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Celebrating one year of Learning Impact
It’s hard to believe that we’re now approaching our 13th episode, and a year has passed since we launched our Learning Impact Digital Series. Over the past 12 months, we’ve spoken with incredible speakers from some of the world’s largest brands, and our audience has grown significantly throughout that time as well.
To celebrate a year of Learning Impact, we’ve collated the four most popular recurring themes from the series and we’re sharing some of our guest speaker’s insights on them.
1. Respecting what learners bring to the table
One of the principles of andragogy, the practice of teaching adult learners, is that experience is a critical component to how adults learn. And this topic has come up many times throughout the series, where our speakers noted the importance of respecting the experience and knowledge your learners bring to your organization when creating your learning programs.
- CLO of NASA, Dr. Karen L. Gilliam, believes training has to be practical, relevant and respectful of experience, in order to support adult learners in their roles.
- Brittany Wagner, nationally respected athletic academic advisor and breakout star of Netflix’s ‘Last Chance U’, tapped into this theme when she shared “we are a product of our experience”.
- And Heather Conklin, SVP & GM of Trailhead, Salesforce spoke about tailoring the learning experience at Trailhead. The team is laser focused on understanding where their learners are, and creating content to help them get to where they want to go.
2. Measuring impact
One of the key areas we often hear is a challenge, but also a critical aspect of developing a learning strategy, is how to measure the impact of your training programs. Whether you collect smile sheets, have a full data suite, or don’t know where to begin when it comes to learning data, many of our speakers shared their tips and insights into why they think data should drive your learning strategy.
- Heather Conklin, SVP & GM, Trailhead Salesforce, shared why you should identify the impact you want to measure before you launch a training program.
- Learning professionals need to move away from only evaluating the bottom line, according to Dr. Jack J. Phillips, President and CEO of the ROI Institute. During his session he emphasized that there needs to be both data and narrative to make a compelling story on the impact of learning.
- And during her session on marketing techniques, Bianca Baumann, Senior Learning Strategist & Director, shared that learning professionals should be more proactive about collecting data throughout the learner journey.
3. Creating relationships with leaders and subject-matter experts
Building relationships is a critical skill when creating learning experiences in your organization. Having leaders on-board with your training efforts can help you build a culture of learning, and utilizing subject matter experts can help you to create meaningful programs that stick with your learners. But finding, creating, and maintaining relationships with these stakeholders can be a challenge, which is why a number of our speakers discussed these relationships in the series.
- NASA’s CLO, Karen L. Gilliam, suggests you listen to your subject matter experts to stay up-to-date on your workforce’s training needs.
- Naphtali Bryant, Director of Learning and Organizational Development at Netflix challenged our audience to proactively connect with leaders to better understand the challenges they face with their teams so you can create better learning experiences.
- Award-winning instructional designer Tim Slade emphasized that it’s the learning designer’s responsibility to create a relationship with your SMEs that sets realistic expectations on what content needs to be created based on what your learners actually need to know.
- And during his session, Brandon Carson, Director of Learning at Delta Air Lines asserted that the learning function has often been siloed away from where the business decisions are being made. And learning leaders need to create relationships so that learning is the business strategy.
4. Building and hiring your learning teams
A number of our speakers touched on how hiring practices and training practices need to adapt so they can work more closely together. Whether it’s looking for skills outside of traditional L&D when building your learning team, or building training programs around strategic business goals to help build your talent internally, it’s clear that the way our guests have approached building, hiring, and training teams is rooted in creating diverse and robust learning experiences.
- In his session, Christopher Lind of GE Healthcare emphasized the need to look outside of typical L&D experience and hire for agility and resilience.
- McDonald’s CLO, Rob Lauber, spent time in his Learning Impact session discussing how to build your talent internally and why the learning function needs to respond to the overall talent strategy of an organization.
- Heather Conklin, SVP & GM of Trailhead at Salesforce, also touched on this, sharing that Trailhead creates content based on external job reqs to upskill salesforce admin based on what employers are hiring for.
- And finally, Brandon Carson, Director of Learning at Delta Air Lines, discussed why learning teams have the responsibility of addressing the skills gap that is created from education models not keeping pace with how quickly businesses are evolving, putting the onus on the business to upskill their workforce.
These are just some of the invaluable insights shared by our amazing guest speakers throughout the series. We’re excited to continue bringing you insights and knowledge from the best and brightest across the learning and training industries!
Keep an eye on our website for all of our upcoming Learning Impact sessions, and if you’re interested in watching any of our previous episodes, they are all available on-demand on our website.
