We may be confusing the market, the learners, and ourselves.

There was a time—not that long ago—in which I was in the Training Department. And the call to action was clear: Train your people so they know how do their jobs well. Training might have consisted of onboarding training, role-based training, and even training on the job. Every large organizational initiative included training so that people were prepared for what they had to perform in their roles. We designed classroom training, online training, and performance support documentation, such as job aids, digital guides, and checklists. We had roles that included instructional designer, technical writer, and facilitator.

Now, as HR departments become Talent Management teams and managers become people leaders, the Training Department is now Learning and Development (L&D). Our call to action is more holistic, but also less clear. We cannot create learning—that is personal to the learner. But, since “training” sounds so 2002, our training programs are called “learning experiences.” ILT with some pre-work is called “blended learning.” Adding some resources to a course is called “curation.” A short video or animation is labeled “microlearning.” Performance support is now called “continuous, on-demand learning.” Also, with this change, the names of the roles have changed. Are you an instructional designer? Or learning experience designer? And fundamentally, what’s the difference?

The names that we are creating also generate confusion for our people in L&D and for employees at large. We may be unknowingly disenfranchising those who design classroom training and eLearning because we are labeling those methods as “traditional.” However, if there is a time to use the classroom, keeping the human element to encourage learning, it’s now!

While I’m not supporting the idea that we have to use the same terms as in the past, I am advocating that we clarify and say what we mean and mean what we say. Stop getting lost in buzzwords and start applying. You want learner experience? Great—practice the principles of user-experience design methodologies to support learning in context. You want design thinking or human-centered design? Great—start with your humans (your audience) before your perceived problem.

These new terms can be extremely liberating, but it’s not worthwhile to just say them. Practice what you preach. Apply them with effective training methods, and when you do, you’ll find that performance support with curated content provided a great learner experience based on work from a design-thinking initiative. Or, more simply, an online checklist helped get the job done.

About the Authors

Britney Cole

Britney is a learning leader with experience in organization development, human performance, and corporate learning and has worked remotely, managing virtual teams for more than a decade. Britney lives in Minnesota with her husband and three small children (ages 5, 7 and 8) where she keeps warm with plenty of blankets and cozy hats. She likes to talk, so you might see her at learning conferences as a speaker. Britney has provided consulting for clients in the financial services, pharmaceutical, steel, chemical, media, technology, retail, manufacturing, and aerospace industries. She forms lasting partnerships with her clients helping them with learning design and architecture, content development, leadership and professional development, performance consulting, technology implementation, and change management. Most recently, she is helping pioneer new experiential learning methods and defining learning 3.0 taxonomy.

Spoiler alert: Not really.

Engagement is an individualized equation, reflecting an employee’s personal relationship with work. There will never be one set of concepts or actions that can solve every equation. And as we know from our research and own experience as employees, a host of factors can influence someone’s engagement at work. Some are within a person’s control; many are not.

The good news: You can provide learning experiences that combine the education, insights, and tools employees need to take greater control of their engagement. Here’s what those experiences need to include:

Definitions Everyone Can Understand

If you measure engagement regularly, your organization may track and talk about data. What is our engagement “score”? What are the “drivers” of engagement for the enterprise or department? Those metrics and discussions are important for shaping action, but more often than not, individual employees wonder, “What does this have to do with me?”

In our work with clients, we talk about how great days at work feel. On great days, people give as much as the organization needs, and they get whatever it is that they want from a job (meaning, impact, camaraderie, recognition, etc.). It is easy for people to dissect what made their days great and understand how engagement is a personalized blend of maximum contribution and maximum satisfaction. This helps people to keep their eye on the prize: their engagement.

It’s also important to define roles and responsibilities. Employees may look to managers and executives to do something about their engagement—a reaction, perhaps, to well-intentioned but misguided top-down action plans after surveys. So, any attempt to just flip accountability to employees to manage their own engagement might be met with resistance if you aren’t clear on how individuals’ responsibilities complement what managers and senior leaders should be doing.

