BLOC Podcast

44: 3 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Scalability for Your L&D Department

February 22, 2022 Episode 44
BLOC Podcast
44: 3 Things You Can Do Now to Improve Scalability for Your L&D Department
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I give you 3 easy tips that you can start incorporating today to ensure that your learning and development department can be more scalable and can contribute the most resources and the most value to your organization. 

I mention a few L&D communities in this episode:

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com

Thanks for listening to the BLOC!

Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/

Or check out what I'm working on over at https://www.getusefulstuff.com/

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Hey friends, and welcome to the block the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Kirby. And on today's episode, we're talking about scalability. And I'm gonna give you a few tips from my experience in both internal l&d and customer education to help make your departments more scalable. First and foremost, what does it mean to scale as an l&d department? For me, scalability is one of the most critical pieces to working in l&d because we want our content to be useful. We want it to be up to date. And we want it to be consumed by as many learners who feel that it resonates with them as possible. If we have lean l&d teams, which a lot of companies do, this can be a really tough challenge, right? So how do we take some easy steps, even if we have small l&d teams to make our work more scalable? Step number one, being willing to move away from the quote, My least favorite thing in the whole world? This is how we've always done it. Right? If we think about training, and we think about learning, and we think about education, we think of this very top down way of presenting information, whether it's a teacher standing lecturing in front of a classroom, in college, to you know, 100 people, I think back to my astronomy class, in college, right? There was our professor, and he stood in front of the giant lecture hall of 150 of us and talk to us about astronomy. How much cooler would that course have been if we actually like, got to go to a planetarium or got to have like interactive learning, or AR Oh, my gosh, what I wouldn't have given to have like, AR astronomy back then. Right? There are apps now that you can like, point to the sky, and they'll tell you like what the different constellations are that you're seeing. Anyway, I digress. But I mean, think about that, think about how top down learning has traditionally been. And even in the corporate realm, we have trainers, right? In a lot of places, pre COVID We're doing in person training. And that all came to a screeching halt as a result of COVID. And a lot of places, just schools included schools and corporations and higher education institutions just took what they had in person picked it up, and plopped it into a virtual setting. Now, if you're someone who has experience developing virtual training, you know that this is not a great method, right. And as we are kind of like feeling out what the world might look like, once we kind of have COVID under control, which we're still not quite there yet. But you know, as we're trying to kind of feel out, like, what's going to be the vibe, what's going to start happening, I think that you're going to see and continue to see a lot more remote education, and remote workspaces. And so this idea of in person training, while it's, you know, still a valid method, depending on what the content is, using it as your go to, is not really scalable anymore, right? Unless you have a huge budget for travel, because people aren't going to a central location anymore. People are going to be working remotely more often. And so the way we've always done it no longer becomes good enough. And that leads me to my second point. Keep up with the trends, right? Keep up with the technology in the field. This is another great way to be scalable. There are so many features and functions of different software the l&d teams can use to find efficiency, to find scalability and to find just, you know, they make your life easier, right? Project management software has come a long way time management, right if you have to track the time that it takes you to complete certain projects. You know, the collaborative project management software where you're working with your Smedes and stakeholders And you can go in and tag them in something that needs review. And just the different technology that is used to create learning experiences, right? What's coming out in AR VR XR, micro learning, you know, authoring tools, you know, to go back to moving away from this is how we've always done it. The rapid elearning authoring tools that we all know so well, are no longer rapid given technology and how far we've come with being able to create learning solutions quickly and efficiently. Think about people on Tik Tok, right. Those people many of them do not have experience editing video, doing any sort of post production on video whatsoever. But creators on Tik Tok are able to piece together these crazy engaging videos. And if you've ever scrolled through tick tock, it becomes a black hole of content that is so quick but so effective. And these are the types of tools that l&d People need to be emulating. But I think in a lot of cases are emulating and are saying, How do we turn that into our corporate learning experience? How do we turn that into our, our, you know, way that we provide information to our clients, customers, employees and beyond? Right? And so I think technology trends is one to really keep keep up with and how can we make our work as l&d professionals more efficient. But I think there are other trends too, right? As we learn more about neuroscience, and