New report from Towards Maturity to solve the communication divide
Towards Maturity has released a new report based on evidence from over 600 learning professionals and 10,000 learners to help leaders in learning and development to meet the increasing expectations of modern, continuously learning workforces.
In today’s digital workplace, always-on technology offers new challenges to learning and organisational development professionals catering for the evolving needs of the modern workforce. What’s more, that workforce is increasingly clear and vocal about what they want and need.
With 95% of L&D seeking to be more learner-centred, only one in four are achieving the goals they seek. The trouble is that too few in L&D have the time to really listen to their customers. As a result:
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Only 54% of learners believe that L&D professionals understand and are able to provide help with their performance needs
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Just 5% of learners agree that it is the opinion of L&D that is the greatest influence on them to learn online
‘Bridging the Divide’ is released in association with Towards Maturity ambassadors, Mind Tools. Deputy CEO, Oliver Craddock, explained in his foreword, “This report gives us a way into the learners’ world and highlights the gap between their current perception of L&D, and where and how they feel that learning can have the biggest impact. Organisations can change their learning culture and involve learners in the design of learning tools and systems, to take advantage of the popularity of new thinking around “UX” and “learner-centric design”.
With 30% of learners finding that learning content is not generally relevant to their needs, it is time for L&D to take stock of what they have on offer, listen to their learners, understand what they need and empower them to take ownership of their development.
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65% believe learners do not have the skills to manage their own learning
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80% of learners know what learning they need – but according to L&D, only 27% allow learners to determine their own path through a programme of learning
A lack of understanding of what motivates learners is at the heart of the communications divide. This report will explore how to press the right buttons to motivate learners, and reveal how high performing learning organisations are having higher success rates using data gathered in the 2017 Towards Maturity Benchmark. Taking the time to reflect on your organisation and participating in this annual L&D Health Check will help to identify where your company could make improvements, with our analysts on hand to help direct you through the next steps of your journey to becoming a New Learning Organisation.
“This learner-centric approach is not new – in fact Towards Maturity have been reporting since The New Learner Agenda in 2013 when we first talked about the benefits of a customer-activated learning strategy, that L&D needs to better understand the behaviour of today’s learner in order to design interventions that truly engage and support their need”, Laura Overton, CEO, Towards Maturity, adds. “This is the year for transformation and time for organisations to make these small changes that will lead to a big difference.”
The full report, 'In Focus: Bridging the Divide, Solving the communications breakdown between L&D and learners' is available free to dowload on the Towards Maturity website: towardsmaturity.org/bridging-the-divide.
Laura Overton and Oliver Craddock will also be hosting a webinar about this report on Thursday 28th June 2018. This webinar will look at how L&D can win over the hearts and minds of business leaders, support the self-directed learners and equip the L&D team for success. Registration for this webinar is available on the Mind Tools website and the latest details on this event are availe on Towards Maturity's Twitter and LinkedIn pages. Towards Maturity's community is available for learning professionals to join and provides updates on Towards Maturity's events, reports and resources.
About Mind Tools
Mind Tools is one of the world’s most popular on-demand workplace-learning solutions. Its 2,400+ resources, focused on leadership, management and personal excellence skills, are accessed by more than 25 million learners and organisations worldwide every year. Mind Tools’ corporate solution helps organisations of all sizes to improve employee performance by providing a consumer-style, on-demand learning environment.
More about out how Mind Tools can help L&D departments to meet managers’ changing expectations on workplace learning is available via mindtools.com/corporate.