Sticky Learns
Would You Bet Your Life on Your Employee Training?
Welcome to the first edition of my newsletter, Sticky Learns. If you’re wondering what I mean by that, you only need to ask and answer the question in the headline: Would you bet your life on your employee training?
As the CEO and co-founder of an adaptive learning system, I’m very aware that, like most L&D professionals, you want to be sure your people are competent when it matters most — particularly in high-risk environments where failure isn’t an option. Boeing is just one example that’s still fresh in the minds of business leaders everywhere. I’m sure we could all identify many others.
If you’re lucky, a lapse in skills competency that happens on your watch won’t lead to project failure, serious injury, fatality, or headlines. But would you bet your life on it? Changes in the world of work over the last few years have made it even harder to address that question. It’s become more challenging to ensure that employee training and the learning it is meant to instill are accurately verified for you and your people to feel assured of the desired competencies.
For starters, today’s employees are more likely than ever to be overworked and continuously wrestling with change. According to PwC’s 2024 Global Workforce Hopes & Fears Survey, 45% of workers say their workload has significantly increased in the last 12 months. Nearly two in three (62%) say the pace of change at work has increased over the same time. Perhaps more striking, almost half (44%) say they don’t understand the purpose of changes taking place.
You need training that truly addresses all of that — training that engages people in learning by getting them to lean in, pay attention, become competent, and keep their knowledge and skills at the required levels.
Being engaging is one of three tenets of training that sticks. For example, the right combination of AI and instructional design can ensure bite-sized learning suitable to each learner’s unique path. AI can surface the best content and verifications for learners to demonstrate their current knowledge, expose gaps, and move them forward most efficiently — saving time and ensuring optimal engagement.
Learners and managers also need to know that training will apply directly to the individual and their role — that it will provide value that can be used in real life. You can ensure training is applicable to each learner and every job if your learning system is designed to connect training to job competencies for each employee and has various types of assessments for skills verifications with manager signoff.
Finally, for training to stick, it needs to be durable. Just like an excellent all-weather adhesive that can expand or shrink in response to changes in temperature and humidity, training that sticks ensures that knowledge and skills are properly developed and maintained over time. It empowers trainers to know where and when to intervene quickly, ensuring every learner is properly trained. Durable training also ensures that your employees align the focus of their learning to their knowledge gaps. AI delivers the right amount of practice, so learners can remember what they’ve learned, understand its relevance to their success, feel confident in their abilities, and retain their newfound knowledge sustainably and efficiently long after initial training.
There is simply no other way to guarantee you’ll sleep easy at night, every night.
STICKY LEARN | Your training won’t stick unless your learning is engaging for each learner, applicable to each employee, and durable to deliver value over time.
What else is going on?
I Dig Deeper In a Recent Forbes Article: “3 Reasons Corporate Learning Is Failing to Adapt and How to Fix Them”
While more employees feel overworked and constantly wrestling with change, corporate L&D is failing to deliver training that helps them and their organizations adapt more quickly, respond to market shifts with greater agility, and become more resilient to changing workforce demographics. Why? As a member of the Forbes Leadership Council, my article identifies three overarching reasons and lays out remedies for each one.
STICKY LEARN | You need to deliver a more agile, truly personalized learning experience that verifies accurately at every step, from design through consumption to application.
What Do You Think?
I’d really like to know. So, I’ve started conducting a one-question poll via LinkedIn each month. I’ll publish the results and my thoughts about them in the upcoming issue of Sticky Learns.
For this first issue, I distributed a poll before the launch:
Recommended by LinkedIn
STICKY LEARN | Wow! No one feels completely confident in the verification of their employee training and job competency. I think the reason is that too many organizations are still measuring course completion and learners’ satisfaction instead of truly verifying learning and competencies. If you want to be more confident in your employees’ learning and job competencies, you need a process that includes precise verification of knowledge and competencies through a variety of assessments and delivers real-time learning reinforcement.
News Highlights
Training and Safety Beyond the Company’s Walls Rayonier, a Florida-based global forestry company, is inspirational in going beyond its own workplace to foster safety and training. Its Safety Star program recognizes contractors for their safety efforts. Read about three of those companies.
STICKY LEARN | Extend training initiatives outside your walls to demonstrate corporate responsibility, enhance your operational environment, and set a benchmark for industry practices.
Employers and Workers at Odds on Skills DevelopmentA recent study shows that while employers and employees equally recognize the need to offer and pursue skills development, continuous upskilling has yet to become the norm, contributing to turnover and employee disengagement. (D2L)
STICKY LEARN | Decrease turnover and boost the employee experience by prioritizing upskilling initiatives to foster a more committed and capable workforce.
How Healthcare Can Better Benefit from eLearningIn today’s digital age, education has transcended the traditional classroom setting. In healthcare, eLearning (electronic learning) plays a key role in revolutionizing how employees acquire the unique knowledge and skills their work demands. (Skills for Health)
STICKY LEARN | Harness the power of eLearning to equip your teams — in any industry — with the skills they need to excel and adapt in an evolving landscape.
Amazon Deemed Responsible for Hazardous Third-Party Items A federal agency decision against the largest logistics company in North America could put transportation and warehousing companies of all sizes on the hook for recalled products, from hairdryers to defective carbon monoxide detectors. (Transport Topics)
STICKY LEARN | The growing importance of accountability in logistics and product safety demands companies stay informed and bolster safety protocols and training in all supply chain operations.
News From Around the Shop
From general news in industries where high-risk work environments are common to reports about trends in AI, training, and learning in general, here’s a compilation of recent news that caught the eye of the people at Realizeit.
About Realizeit
Realizeit is the adaptive learning system that delivers training that sticks through learning experiences that are engaging, applicable, and enduring. We uniquely leverage expertise and experience in adaptive learning, AI, and higher-education instructional design to work with customers to design, modify, and build unique training and learning programs that easily and efficiently integrate into their existing learning ecosystem to maximize performance and reduce risk. With real-time, clear lines of sight into knowledge gaps and accurate verification of proficiencies, you’ll always know your people have the skills necessary to drive success.
Contact us if you need training that sticks.
Great stuff, Manoj Kulkarni.
Growth....People.....Sales
1moVery useful i'm sure for those in high risk environments