Exercises that Provide Individualized Insights

Engagement equations look different, depending on employees’ personal values, career aspirations, work-life situation, interests, and talents. Those equations are also shaped by the requirements and conditions of employees’ specific departments and jobs. Therefore, people need to be clear on what they want from work as well as what they need to deliver. Free lunches, the most inspiring leaders, or the most meaningful mission won’t make up for a bad job fit and ambiguous goals.

You need to give employees the tools to drive personal reflection because many won’t do it on their own. And if they don’t know what’s important to them, they won’t find “it” in their current role, another department, or in the company down the street. (Yes, I did just imply they may be doomed to perpetual disengagement.)

An Environment that Encourages Peer Consulting and Shared Accountability

A shared understanding of engagement and the personal insights described above can be acquired effectively through self-directed learning and tools. It’s often hard, however, for people to turn insights into action on their own. That’s where strategy sessions and peer consulting come into play. Although everyone has a unique engagement equation, peer consulting provides a sounding board for ideas, feedback on plans, and additional insights.

Coming together, whether in person or virtually, also creates a sense of community and opportunities for people to be inspired by their peers, hold each other accountable, and dare to take risks to increase their contribution and satisfaction.

Momentum

Your team’s bandwidth and your organization’s culture may shape your options for keeping engagement on everyone’s radar. Can you leverage technology to push regular, inspiring reminders to reflect, plan, and act? Will people participate in chat rooms or coaching circles? Does your team have the time to curate “my great day at work” blog posts?

And what is the role of the manager? That’s fodder for another blog post. Can you train managers to “engage” their people? Spoiler Alert: Not really. Just as no one can “motivate” someone. You can, however, equip managers with the ability to create an environment that fuels engagement and the coaching skills necessary to help their people solve those very personal engagement equations.

About the Authors

Mary Ann Masarech

Mary Ann Masarech spent the first third of her career writing, designing, and marketing skills training for top-notch consulting firms. She acquired a broad Mary Ann is the Lead Consultant for GP Strategies’ Engagement Practice. In this role, she leverages her extensive experience with instructional design and client experience to create practical tools and strategies that clients apply worldwide to create successful businesses and thriving workplaces. She is also co-author of The Engagement Equation: Leadership Strategies for an Inspired Workforce (Wiley, Oct 2012), and a founding member of the Norma Pfriem Urban Outreach Initiatives, a not-for-profit that addresses food insecurity and education for underserved adults and children. Mary Ann is a graduate of Wesleyan University. 

By GP Strategies

We are wired as human beings to connect and learn through others and an approach that eliminates this connection eliminates the most powerful aspect of leadership development. But there are ways to reach across the technology and support human connection. It takes a thoughtful approach that’s not only learner centric and leader centric – it’s human centric. Learn how Leadership Essentials can help you embrace the convenience of digital while not losing sight of the human. Our effective elearning solutions cover 8 topics over several weeks to help your leaders be the best they can be.https://www.youtube.com/embed/hApQkKiMR7Q

About the Authors

Leah Clark

Leah Clark is the Leadership Practice Lead at GP Strategies, as well as an author and the founder of LeaderConnect. With over 28 years of experience in her field, Leah brings a unique perspective on the mindsets and skillset that are critical to leadership success to her coaching and consulting. Her clients benefit from her collaborative approach to crafting a well-connected and thoughtful leadership development strategy. Leah holds a Master of Arts; Organizational Psychology, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts; English and Sociology, Boston College.

By Erica Tetuan , Principal Change Consultant

At work, change is an expected and necessary constant. The most successful organizations are those that can adapt and change faster than their competitors and emerging industry disruptors. Those that fail to grow and adapt are not likely to survive. Leaders are drivers of change. For some of those changes you may be the innovator and designer of the change and for others there is little or no control over the design. All changes, regardless of how they are initiated, trigger an emotional response. We live in a time when the volume, velocity, and complexity of change are unprecedented; it can feel like rafting down a perpetual whitewater river. How do we navigate the rapids?

Navigating Change

The way you respond to a change can have either a positive or negative impact on your ability to adapt to the change. Your goal is to find a path to navigate the rapid waters and build resilience so you are best able to adapt. For changes in which you have no direct control, taking on a growth mindset by approaching changes from a point of inquiry and learning allows you to gain much-needed certainty about the future state. Start by seeking answers to the following questions:

1. What exactly is the change?
2. Why is the change happening?
3. Why is the change happening now?
4. What would happen if the change didn’t happen (what is the risk of not changing)?
5. What specifically is changing (what does the change mean to me)?

