The seminal report “Meet the Modern Learner” by Josh Bersin, focused on how to engage the overwhelmed, distracted, and impatient employee.
And its findings – first published in 2014 – still hold true.
Whatever age you are, it’s increasingly likely that you are a tech-savvy, eager learner, who relishes the ability to freely connect with your colleagues, managers and other experts within your organisation.
In short, we are hungry for information, but short on attention span.
The report has been a must-read for anyone involved in the strategic development of talent. Yet HR and learning professionals are still struggling to develop compelling and engaging learning programmes for the “modern learner”.
So, as we look to develop our teams to be as effective as possible, to what extent are we aligning ourselves with the modern learner?
To help answer that question and more, Andy Crotty and Chris Cummins brought together a team of senior representatives from the life sciences sector.
Here’s ten key points made by the group:
- There are five generations of people in the workplace at any one time, our approach must be flexible.
- Learners should be able to choose what to learn rather than it being imposed on them.
- We need to move away from big sessions, with lots of people.
- We need to be mindful of the attention span of the modern learner, it is short and possibly getting shorter.
- Who “owns” learning? A lot of learning is on the job and peer-to-peer based now; the role of L&D is to enable that to take place.
- We need to help people to understand the different methodologies available to them and how they learn best.
- There will always be a need for human facilitation, even if content is machine driven. The tools we have can actually improve instructor-led training.
- Modern learning is everywhere and involves everyone. It’s about creating a blended approach that delivers a good learning experience.
- Even when presented with the same information, we learn at different speeds and at different times, to suit our needs.
- The danger with the “modern learner” is that we assume that everyone is the same. We need to be focused and customised in segmenting our audience; it’s all about the individual.