COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of digital learning across organizations worldwide. However, many companies are still at the beginning of their digital adoption journeys.
In this special episode of The Business of Learning, sponsored by CrossKnowledge, we spoke with Jan Rijken, learning director at CrossKnowledge, to learn how L&D can support digital adoption across the enterprise.
Listen Now:
Additional Resources:
- (Article): 6 Fundamental Ways to Help Employees Keep Up With Digital Transformation
- (Article): Overcoming the Digital Literacy Crisis
- (Research Report): Training in the Time of COVID: How Learning and Development is Responding
The transcript for this episode follows:
Speaker 1:
Welcome to the Business of Learning, the learning leader’s podcast from Training Industry.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Hello, and welcome back to the Business of Learning. I’m Michelle Eggleston Schwartz, Editor in Chief at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
I’m Sarah Gallo, a Senior Editor. Today’s episode of The Business of Learning is sponsored by CrossKnowledge.
Ad:
CrossKnowledge empowers global organizations to continuously develop a skilled workforce with a multi awarded digital learning solution. CrossKnowledge uniquely combines digital content for the most in demand skills, a powerful learning platform and expert capabilities to create impactful learning experiences.
For over 20 years, CrossKnowledge is recognized as a true partner for effective skill building at scale with unmatched expertise and accountability. CrossKnowledge is part of Wiley, a leader in research and education, and serves 500 clients reaching 12 million learners.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Digital learning has taken the learning and development world by storm. Although virtual learning was already on the rise before the global pandemic, COVID 19 accelerated the adoption of digital learning across organizations worldwide. However, many companies are still at the beginning of their digital adoption journeys. To learn how L&D can support digital learning adoption across the enterprise, we’re speaking with Jan Rijken, Learning Director at CrossKnowledge. Jan, welcome to the podcast.
Jan Rijken:
Thanks very much. Pleasure to be here.
Sarah Gallo:
Jan, why don’t you start us off by introducing yourself and telling us a bit more about the current focus of your work.
Jan Rijken:
Okay. Happy to do that. I’m Learning Director at Wiley CrossKnowledge, an organization that focuses on providing employees with development support from the time they are in college to the time they get pensioned. My specific role is to support corporate learning organizations in their learning strategy, and I mentor young talents. In addition to that, I’m a professor at Madrid Business School, where let’s say I also help L&D professionals. This is probably because most of my career was spent in learning and development, our chief learning officer in four industries, including big organizations like KPMG and Daimler.
Sarah Gallo:
Great, thanks for sharing. I think, like Michelle mentioned, it’s perhaps the understatement of the century to say these past few years have brought us unprecedented change in how we work, learn, and even live our lives. Jan, what’s your view on how the Coronavirus pandemic impacted corporate learning and development?
Jan Rijken:
I think first of all, people development is increasingly a strategic driver for organizations. Even before the pandemic, organizations were having skills gaps. Talent shortages have only increased. I think the pandemic has impacted and accelerated organizational changes and challenges. Business models are changing and especially, the workforce has to embrace new skills to stay relevant. Hybrid working was another new phenomena with vitality and health suddenly becoming organizational relevant issues. Related to that, we now have a big, I’m not sure whether it’s a hype, but the big theme at the moment, which is the Great Resignation. I think the pandemic has provided many employees with the time to think about their future in organizations in their role, what’s next and decided to move on. That’s quite a shift for many organizations. In terms of learning, we talk about digital learning, organizations had to embrace digital and hybrid learning, which is quite a disruption from the old face to face model. I think, needs analysis is more important than ever. Who are our target audiences? Where are they? How are they learning? Learning adoption, because like you and I, if we sit behind our screens for six, seven hours a day, and then at the end of the day we’re asked to learn, that isn’t easy. Psychological safety is another issue that’s new. Suddenly, people have to learn online either alone or in groups, and psychological safety is an important theme. So, there’s quite a few areas that have shaken L&D and organizations up during the pandemic.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Those are some great points. I couldn’t agree more. I know over here at Training Industry on our website, at the beginning of the pandemic we saw upwards of an 8,000% increase in website traffic related to digital learning, remote learning, a lot of the key issues that you addressed. We were definitely seeing that at the onset, and then our own pulse research found that remote training delivery has gone from accounting for 50% of training delivery to now 75% of training delivery as a result of the pandemic.
Jan Rijken:
Right. Yeah.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
With these key shifts in mind, what are some of the major challenges that L&D is facing today?
Jan Rijken:
We’re talking about the shift from classroom to workplace learning. I think another one is the shift from what I would call content to context. Where many organizations have typically focused on developing great content, but actually that isn’t enough in the current setting. We need to look at the context where learners are and quite a few of them are learning from home. Another one is what I would call courses to resources. Developing courses is not enough. We need to develop resources as well and provide them so our employees can learn anytime, anywhere. I think another one is from generalized to personalized. Many organizations used to sheep dip groups of employees in terms of their learning. For instance, training account managers providing training for a group of account managers. Now, I think they’re shifting from generalized to personalized where they look at, okay, if we look at this group, how diverse is it and how can we help the people in their individual learning journey? Those are some of the challenges and shifts that I’m seeing.