how we learn and how the brain works, things change, right. And something that I know is a struggle for a lot of people is like Case in point, the myth of learning styles, right? Very hot topic. But when I was in a graduate degree program in 2014, we were taught that learning styles were how people learned. But even just since that time, there's been numerous research that has come out that said, we don't really need to learn those ways, we might have ways that we prefer to learn, and things that we prefer, but like, we are not necessarily forced into a box that we can only learn one of three ways. And if you really think about it, if you identify as a kinesthetic learner, but you've learned something on YouTube, are you really a kinesthetic learner? If you're a visual learner, but you've listened to a podcast, and you've taken something away from that podcast, are you really a visual learner after all? And so you might be saying, well, no, I can't learn those ways. But can you going back to the top down, right? Top down learning with a college lecture, right in front of the classroom, just talking at you. If you were a visual or kinesthetic learner, that should have been an F in the class for you. And I used to identify as a visual learner, but I still somehow pass that class. So how could I have passed that class if I was a visual learner? Anyway, I digress. Again, there's a lot of information in literature. But here's the thing. As we learn more, and as technology improves, and as we learn more about the brain and how people learn, we have to we are obligated, morally and ethically, in my opinion as l&d professionals to adapt to that, right. And if we can't adapt to that, then we're not going to be able to provide scalable learning experiences, right? Because if we are only looking at three dimensions, to deliver content in, we're gonna miss all the other hybrid ways of creating cool content, all the other experimental ways of creating cool content, because we're working within the confines of our own belief system, rather than doing what we tell people to do. And that's keep learning. Right. There's also some other trends that I think it's super helpful to keep up on design trends, right? visual design, graphic design, user interface design, that we don't necessarily need to be experts in any of those fields, but as people who are designing online learning or you know, e learning or you know, infographics anything, right, I think it's good to be aware of those trends. For instance, I recently looked up, it was like book cover trends for 2022. Because I just wanted to see like, how are people making things? Look, what kinds of fonts are they using? What kinds of colors are they using, what kind of style. And then we can take those things and emulate them in our elearning, and our online courses so that we're staying super up to date, because there's nothing that is a threat to scalability more than having something that is outdated. Right. And that kind of is the point of my first two, two tips here. Moving away from this is how we've always done it and keeping up with trends is that a huge risk to scalability is something being outdated. If you have a course where the information is no longer valid, if you have an infographic that has broken links, if you have an online learning for your new employees for onboarding that looks like it was made in 1995, you're going to lose people, right? You're going to lose their engagement. And you might be wondering, why is engagement important to scalability? Well, if scalability is the amount of resources and the way that we maximize learning for the most impact for the most learners possible, if we lose our learners on day one, we are no longer a trusted source. To create those resources. Those resources will start being created outside of the l&d department, people will stop trusting us to use our LMS or our l&d team to create those learning experiences, if we prove that we cannot handle it, and a great way to lose that trust that we so desperately need to be able to be given the time and the resources to scale is to have stuff hanging out in our LMS. And in our catalog that doesn't work or is outdated, or has incorrect information, right? Which leads me to my third and final tip, make sure you are touching your content on some kind of cadence. Now, the cadence will depend on what your industry is how quickly it changes. So for instance, if you work for a SASS company, and you have quarterly product updates, you might want to check on your content quarterly to make sure that it's up to date, create content with that in mind, create content with how often things change in mind, don't promise any future features, don't add any sales pitches to the content, just present the information as is, with the knowledge that if this is something that is constantly changing, would it be better to maybe have it in a handout or something that's more easily updated, then maybe in the middle of an elearning course, or maybe it has its own elearning course. And then when you launch, create a reminder, a touch point to come back to that content, to revisit it and to make sure that it is still valid and still up to date. And that'll really help with the scalability efforts. And if you move away from how you've always done it, and you look at the new trends and technology that's coming out, and you find something that fits your organization, and you're able to set out your content and create those resources that are so critical for your team, your customers, whoever. And you are coming back to that content regularly, making sure that it stays up to date, making sure that it's modern, not just an information but also in aesthetics. Right. Then what you'll hopefully find is that you are then able to better help keep your learners engaged and then hopefully help to improve their performance as well. And what