The answers to these questions allow you to take positive next steps to successfully adapt to the change. Once you understand the above, you will know how you need to work differently if you need to learn how to use new systems or tools. You will also understand new reporting structures as a result of the change; determine if your job role has changed; and learn how to interact with new processes, products, or services. With this information, you will be in a position to make informed decisions and take actions that will have a positive impact on your success with the change. For example, you could build better relationships with appropriate stakeholders and attain the new knowledge and skills you need to be effective in the new way. Equipping yourself with the appropriate information helps you navigate the ins and outs of the change and lead your team confidently.

Benefits of Resilience

Developing resilience will help you manage the constant bumps and turns that arise as a result of the change. A simple way to define resilience is forward movement. It’s about bouncing back quickly from the emotional and psychological challenges that come along with a change so that you can keep taking steps toward positive outcomes. Being resilient is a critical skill that will help you regenerate momentum when feeling stuck and move through change with self-assurance. It is also a core feature of demonstrating an agile mindset, increasing your ability to adapt and respond rapidly. As a leader, you not only need to understand and navigate the change yourself, but also position your team for success. Building your resilience first allows you to reset quickly and reduce the interruptions to accomplishing work. Doing so creates ease and stability for your team. It frees up your mental energy to better support them through the change process while you simultaneously model the behaviors you’d like them to exhibit.

About the Authors

Erica Tetuan

Erica’s focus in helping leaders realize change in their organization is to be as preventive as possible, which means practicing change management with a lens of avoiding resistance from the start. This focus relies on the ability to be predictive and see around corners that others may be blind to. Erica also discusses having difficult conversations, being provocative when boundaries need to be pushed, and asking people to pause and think about enabling the organization to talk about uncomfortable things that may prevent them from achieving their goals. Erica has 20 years of experience in influencing stakeholders and working collaboratively to motivate diverse groups of people. She has developed change management methodologies, built internal change management practices, and led strategic organizational transformations. She has an MS in Organizational Development and Knowledge Management from George Mason University and a BA in Social Science from Nazareth College of Rochester.

For too long, training has been synonymous with tedious WBT sessions that learners click through and forget. They won’t retain much about how to file an expense report or sell that new widget—and they’re certainly not going to take the course again when they need the information.

Let’s admit it—For years, L&D professionals been spared the selective pressures that apply to other products. We push mandatory training when our client orders it, and learners comply or suffer the consequences. We haven’t had to think about user experience (UX), because we’ve had a captive audience: our own employees, or our client’s.

How can we make the transition to the pull model of learning by designing for customers instead of captives? To start, we can show respect for our learners’ time and professionalism. Competent employees are not slackers who want to get away with poor performance; they want to perform well. When they need support, they look for solutions they can access from the sales floor, the phones, or the conference room. And they’re getting them—they’re just not getting them from us.

The sources learners are pulling vary by industry and job role, but most share four key features:

Accessibility—We know from Gotfredson and Mosher that learners expect to find what they need within two clicks or 10 seconds. The resources they’re using aren’t gated behind an LMS, or even a login. They’re out there for anyone and everyone to find, use, add to, and comment upon.

Indexability—If it’s hard to find, it might as well not exist. Learners want to see information organized in clear hierarchies, with branches showing related topics. Think about how easy it is to jump from one result to the next on Wikipedia or find a panoply of related items to buy on Amazon.

Palatability—Just like our favorite snacks, the resources that learners access are easy—even fun—to consume. Job hacks, vlogs, and TL;DR summaries are created with a time-challenged audience in mind. Learners aren’t forced to sit—or scroll—through content that doesn’t appeal or apply to them.

Informality—Learners don’t care whether sources have been vetted by Marketing or Legal; they want answers in plain language—or images. The message doesn’t need to be on brand or the presenter camera ready.

If learners like these free resources so much, why should we create on-the-job learning solutions at all? Should we just give up and let them Google?

