The Learning Ecosystem

Without a sustainable, user-friendly and easily implemented plan to capture and spread information between employees, technology is just hardware and software.

There’s good news for today’s CLOs concerned with learning ecosystems — the environments, cultures, organizations and methods that support workplace learning and performance. It’s not about the software; it’s about what they do with it.

Learning executives often inherit a technical landscape of tools and processes, and as they work to utilize them effectively, they must decide: What stays? What goes? What gets added? How to integrate?

Planning Is Paramount
As with any tool or capital appropriation, the strategy and plan should precede the investment. This principle is no different when investing in employee learning and workforce performance. Too many software implementations fail because of lack of front-line adoption, corporate culture, employee readiness and compliance. In other words, there is no effective environment or plan.

Before there can be answers to any of the aforementioned questions, it is critical to assess the current learning environment in preparation for planning by asking:

• Is there a training department?
• Is there a learning organization?
• Is it on the corporate org charts?
• Is it virtual?
• Are practices and processes supporting employee development endorsed from the top?
• Are these processes lean, efficient and integrated with business operations?

Assessing the current state will guide the decision-making processes, not necessarily the end state. An end state can and will change in today’s business environment. Investing in learning processes, environment and plans will help guide and sustain a learning ecosystem regardless of rapidly changing technologies.

Employees, not technologies, are the focus of all learning strategies. Employees are a business’s front line, one that varies from organization to organization. Some employees are behind a desk in front of a computer the entire workday. Others are moving quickly around a shop floor. But wherever they work, employees are a key consideration in the choice of learning strategies. Further, learning is of most value and relevance when it yields front-line performance improvement. One of the most precious organizational assets is knowledge. How well leaders optimize and convert knowledge to sustained employee performance is one measure of success, reflected by employees’ knowledge management capabilities, their ability to learn, support of their own performance and collaboration with experts.