that does is then it proves your worth to your organization. So that when you become the you know, hub for learning culture at your organization, which is what we always want, right? When you become that hub when you become that go to When you become the expert, when you need additional resources to help you scale, when you say, oh, man, we really need another instructional designer to help us make all this content, or we really need a learning analytics person to help us go through all of this data that our LMS is collecting so that we can better serve our audience, you'll have the support of your organization behind you to be able to accomplish those things. Okay, so you're like, Okay, these are all great tips and suggestions. But like, what do we do if our organization doesn't want us to do any of these things? Or doesn't support us in these efforts? Right. And that's tough, right? It's really tough to work in an organization where the catchphrase is, this is how we've always done things. And I've been there, I've worked at organizations where they were so adamant that we did not change any processes. And that the idea was, if it's not broke, don't fix it, but it was broke. This is why it is so critically important to have in your instructional design process to have in your workflow. The learner analytics, right. And so this is something that you can make part of the process, right. With this in with the redevelopment schedule, you can say, alright, well, part of our process is to collect learner satisfaction, test scores, things like that. So that when you say, Hey, it is broke, and we should fix it, you have some statistical evidence behind you, right. And so you can work that into your evaluation phase of your instructional design process, or your or the feedback phase of a project management process, right. You can also work those redevelopment schedules and making sure that, okay, six months after we launch a course, we're going to come back to it, that can also be part of your workflow part of your process. As far as keeping up with trends, that one becomes a little bit more difficult. You have to have the support of your organization to be able to spend time doing professional development to be able to keep up with those trends. Now, you can always keep up with them on your own outside of work. But in my personal opinion, I feel like learning and development teams need to be willing to develop their own. My dear friend, Sara Kunis DRA shares the phrase that was shared with her that l&d teams are off often, the cobblers kids with no shoes. And that really strikes a chord with me because I've been there. I've been in organizations where I've asked to go to a conference. And my skip level said, Well, we really like for people to invest in themselves. But I was already paying for a Ph. D. program like, Hey, I'm paying 10s of 1000s of dollars for this degree. Could you just throw me 1500 for a conference, please. And I laugh about it now. But it's, it's honestly not funny, right? To work at a place where you don't feel your growth as a learning professional is supported. It can be really tough. And so if you are a learning and development manager, director, make sure that your people get time in their schedule every week to be learning, whether that's a new skill, whether that's keeping up with trends, whether that's attending a free webinar, taking a LinkedIn learning course, whether you and your team or having a book club together, as the leader of the l&d department, it is your job to make sure that your people are getting what they need. I'm putting this responsibility on you. You're the one that has to fight for them to be able to spend time on professional development. If you are the individual contributor, all you can do is keep asking, keep asking for those opportunities, be relentless. Keep asking if it's okay if you attend this webinar on Wednesday, or if it's you know, and then if You still don't get the support you need. It's something that you can do relatively easily on your own time. Right. There are so many wonderful l&d communities out there. My dear friend Tim Slade has one. And there's GL DC, TL DC. See? There's all sorts of free communities where you can go and learn. And 360 learning just launched the l&d Collective, I'm just thinking of ones off the top of my head as they kind of happen. But there are places to hang out and learn more about what's going on in the field and the trends, you know, looking at the conferences, and looking at free conferences, paid conferences, things like that, to really just make sure that you're always learning and always growing. There are so many other lnd podcasts, aside from just mine, where you can just listen on your lunch break, or, you know, listen while you're finding stock photos or videos of your, for your courses, right? And so there are ways to work it in if you really get a hard No, but I encourage you if you're looking for a new job, or if you're interviewing for an l&d job, make sure you ask those questions. That's something that I always ask is, what do the professional development opportunities look like? Who is afforded those opportunities? What kinds of opportunities would I be afforded if I worked for your organization, and then when they tell you those things, hold them to it? Right. And, you know, make sure that they know how important it is for you to be your best and to do your best. And hopefully, if you are doing good work, and you've got really engaged learners, and you start asking for these things, again, if you've shown that you provide value, hopefully it becomes a little easier for you to work these things into your process, work professional development into your work week, and then ask for additional team members and other people to help your department scale within l&d. Thanks again for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.