Not at all—these four features can be pitfalls as well as assets. Just because content is accessible, fun, and easy to find doesn’t mean that it’s a reliable source of information. If your client uses a branded set of procedures or shares proprietary information to prepare salespeople for product launches, their employees won’t find the information they need by Googling.

What we can do is give learners more of what they want. They’ve already demonstrated their appetite for resources they can pull at their moments of need. L&D would be missing a huge opportunity if we didn’t learn to play in the pull learning space—and part of that opportunity means helping our clients learn to do the same.

Let’s commit to push back on push learning. Save it for high-stakes topics, such as legal, financial, and ethical compliance. Help clients move performance supports out of the LMS and into a content aggregator learners can use on their phones or laptops. Create bite-sized job supports, and label them clearly, so learners don’t have to hunt for what they need. And offer resources in multiple formats—podcast, PDF, video—so that learners can choose the most palatable and practical option. Above all, poach liberally: Innovations in the content and the services learners consume in their spare time are ripe for adoption by L&D.

About the Authors

Tiffany Vojnovski

The idea that school could be different first came to me—as did most risky ideas—through fiction, specifically Notes on the Hauter Experiment, a futuristic novel set in an automated boarding school. Screens replaced teachers, and flashing lights cued students to move to their next class. Those who disobeyed were punished with grating alarms and foul odors. Whether the author, Bernice Grohskopf, had a background in instructional design or simply excelled at reimagining the boarding-school bildungsroman, one thing was clear: school was ripe for an LX intervention. I didn’t revisit the idea until I joined the New York City Teaching Fellows program; but this time, I was the teacher instead of the reader. Via a fast track to certification, I was charged with teaching in one of the highest-needs schools in the country. My challenge was to boost students’ achievement by several grade levels while adding rigor and interest to the high-school English curriculum. After a lot of trial, error, and reflection, I learned how to help my students succeed. However, I never felt comfortable enforcing the poorly thought-out procedures and meaningless paperwork our school leadership imposed upon students. I believed in the value of knowledge, and to organizations devoted to learning and exploration. What I wasn’t sure I believed in were the virtues of going through the system in a single “right” way. If anything positive came out of my complicity with the school’s—and district’s—lamentable LX, it was the empathy I developed for my students. If their job was to learn and follow the rules, my job was to make it as easy as possible for them to do so. Any procedure that caused confusion about what to do when they entered class, where to find learning resources, or how to turn in completed work needed to be redesigned. When students arrived in a classroom designed for professional learning, they acted—surprise!—like professional learners. My commitment to LX has been the link between my teaching and instructional design practices. Rather than despair that learners aren’t who we want them to be—more literate, more professional, more successful in whatever way we value—we should design learning tools that make these ends accessible. Learners themselves can teach us how: thanks to the design thinking model, we have a series of steps for engaging learners in empathy interviews and quickly prototyping solutions that might help them. It’s easy to view the learner as a faceless cipher sitting at the other end of an eLearning module. However, once you meet someone face to face, you can’t help but care about their experience. Not every learner is skilled in metacognition or speaks the language of academia, but all learners can tell us, in their own idiom, about the obstacles and fears that trouble them—and the interventions that would improve their lives. Learning is more than a system of rewards, punishments, and behavioral cues meted out by machines. My commitment is to maintain an open mind and to treat every learner as a sympathetic character.

Safety at work has been the hallmark of organizational development for well over two hundred years. From the rise of the labor movement during the industrial revolution to the inception of regulations addressing chemical safety, keeping workers away from harm while performing their jobs has been a pressing need.

But what about psychological safety at work? What is the responsibility of the organization to provide an environment where their employees can be open and vulnerable without fear of embarrassment or, worse, retribution? Psychological safety is an environment in which people are comfortable being and expressing themselves. When personnel trust others, they feel psychologically safe enough to take the risk associated with sharing ideas.

In organizations that put people first, psychological safety is not only the right thing to do, it can also have meaningful consequences on organizational outcomes. When employees feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to contribute their ideas and support others. When they contribute ideas that are new and innovative, even if those ideas are not implemented, they raise the bar for team performance. It also means they feel comfortable speaking up about problems or risks without fear of retribution. The payoff for the organization can be great because individuals are able to safely share both problems that need to be addressed and opportunities for creativity and growth.

