Organisations across industries are slowly but surely experiencing the need for employee skilling, not only to meet the needs of the ‘new normal’ but also solve complex business challenges arising due to the disruptions caused by the pandemic and the plethora of new enterprise tools and technologies flooding the market.
With reduced manpower, constrained cash flows and decreased time to productivity, employee skilling has become the need of the hour, while cost and time-effective ‘agile’ learning solutions, such as off-the-shelf eLearning content are the table stakes in organisations of all types and sizes.
Furthermore, constant innovations in the workplace and the rising attrition rate have resulted in a constant demand for talented employees, and calling on L&D pros to be more proactive in their approach to optimise available talent and focus on capability development in order to address the skills gap.
However, the situation still remains bleak when talking about bridging skills gaps, capability and talent development and employee engagement. This is largely supplemented by our increasingly complex business environment, rising competition and the onset of ‘digital everything’. The constant disruptions, multigenerational workforce and just-in-time learning needs are driving the need for a more proactive and innovative approach to skilling, one that is not only impactful today but also scalable in the future.
While data from LinkedIn’s ‘Future of Talent’ report clearly suggests that 95 per cent of the companies in India have already dedicated L&D programmes to help employees learn new skills and prepare for the future, there is still a case to be made for learning relevancy, effectiveness and the business impact that employee training programmes are expected to drive. This is where content curation stands to offer maximum benefits.
As L&D and HR teams start offering more learning opportunities to their employees, they need to be mindful of several factors that can impede the employees’ learning experiences, such as content overload, irrelevant course titles, learning flexibility, device compatibility as well as personalisation. Bombarding employees with too much learning that they find little value for is bound to exhaust employees, leading to disengagement with the content, and eventually resulting in a loss of trust, which is never a good sign. Instead, L&D stands to gain more from focusing on maintaining learning relevancy through courses that deliver the right learning at the right time. Let’s find out how.
What is content curation?
Bersin by Deloitte states –‘Content curation is related to identifying the most relevant information for a specific group of target audience and contextualising and organising it before presenting it to them.’
In essence, curation of learning content is the best and most effective way to ensure that L&D programmes are impactful and drive the desired business results through employee skilling.
In this age of digitalisation, remote and hybrid work environments, content curation helps learners cut through the noise and get access to only the best and most relevant courses, leading to a more time-optimised and efficient learning experience that sticks.
Learn how Plethora’s curated content solutions and a consultative approach can help you maximise the impact of your L&D programmes
Here are a few benefits of curated learning content done right:
• Leadership development
McKinsey states that businesses thatinvested in leadership development saw expected returns. Today, it is also evident that businesses with effective leadership pipelines outperform twice as much on the top line and talent retention. Effective leadership development remains a key benefit of content curation as the content can be mapped to particular learning needs as well as to different levels of competencies, targeted learning for high-potential employees (HIPOs) and focused smart groups.
• Improved engagement and motivation
While McKinsey research states that continuous learning indirectly translates to happiness, a more WIIFM-led approach means employees (in addition to skills) stand to gain the confidence and motivation they need, to apply the skills they have learned. Employees are most likely to project confidence and be motivated by newer challenges at work, when they are engaged and provided with the skills to develop in their role.This is only possible when the learning content matches the learning needs aka relevancy.
• Fostering a value-based employee culture
Content curation, complemented with tools such asa competency matrix, anchored learning and contexualised learning, helps businesses onboard and train employees in their values and mission, and gives them all the ammo they need to perform in their role. Millennials, especially, are more attracted towards companies that have a values-based culture and those that are invested in the development of their employees.
Future of Learning in the Wake of Covid report by Deloitte looks at understanding mind-set shifts in the L&D functions of Indian organisations. It points out that 80 per cent leaders are moving away from ‘content development’ and towards ‘content curation’.
Moreover, curated content enables learners to imbibe the learning that is most relevant and personalised to them. Not to mention that in today’s work environment, personalisation and customisation are note worthy trends.
Takeaway
It’s clear now that to build a strong learning culture and achieve a competent and future-ready workforce, L&D must move away from traditional one-size-fits-all solutions to a more curated and personalised approach that promises to be a game changer for your L&D strategy.
The author, Amit Gautam is the Founder & CEO of UpsideLMS and Plethora. He is a learning technology enthusiast and a passionate leader. An IIM and NIT alumnus, Gautam is the key idea generator for UpsideLMS & Plethora’s product teams, a Sales and Marketing orchestrator, a learning technology solutions consultant for clients and prospects, and a mentor for all the function heads at his company.
