire, to recruit for, and consider, “Could we create some sort of learning path into these roles or career pathway into this role?” So go where the most attention is needed. That would be my advice.
And there are so many great examples out there of these different types of programs and learning paths. When we were designing our career exploration program, I looked to colleges and universities because they’ve been very successful in their career centers and creating the environments and the spaces for students to learn about the many different careers out there. And so much of the design of our career exploration program came from the research that we did, and when we looked into colleges and universities to see how they set up and prepared their students.
Parker Donnafield:
Absolutely. I echo Keri in that. Start with where you want to be and then also analyzing where you currently are and who the leaders of those future states can be. And on top of that, look at the structure and options within the systems you already have. Can you create a learning experience platform in an existing model? And also research the knowledge bases that your organization currently has because you don’t need to go really far out to create this amazing program. Most organizations have the talent within them that can support already standing structures.
Sarah Gallo:
Great. I kind of want to follow up on something you mentioned earlier, Parker, which was kind of around the LMS’ role in supporting these initiatives. I’d love to hear how both of you are using technology to create personalized learning and really just to support your learning efforts that you’ve been discussing with us.
Parker Donnafield:
Absolutely. So kind of going back, we look at our assessments that are initiated and administered through our LMS. We also offer on the job training management through our LMS, where we design and build certain topics within roles that are needing support that, again, defines clearly what is told to them, what is shown to them, how they do it in their role, and then how they demonstrate it to their leader, all built within our LMS, and we can report on all of these things as well. Which is huge for a learning team to be able to say, “We are supporting the organization and we’re being cost-effective while doing it.” So a lot of our work goes through the LMS because it just creates, again, that consistent program with personalized experiences.
Keri Borba:
I’m starry-eyed right now because that is the Holy Grail, when we talk about things in our field, in our area, that are just so important. And that’s for me, the Holy Grail is can we get to a level four evaluation or can we get our learning management system to help us personalize and target learning for individuals? We utilize a learning management system, more so in a catalog based format. So for each of our business lines, we have a catalog of courses, whether they’re technical, so role specific, like how to change a tire or get into a locked vehicle, as well as supervisory, professional, and management development. We have learning paths within our learning management system, so when new folks from specific departments join, they’re automatically assigned all of the required or compliance courses that they need to complete in order to be able to sell or be able to use a certain system. So technology certainly has come such a long way, learning management systems have become so much easier to us- and kind of lightened, if you will, and made much more user friendly to learning professionals like us.
Parker Donnafield:
And, absolutely, I think as we look to the future current state, we’re still in learning portals as we start to move into personalized learning experiences. I’m super excited to see what an LMS can do to support really the initiative of creating individual programs for people.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Thank you both for sharing. We’re going to dive deeper into the business case for personalized learning after a brief message from our sponsor.
Speaker 8:
One-size-fits-all training is a thing of the past. Your learners have unique strengths and weaknesses and need training that’s personalized to their individual job roles. That’s why Training Industry Courses launched its suite of personalized learning journeys, tailored toward your specific L&D career paths, all of which include registration to the flagship certified professional and training management credential. Whether you’re looking to invest in your own development or train your L&D team members, Training Industry Courses learning journeys offer a comprehensive experience that puts your learning needs first. To learn more or to schedule a call with a professional development consultant, visit the links in the show notes for this episode.
Sarah Gallo:
So, Parker and Keri, we know that it takes time and resources to create this kind of personalized learning experience. So I really want to touch on why this is so, so important for the business. Can you share more on how learning pathways and personalized learning efforts can benefit the business in terms of retention and engagement? And are there any other business benefits here that can be realized?
Keri Borba:
I’ll go back to our career exploration program where we are measuring not only retention, but also promotion rates. And so we are an organization, as many others out there, that really enjoy promoting from within. That’s not to say that we don’t also enjoy bringing in new ideas and new perspective from outside the organization, really focus on building or enhancing opportunities for our internal folks. So that being said, the metrics really speak for themselves in terms of our retention rate within the career exploration program graduates, or as I call them, the explorers.