Sarah Gallo:
Great. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot of shifts going on right now, and it’s not an easy time to be in L&D, but we always love seeing how learning leaders can really step up to the plate and deliver those programs that can help their companies. Jan, we’ve made it clear that digital learning is one of those key shifts in how we learn that has come from the COVID 19 pandemic. Can you touch on the future implications of this shift and what it really means going forward?
Jan Rijken:
Organizations have had to embrace digital learning. Some of them were already working with it, but during the pandemic, there were no other options. I think the first one is meeting resistance, meeting resistance in terms of the learners. How can we get learners to learn online even in their easy online work life? Meet resistance with line managers. How can we get them to support learners who are learning online? That’s different from the past where they had them around them. How can we even meet resistance within L&D? Not all our L&D professionals were digitally savvy. How can we get them to embrace digital learning? A few other things. If we have had the shift from face to face to now digital, and probably hybrid in future, we’ll have to a different design and delivery approach in terms of designing and delivering high impact learning, and that requires new thoughts. And learning analytics, can we use data more than ever before to not only plan, but also deliver and evaluate the learning that we’re doing, both at a program level and at learner level? The last thing I want to mention related to your question is, connectivity and collaboration are important new features within the digital learning world. Because we now have to think, how can we reach and touch our learners and get them engaged?
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
Definitely. I think you touched on this, how challenging business-wide adoption is for these changes, whether it’s remote work or rolling out new technologies or systems. Can you talk a little bit more about some of these core challenges organizations may face when adopting digital learning?
Jan Rijken:
I talk to clients every week. I talk to learning leaders, and actually they’re struggling because the situation is new for them. Starting with the impossibility to use classroom training, so they were forced to use online learning. Not all of them had a good ecosystem in place, so they’ve had to look at how can we optimize the learning infrastructure that we currently have? That’s where it started. Then focus on new skills because suddenly they’ve had to drop everything they were doing and focus on new skills, like remote leading or resilience, things like that. They were important. And related to that, things like cyber security and psychological safety, as I’ve said. They are digital skills that all organizations have had to embrace, and especially that within L&D. They weren’t issues before using digital learning in this way, but they’ve now suddenly become issues.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah, definitely. I’d love, Jan, if you could walk us through what that psychological safety might look like in a digital learning environment, and how can learning leaders really make sure that they are creating this inclusive, psychologically safe space for learning?
Jan Rijken:
Yeah. Thanks for that question. I’m not sure there’s a silver bullet for it, but it is about awareness within the digital space. I think, as we sit here and the people in organizations around us have had to use tools like Teams and Zoom a lot in the past year. I think in terms of psychological safety, it is important for people facilitating events and meetings to first of all, recognize who’s in the meeting and how are people sitting in the meeting? It’s easy if you have them in front of you in a real room. But in a digital environment, I think it’s important to look at the non-verbal components of how people are attending. I think that’s important. Another one is, make sure that everybody contributes to a meeting. In a room you would have certain people talk a lot, but in a digital environment, it’s some others that talk a lot, and we have to make sure that digital meetings and training sessions are very inclusive.
Make sure that we reach out to everybody attending. Make sure that they can contribute and use features that most of these tools have got by now, like working in smaller subgroups where, let’s say there’s a smaller barrier for people to talk and contribute. I think they are some of the elements that we need to recognize and that I see people adopting.
Sarah Gallo:
Yeah. Those are some great tips. Thanks for sharing. Well, maybe now you could tell us a little bit about CrossKnowledge’s digital learning maturity model. Why was this model initially created and how is it designed to support organizations along their digital adoption journeys?
Jan Rijken:
Let’s start by saying that the digital learning maturity model was developed in answers to clients’ requests and challenges. We talk to clients every day, every week, and when we decided to review the questions and challenges that we got from clients, we saw a lot of commonalities. All of them are related to the fact that clients are searching for high impact learning. They’ve got an ambition to deliver high impact learning, which means learning that’s effective, learning that’s sufficient and learning that is inclusive. Related to that, we decided to look at are there models around that we could probably use effectively with clients? We reviewed existing models like the Bersin Model and Learning Performance Institute Model, which were good, but too general and incomplete. For instance, digital learning component was missing. So, we used that and built a model with six dimensions that illustrates and highlights and proved where every organization is in the digital learning maturity journey of high impact learning. With the aim of identifying how organizations can improve their learning strategy, their learning approach in every possible way and what the drivers are. Looking at those six dimensions, they are learners. Learners are an important element of learning cycle. Line managers, because they are the most direct influence on workplace learning. Learning analytics, so what kind of data have we got and do we want to use? Learning experience, this is how, let’s say learning is designed and delivered. Learning architecture, this is more about the digital ecosystem that organizations have, like an LMS and L&D capabilities. This is about learning strategy, governance and L&D’s capabilities. All of these together provide an opportunity for organizations to score and the score indicates their maturity in terms of how close they are to high impact learning.
