'How do you think the current global situation will change L&D for good (or for bad)?'

I believe L&D is one of the heroes of this crisis. Not only is the appetite for learning voracious, but companies are desperate to train, enable, and adjust people’s work and employment situations at light speed. The marketplace of digital learning tools and providers has stepped up in a myriad of ways.

I’ve talked with companies who have rapidly deployed work-at-home programs, wellbeing and mental health programs, programs to build positive thinking and alignment, and lots of COVID-19 response and safety programs. I believe L&D is one of the most important disciplines in this crisis, and this time builds on years of investment and innovation in the L&D Profession and L&D industry.

Never has there been a time in our industry where L&D has had to rapidly shift its priorities and efforts to support the business under a crisis. Being in the face-to-face event industry, the phrase ‘pivot to virtual’ not only means finding ways to boost remote working capabilities, but temporarily shifting our whole business model to designing and delivering virtual events. The need for L&D to be on the front lines, finding ways to leverage existing digital learning capabilities in an agile way has never been greater. The crisis is also pushing L&D to re-think and reframe its true value and relevance to the business. It makes us ask 'why do we do what we do?’

It also makes us question our value proposition. If we can’t be of support now, when will we ever be? Now more than ever, we are learning the need to be there at the ‘point of need;’ delivering the right resources, curating content at speed, being part of collaborative teams and business unit efforts to do what must be done to keep the business moving forward. This is what counts. Shouldn’t it always be like that?

While many companies have shifted to working from home due to the current pandemic, my concern is that not all remote works are created equal. Some employers have a culture of mistrust and they take this as an opportunity to tighten control and enhance digital monitoring of their staff (e.g. mandatory video check in and out each day, daily updates on Zoom calls, data tracking of productivity, recording of time spend on various company tech platforms).

Moving forward, my hope is that L&D will use this as an opportunity to support learning and performance better by leveraging the data we generate, not as a surveillance tool but rather to gain insights to support the staff in upskilling and retraining. Collectively, we need to take an active role in heightening awareness, and to provide oversights of data tracking and usage.

How L&D will change as a result of the global situation is for us to decide. This crisis has created an environment that we can either view as terrifying or thrilling. There’s no denying it’s been a challenging and painful opportunity that’s stretched us by highlighting both our deficiencies and strengths. However, where we go from here completely depends on what we do with what we’ve learned.

If we choose to ignore it, I see it going two ways. At best, we remain a luxury to our organizations that simply executes on the orders given as long as our organizations have budget and mindshare to support us. At worst, we’re seen as a nuisance that failed to deliver when our businesses needed us most, damaging any perceived value that existed for years to come.

That said, I’m optimistic if we embrace the reality that learning is not about us but a function designed to equip, empower, and prepare employees to deliver on the needs of our business and pursue that relentlessly, we are uniquely positioned to be elevated to a position of value we’ve never seen before. So, the question is, will we embrace the opportunity, get over ourselves and out of our own way, and rise to the challenge? That’s for us to decide.

Educating the educators
Mark Twain famously said that he didn't want school to interfere with his education. The L&D community shares Twain's cynicism: schools and Universities don't prepare graduates to enter the world of work equipped with the right skills and attitude. This global pandemic has hit (higher) education hard: over half of billion students can't attend classes. As a result, universities in the UK alone face over £2.5b in tuition fee loss. In this context, the L&D community will have to step up and be part of the solution, by partnering with educators in a few areas:

• update the curriculum and make it more skill based, especially around critical digital and life skills
• transfer valuable online learning design and delivery knowledge
• personalize teaching methods by leveraging technology and data science

The L&D community will come together and work to "fix" the education issue.

For L&D to evolve, it’s not the location of teams that matters. It’s our mindset.

Lockdown is unlikely to eradicate the troublesome hangovers of outdated thinking:

• Digital is cheaper and inferior to F2F
• People are captive learners ready to be taught
• Success can be measured by completion

Whilst these myths persist, can the industry move forwards?

And there is another powerful driver of inertia: sunk cost fallacy. The volume of lifelong career facilitators who will find it hard to let go of their experience and effort makes me believe the norm will return fairly quickly.

Audiences must vote with their feet to force change. But that would require a seismic culture shift. The wider question I might ask: “how will the current situation change our work environment?” Otherwise, humanity’s gravitation toward hierarchy means reverting to normal could be an accidental outcome of these unprecedented times.

I think L&D will be under greater scrutiny in the months to come because our stock-in-trade, classroom training, will still be unavailable as social distancing is likely to last for some time yet. That leaves many L&D teams with only platforms and content that have been largely resisted or ignored by employees.

This should be the start of a new dawn for L&D where we spend more time understanding real problems (and there will be plenty of them) rather than seeking shiny new solutions.