Leaders play a big role in creating an environment of psychological safety. The building blocks of this effort draw upon two critical mindsets: inclusivity and growth. When leaders embrace these mindsets, they lay the foundation for an environment in which psychological safety is possible.

When a leader adopts an inclusive mindset, they embrace the thoughts and opinions of all members of the team. It’s about more than permitting differences; it’s about actively seeking them as a way to spur conversation and innovation. An inclusive leader recognizes that the best ideas don’t necessarily come from the same people and ensures that all voices on their team are heard.

A leader with an inclusive mindset might be operating on two levels during a team meeting. At the tactical level, they want the meeting to run smoothly and cover important topics. At the psychological level, the leader needs to monitor the group dynamics and be mindful of the participation of each team member. A groundbreaking study by Google showed that teams in which all members spoke an equal amount during their time together enhanced the presence of psychological safety.

When a leader adopts a growth mindset, they create an environment where all ideas, even those that might not seem worth pursuing, are allowable. Leaders with a growth mindset see failures or setbacks as opportunities to learn and grow. They understand that criticism of ideas, whether explicit or implicit, is one of the fastest ways to stifle contributions. When a leader gives space to ideas that might seem silly, nontraditional, or decidedly against the group consensus, they provide fertile ground for growth.

A leader with a growth mindset encourages all ideas to be surfaced, values them and the individual who contributes them, and considers the ideas equally valuable even if they are not ultimately implemented. To make this happen, leaders need to operate on another level. As a new idea surfaces, they need to not only moderate their own reaction, but also be mindful of what the team members are feeling as others respond to their ideas. In short, leaders need to tap into the skills of emotional intelligence; to be aware of, control, and express their emotions; and to handle interpersonal relationships empathetically. When leaders apply these skills, they send the message that team members don’t need to be like everyone else, and they don’t need to be perfect to contribute to the team.

Improving psychological safety at work has been brought to the forefront of many organizations, and it’s likely interest in it will grow—and for good reason. When organizations build teams in which individuals feel comfortable contributing all that they can without hesitation, it’s a situation where everyone benefits. Full contribution, combined with maximum personal satisfaction, is the definition of an engaged workforce.

About the Authors

Leah Clark

Leah Clark is the Leadership Practice Lead at GP Strategies, as well as an author and the founder of LeaderConnect. With over 28 years of experience in her field, Leah brings a unique perspective on the mindsets and skillset that are critical to leadership success to her coaching and consulting. Her clients benefit from her collaborative approach to crafting a well-connected and thoughtful leadership development strategy. Leah holds a Master of Arts; Organizational Psychology, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts; English and Sociology, Boston College.

At the heart of leadership development is the relationship between the leader and the individuals and teams being led. Because of this, it’s critical for leadership development to include both the actions a leader needs to take to be competent and direction on how to form connections with others. This ability to connect with others distinguishes great leaders from those who are merely good and differentiates leaders who get things done from those who drive high performance.

But the stakes are high when it comes to “testing out” skills of human connection. If we miss the mark in deploying a hard skill, the downside can be very real, such as not hitting a sales goals, noncompliance with regulations, or the need to perform rework. Without the skills of human connection and human interaction, the results can be profound. Damaged relationships, lack of trust, lost motivation – interpersonal gaffes are trickier to bounce back from and reverberate through relationships.

The need to improve skills of connection is a core outcome of leadership development. Providing new leaders and managers with an opportunity, a safe space, to practice their leadership development skills with trusted colleagues and leadership experts is critical.

Organizations can help ensure their leaders achieve this success by advocating and embracing leadership development. But what happens when organizations want to reach hundreds, if not thousands, of leaders in a way that is innovative, accessible, scalable, and relevant? With the explosion of learning technologies, opportunities abound to reach new generations of leaders with an incredible range of digitally enabled options that learning technology expertise can support. But how do you maintain a focus on human connection when there is technology between them?

Creating a Human Centric Development Experience

The good news is that there are ways to take advantage of all that technology has to offer while preserving human connection. It’s more than leader and learner centric – it’s human centric.