Sarah Gallo:
Great. I know you’ve also used the model to conduct some pretty substantial research. Could you share those key outcomes with our listeners?
Jan Rijken:
Yeah, happy to do that. As I said, the aim was to support clients in identifying their digital learning maturity and take action based on the outcomes. That provided us with some data and best practices in lessons learned, but we actually wanted to go broader. We started a research with a wider group of organizations. I think at the end of last year, we had more than 200 organizations participating across the America’s, Europe and Asia in 13 industries and varying size. The most striking result for me was relatively low average score of 60 out of 100 for organizations on their digital learning maturity. Although it confirms earlier Fosway Group results in their research. This implies that there’s a lot of space for improvement and growth. I think that’s the good news. Pharma was the highest scoring industry. That it wasn’t a really big surprise because they generally invest high in L&D and they’ve got quite a mature L&D function. The other interesting one is that there’s a correlation between size and maturity. The bigger the organization the higher, in general, the digital learning maturity. They were some of the results that came out, and obviously there were results on the individual components of the model.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
That’s great. Thank you so much for sharing that information. Before we wrap up here today, are there any other insights that you’d like to leave our listeners with?
Jan Rijken:
Yeah. Happy to share a few. I think it is important to see how organizations can leverage the outcomes and progress their digital learning maturity. If organizations take part in our research, they receive a very personalized and specific digital learning maturity map that shows their score on the six dimensions and enable them to take actions. In addition, CrossKnowledge has developed resources for organizations to progress, like toolkits. I’ve seen some good practices for organizations analyzing results and planning actions. In addition, I think there’s a few implications for learning and development that we haven’t touched. I think if they really want to progress their digital learning maturity, there’s three things that they need to work on. First of all, they need to work on their own capabilities. Become more tech savvy, leverage data analytics, and that’s an area that generally is not very well developed within HR and L&D. Boost their design thinking experience and online facilitation skills. Make sure that they are role models of learning. I think the second area is collaboration. L&D can’t do it alone. HR can’t do it alone. I think they need to collaborate with different parties within the organization. First of all, with the learners. It’s the obvious one, but it’s underestimated. Connect with the learners, know where their needs are, but also see what are the opportunities for user generated content? Because most learners are smart and happy to share content. Link with line managers to make sure that they enable positive learning climate. Link with leadership because L&D is a strategic driver for change that can support the organization’s ambitions. I think become partner in crime with peers like IT, procurement, and HR to make sure that they deliver what’s expected. The last area is the make or buy. Can, in the new circumstances, organizations develop digital learning themselves, or do they need to team up with strategic vendors and get the expertise and resources that they need? I think they are some very specific tips for L&D. I think, let’s say moving towards a close there’s some recommendations based on lessons learned and best practices that I’ve seen and I’m, let’s say, happy to share. I think the first one is be brave and be confident. I think this is something that L&D something lacks. Make sure you stand strong on your feet and be brave and go for it. You can’t do it alone, so within the organization, seek some support in the allies that you can find, and focus. Make sure your plate is not too full because then you can’t deliver within the relevant time. Focus on the absolute necessities that leaders bring forward. Outside of the organizations, make sure you’re open to best practices. Listen to podcasts, read your research and connect with peers. I have learned during my career that it really makes sense to find one or two trusted peers to work with that you can call at any evening and say, “Please help me. I’ve got an issue here. Give me some advice.” Look for those. Stay vital, stay resilient and stay positive. I think we’re in a tough situation and it’s probably, it will take some time before we get out of this situation, so stay vital. That’s important in terms of your mental health, but also in terms of your sleep. We’re currently doing quite a bit of research on the importance of sleep, and stay positive. Last but not least, ride the change wave. The change is there to stay, so rather than resist it, find the right curve and ride it. I’m sure that with that positive attitude that you’ll get to the result that you want to reach.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
I love that, ride the change wave. I love it. Those are some great recommendations for our listeners. Jan, thank you so much for speaking with us today on the podcast. How can our listeners get in touch with you if they’d like to reach out?
Jan Rijken:
Yeah, thanks for asking. The easiest one is if learners want to connect with me on LinkedIn, happy for people to connect with me. I regularly share research, my own research, but also research from others. I’ll link them also to podcasts. I’m just on a podcast a few weeks ago on my latest book, 49 Tools for L&D, so happy to also talk about that. In terms of Wiley or CrossKnowledge, they can also connect with me through the CrossKnowledge organization. Happy to, let’s say, keep sharing. I’m in my third career phase, which is all about sharing my knowledge and helping the next generation to perform.
Michelle Eggleston Schwartz:
For more insights on digital learning and to view the highlights from this episode in animation, check out the show notes for this episode at trainingindustry.com/training industrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo:
And as always, don’t forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. We love hearing from you. Until next time.
Speaker 1:
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.