And I think the other metric, it’s a little softer, but it’s there, is graduates from our program, I see that they are so much more engaged and they become what I’ll call an ambassador for the organization. So an ambassador for how great it is to work at AAA, an ambassador for all of the great programs and opportunities made available to them, an ambassador for the benefits that we have in the organization. So I find the engagement of our explorers, those that have graduated from the program, it absolutely skyrockets. And that’s really, I think, where we catch the attention of employees because I, as a Vice President in the organization, I can talk all about the benefits and programs all day, but when a story or an experience comes from a peer, it just holds so much more credibility. So that for us has been, I guess, an unintended result or outcome.
I’ll just share one other thing that we also noticed that was unintended. I mean, as a result of the career exploration program, the goal is for the explorers to find other opportunities across the organization, things, other roles that they’re excited about or that they aspire to. I can count on both hands the folks that graduated from the program and at the end when they presenting their reflection of learning and their career path, they said, “I really, really love this program. I love seeing all of the different opportunities across the organization, but what I realize is that I love my job. I really love being a travel advisor.” And so talk about engagement and talk about just affirming that I’m where I’m supposed to be? That’s another unintended benefit of that program.
Parker Donnafield:
I love that and I am so excited to get my invite to this explorer program just whenever you get a chance. I think kind of going off what Keri said, really, the benefits of personalized learning pathways for the business are twofold. The first is that you get a better perception throughout the organization with employees and their benefits, being able to speak to them and that sort of thing. We also see a more streamlined process for lean knowledge transfer and the scalability of learning programs, the sustainability of learning programs, which is huge. From a resource perspective, you’re using less resources to continually improve your program. As a business case, that’s less cost. And then you also have more flexibility for learners and being able to give them the space to learn while creating data transparency across departments, which is huge for talent. If you’re acquiring talent, you can use learning data to show what types of learners we should be interacting with. And so really perception and metric-driven growth of the organization would be probably the two largest benefits that I can see for creating learning pathways that are individualized.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
That’s great. Those are such good insights because the benefits are huge for the company. And I like what you touched on there, Keri, kind of around the notion of learning champions and really leaning into the learners to amplify their excitement for the learning that they went through and how that can really create that learning culture for the organization, I think is really, really important there. We’ve covered a lot of ground today. It’s great hearing all of your insights. For our listeners who want to implement some of the best practices we’ve covered today, what’s one step they can take after today’s episode to get started?
Keri Borba:
My advice would be to start small. Start in one area of your business or of your operations. Socialize the idea with your operations. Talk about the benefits that you’ve realized in other areas or in other departments or other business lines. I find if you kind of go all in and start really, really big, it makes it challenging to really keep track and keep your finger on the pulse of how well the programs are being received or the results that are coming. So my advice would be to start small, socialize, use those influencing skills that you have, and really talk about the benefits of personalized learning.
Parker Donnafield:
Yeah, for me, I think step one is start asking questions. Where do you want to go? Where are you currently at? Who can influence you in getting where you want to go? Just asking questions and really starting discovery of your current state to future state would be my best advice.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Well, Parker and Keri, thank you both so much for speaking with us today on the podcast. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they would like to reach out after the episode?
Parker Donnafield:
You can connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, my name is Parker Donnafield. And I also do write articles for Training Industry, so feel free to find me on the site as well.
Keri Borba:
And you can connect with me on LinkedIn as well.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
To learn more about personalization and learning pathways and to view the highlights from this episode in animation, visit the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo:
And if you enjoyed this episode, let us know. Leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until next time.
If you have feedback about this episode or would like to suggest a topic for a future program, email us at info@trainingindustry.com or use the Contact Us page at trainingindustry.com. Thanks for listening to the Training Industry Podcast.