Developed by the leadership division of GP Strategies, BlessingWhite’s new digitally enabled frontline leader journey, harnesses the technology that gives learners access to range of interactive options for learning that they can access anywhere, any time, and in any way they prefer. What’s more, we’ve found creative and engaging ways to keep the connection among the learners alive and well. Here’s how:

• Community – By creating a sense of community among learners, connection is enhanced. Sharing aspects of a learner’s personal life and insight on where they want to grow and give as an individual invites a sense of vulnerability elemental to good leadership. When we see that our colleagues share a favorite sport, parenting struggles, or a desire to get better at communication, we begin to see similarities that create stronger bonds.
• Collaboration – By creating an environment where collaboration is encouraged, so too do we encourage connection. Asking learners to hear their colleagues’ ideas and then lend their advice and support sends the message that we are not in this quest for self-development alone. Just as a leader needs the support of their team and others across the organization, learners need the opportunity to ask for, and provide, assistance to others.
• Coaching – By providing the support of a leadership coach to act as a trusted guide, leaders have a go-to person who can help them illuminate what’s working well and what they might need to change as they test new skills. Like a facilitator in the front of an instructor-led session or a mentor within an organization, a team member who demonstrates strong leadership behaviors helps the leader to see highly interpersonal skills in action.

We are wired as human beings to connect and learn through others; foregoing this association eliminates the most powerful aspect of leadership development: connection. Creating community, encouraging collaboration, and applying coaching techniques are methods that reach across the technology and support human connection.

About the Authors

Leah Clark

Leah Clark is the Leadership Practice Lead at GP Strategies, as well as an author and the founder of LeaderConnect. With over 28 years of experience in her field, Leah brings a unique perspective on the mindsets and skillset that are critical to leadership success to her coaching and consulting. Her clients benefit from her collaborative approach to crafting a well-connected and thoughtful leadership development strategy. Leah holds a Master of Arts; Organizational Psychology, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts; English and Sociology, Boston College.

For some organizations, measuring employee opinion and sentiment via a survey (whether it be related to engagement, culture, experience, etc.) is a part of typical business practices. Creating a blueprint for how to implement the measurement strategy before, during, and after the survey is a process that comes as naturally as breathing. Other organizations struggle more with this process either due to inexperience or, more likely, the inability to develop a measurement strategy that aligns with their culture.

While surveying your workforce is essential, it is important to keep in mind that when it comes to measurement, one size rarely fits all. Rather than trying to follow abstract best practices, the measurement strategy needs to resonate in the context of your organization’s culture and priorities. Consider the following as you articulate your survey strategy:

• Timing. This is about creating your survey calendar. Are you an annual-census survey type of organization? Perhaps biannual with pulse surveys in between? Maybe you want quarterly pulses all year long. To decide what rhythm is appropriate, think about your decision-making process and the organization’s ability to act and implement change based on survey results. There is no right or wrong answer to how often you collect employee opinion information, but whatever your timeline, the most important thing is to stick with it, regardless of what may be happening in your organization and the challenges you face.
• Supporting. To ensure a response rate that provides a representative sample of your population, a robust communication strategy during the survey’s live period should be in place. Understanding the most frequently used communication platforms available in the organization, such as email, intranet video, newsletters, all-hands meetings, and social networking sites, ensures that your messaging meets employees where they are. Also, consider your organizational structure and who you need to get involved. Messaging from the executive leadership team and HR suffices in organizations with centralized decision-making processes, but highly decentralized organizations need to involve leaders of business units and departments in order to encourage participation.
• Cascading. When the survey closes, there should be a strategic plan for the information you have collected and, most importantly, who in your manager and leadership team should have access to the data. You may choose to provide only the executive team with the survey results, involve middle managers, or cascade all the way down to frontline managers. Consider how much (or little) your organization values information sharing and transparency as well as the comfort level of the leadership team when determining the appropriate distribution of survey results. Regardless of who you share the information with, don’t forget that it’s only those populations that can be expected to act on results. You can’t hold leaders accountable for data they did not see.
• Taking action. Soliciting employee opinion should not be an academic exercise intended to enlighten you on what it feels like to work in your organization. Rather, use the data to gain insights on how to maintain what your organization does well and improve what isn’t working. While taking action is a prerequisite for surveying your employee population, the action you take and how you choose to do so may vary. Action can’t be driven by survey data alone; there is no magic number that indicates what you need to focus on. Rather, reviewing the data in light of your organization’s values and strategic priorities will help you determine where to focus. You will also need to consider how you take action—Will there be one organization-wide approach and focus to act on, or will leaders have the latitude to implement actions that address local results? Part of the how is determined by the cascade you choose.