Those who pivot towards Performance Consulting, data-driven decision-making, experimentation and more agile solutions, will prove their worth and are more likely to contribute to what their organisation will be trying to achieve under extremely testing circumstances.

Those waiting for things to ‘get back to normal’ and run courses supplemented by e-learning and generic content will struggle - both to convince their employers and to make any difference at all.

We re-discovered that the need is not only the mother of inventions but also of learning: without a compelling and strong need, humans lack the necessary focus to face the (positive) struggle of learning and create new paths and patterns in their brains. This inspired us to give more value to learning transfer, to shaping learning around real gaps and to forecasting learning needs. But that’s the tradition of learning that comes back. The new thing is how fast we had to unlearn everything: relationship rules, communication tools, dynamics, power equations… all was disrupted in a night. And this “unlearning” ability is the future: we need space for experimentation, innovation and doing things better. So let’s unlearn!

In the last few months we have seen the dramatic changes companies are going through — not only with how people learn for work, but fundamentally how people work. Remote working is going to become the new normal, and as people have been forced to adapt to these changes, companies and employees have realized that they don’t have to be in the office to be productive — or to be learning new skills. L&D needs to shift its focus to helping people build skills, and employees need to showcase their transferable skills with the goal of employability.

Many companies are already creating internal career marketplaces focusing on employee skills. The crisis has required some companies to shift hundreds, if not thousands, of internal employees to completely different jobs in a very short period of time. Companies are doing that by understanding what skills people have and how they can match those skills with what the company needs in a very agile and dynamic way.

All of this is good news for learning and development for the future. Although this global disruption has been difficult, it has demonstrated how the workforce and workplace of the future can function effectively with skills at the core.

I don’t think L&D will change just because of COVID-19. Yes, we are already seeing a mass transition to virtual learning and this trend will probably continue for some time. However, by itself, digital delivery is just a surface-level tweak.

COVID-19 has undeniably given L&D its time in the limelight. Now more than ever there are plenty of opportunities both to support organisations and to make a difference for individual employees. However, unless L&D take this chance to deliberately rethink their purpose and ways of operating in organisations (context over content; performance over tests; business goals over discrete learning requirements), I believe it will go back to business as usual, only with more digital learning on offer.

COVID-19 and the resulting devastating circumstances are clearly no welcome thing. However, it has given us the chance to focus on what really matters. Moreover, it’s often in a challenge that valuable traits are developed. It’s the pressure that transforms and elevates diamonds above their chemical counterparts; soft lead pencils.

To that end, COVID-19 should trigger a long-overdue reflection in organisational learning. For many, the treadmill of running face-to-face courses has been rudely disrupted by enforced remote working. There are four welcome trends emerging from those succeeding in facilitating effective organisational learning during lockdown: Prioritize, digitize, socialize and humanize!

 #Prioritize … the attention must be on what is genuinely needed for the organisation to survive and thrive. #Digitize … COVID-19 highlights that effective digital solutions now underpin successful organisations. #Socialize … social connectivity is a key to effective lockdown working; effective remote relationships are crucial. #Humanize … much is said of a move to “learning in the flow of work”; COVID-19 has thrust us into “learning in the flow of LIFE”. Personal lockdown-working circumstances are unique and challenging; one size can’t fit all. It never has!

Adoption of new practices in organisational learning and the shift away from the classroom have been too slow.  Barriers to adoption of new practices have dropped.  There is potential for a massive shift right now - well beyond simply replacing face-to-face classroom sessions with online sessions. As a minimum business continuity now demands options for critical learning in both physical and virtual environments.  

The human aspects of digital transformation are receiving more focus.  The shift in leadership and working practices will create greater empowerment and trust in many organisations. This creates more positive conditions for learning cultures.  If learning professionals can shift their mindset and practices far enough we could emerge with more adaptive workforces and organisations.  Now is the time to move forward with courage and conviction.

Organisational implications: Given that most organisations doubled down on learning during the lock-down, narratives around building organisational capability, capability frameworks and the various tenets of leveraging live virtual classrooms, digital learning, content libraries became mainstream.  It also became clear that there’s only so much you can do to create structured learning experiences and pathways. The need to think gamification, simulation-based events, and virtual tournaments are all options on the table. Engagement, mental health, wellness, and motivation will become key drivers while learning will remain table stakes. The narrative of empathy–engagement–education will continue in the short to mid-term. Employee experience will also emerge as the new currency of learning.

L&D for L&D: The need for L&D to eat its own dog food will also accelerate and teams will take the time to pause, reflect, retrain and refresh. Building the capability of learning teams across tenets of digital learning i.e. virtual facilitation, content curation, community management, experience design are all options on the table. There is an eager partner / vendor community out there that will support clients. Leveraging partners, providers, global experts, open courses to build L&D team capability will be smart investments in the near term.