Considering these elements as you are determining your measurement strategy ensures that your approach to the employee survey resonates with your organization’s culture.

About the Authors

Colleen Casey

When I was about 8 years old, I made the obligatory pilgrimage of every born and bred New Jersey native to the Thomas Edison museum. The other children and I pummeled our patient tour guide with innumerable questions (mostly pertaining to whether or not Mr. Edison had died on the premises). Upon learning that Mr. Edison had not received much in the way of a formal education, I inquired “But how was he so smart if he never went to school?!” The simple and astute response of the guide – “He asked a lot of questions.” My career in public opinion and employee polling has led me to do just that – ask a lot of questions in order to better understand how others see the world and what shapes those perceptions. In my current role, I use the insights that I gain from engagement surveys to help our client organizations better understand how their employees view their work, their leaders and the organization’s culture in order to enable them to implement meaningful change based on employee feedback. I feel that my time spent studying sociology and living in France provided me with a unique opportunity to see the world through a different lens and understand how culture informs the way we view ourselves, the world around us, and the institutions that shape us. These academic and personal experiences have been highly valuable to me in my career, heightening my sensitivity and awareness of the necessity to bring a unique approach to client measurement strategies, an approach that aligns with and reflects their unique organizational culture.

It is ALWAYS all about me. We can picture our kids saying this, we can stereotype millennials who want this, and if we are honest with ourselves, we can admit that we all want some element of our learning journey to be focused on us.

However, when we think about the manufacturing floor, something else is saying those words. Our equipment. The equipment that works tirelessly day in and day out to manufacture the products that our salespeople sell, our marketing team markets, and our shareholders reap the benefits from. Our equipment is screaming, What about me?

Personalization on the manufacturing floor can benefit from all the key concepts we know about individualized learning journeys, but one element can actually return your investment. Focus on equipment criticality. Just as we focus on the information and tasks that are important to learner performance, we also need to focus on our equipment.

Critical equipment is that equipment whose failure has the highest potential impact on the business goals of the company. An asset strategy, which keenly targets equipment criticality, can then be used in a variety of ways for your training and learning needs:

• Streamline documentation: Technical training budgets typically include more documentation than you can throw a book at. Literally – have you tried to pick up a training manual lately? Pro Tip: Lift with your knees. Alternatively, think smart; use equipment criticality to determine the documentation you really need to ensure safe and efficient operation versus simply using the documentation provided by your original equipment manufacturer.
• Streamline onboarding: With the aging workforce and a new generation entering the field, training needs are daunting. There simply is not enough time from the day of hire to the day the new employee sets foot on the floor and safely operates the equipment. Using equipment criticality, you can reduce the knowledge and skills you need to transfer during onboarding.
• Streamline training: There are other tools, such as skill surveys, job task analyses, assessments, and skill performance measures, that can then be used to create individualized learning journeys tailored to each employee’s specific training needs.
• Improve compliance: Seventy percent of firms are expecting regulators to publish even more regulatory information within the next year, with 28 percent expecting significantly more. Using your equipment criticality, you can also fine-tune the compliance program to focus on the most heavily regulated areas and the areas where you need to focus on the safety of the people, equipment, and environment.

So, the next time you walk into your manufacturing facility, recognize that your physical assets (the equipment) are also looking for you to personalize the learning and development of your technical workforce. With a focus on equipment criticality, you can both reduce your training spend and increase the overall effectiveness and lifespan of your equipment.

About the Authors

Sheri Weppel

Sheri Weppel started her career as an art teacher covered in finger paint, clearly teaching people about out-of-the-box thinking (or at least off-the-construction-paper thinking). While working on her master’s degree in Instructional Design and Development at Lehigh University, she realized that we could learn a lot from the public-school classroom. Concepts like micro-learning, learning styles, gaming, and training on demand were common in grade school, but were considered new concepts in the corporate sector. Because one degree is never enough, Sheri continued her studies at Lehigh with a focus on Gaming for Instruction. In her spare time, she spent her evenings losing to her husband in Scrabble and wanting to throw the letter Q across the room, making her realize the emotional attachments we can have to games. If we could harness that desire to succeed, compete, or win to a learning environment, what impact could we have on learner motivation? Countless games of Scrabble later, Sheri started at GP Strategies as an Instructional Designer and was able to inject those concepts into solutions for her customers. This is often a challenge for customers that want to use gaming but often don’t believe they have the time or budget required to successfully launch into the gaming space. Sheri is driven to help these clients find a balance in embedding gaming elements into instruction in a practical manner. In the past nine years, Sheri has held many roles within the organization, from instructional designer to sales lead for blended learning, and is now focusing on the off-the-shelf product GPiLEARN+, growing the product into a true blended learning solution. Regardless of her role, Sheri is always focused on working with customers to help build impactful training solutions that focus on the needs of all populations. She helps clients determine specifically when to incorporate gaming versus using hands-on, traditional approaches. When she is not working, Sheri enjoys having adventures with her dog Olivia, attending barre classes, and learning new three-letter words that begin with the letter Q.

There is a lot of speculation about what the future of work will look like, feel like, and function like. We are already experiencing dramatic shifts in the way we work, being driven and enabled by new digital-experience platforms and artificial intelligence, creating an experience that is self-directed and adaptive. Included with these shifts are the change in workforce demographics and the emergence of the empowered consumer who demands a level of service that is co-created in real time. This lineup could provide for the perfect storm unless organizations, specifically their leadership, plan and prepare for the dramatic change in mindsets and approaches to the way people think, learn, and perform in the very near future.

Companies that are proactively anticipating the 2025 or 2030 future of work dynamics and focusing on digital transformation are significantly improving their opportunities to improve both the employee and the customer experience, increase speed of innovation, increase productivity, and increase effectiveness of decision making results by having predictive analytics available.  A recent Forbes article written by Louis Columbus stated an interesting statistic, “55% of startups have already adopted a digital business strategy compared to 38% of traditional enterprises.”  By 2020, those that have not integrated and adopted a digital strategy will find themselves unable to compete in the evolved market.  To remain competitive, companies need to ensure they have a robust future-of-work transformation strategy that starts with the mindsets and actions of leadership.

Companies that are making it a strategic priority need to also ensure every critical aspect is covered in their work transformation strategy development. Companies having a keen focus on the human side of the effects are the front runners in preparing their workforce for a new way of working. These companies anticipate and proactively develop the required and relevant capabilities needed to perform effectively in the new environment and to meet the demands of the future customer.

The trick to having a work transformation strategy that really makes a difference is to ensure it is one that can be executed successfully. Too often, great efforts are put into creating a strategy only to have it be a communication piece that circulates, stirs up a bit of discussion, and then gets lost in the demands of the day. A strategy that is executable needs to use a holistic approach that goes beyond just getting the strategy documented; the approaches, tools, and resources must also be aligned to execute on each factor of the strategy. A holistic, executable transformation strategy entails five critical elements:

• Business Alignment
  • Vision and performance philosophy, strategic value, and structure for success
• People and Teams
  • Performance experience, capabilities matrix, and enablement journey
• Technology and Systems
  • Technology ecosystem, integrated user experience, and systems integration
• Policies and Procedures
  • Constraints and enablers, systems structure, and measurement and analytics
• Culture and Environment
  • Leadership and change management, stakeholder support and enablement, and governance and sustainability

Each of these elements plays a vital role in the development of a strategy that becomes the calibrated compass point for the execution and continued evolution of the strategy. By addressing all five elements and subcomponents of those elements thoughtfully and intentionally, leadership can produce an effective strategy that guides the creation, implementation, and evolution of the transformation. The strategy initially positions and informs the business case for the transformation and development of future-of-work performer experience. As the experience is rolled out, this strategy then serves as the operational blueprint that then becomes the governance playbook to serve as the standards guide and course-correcting compass point.

Work transformation is already occurring—now is the time to anticipate and design the experiences that align skills with business needs. Strategy needs to focus on empowering employees to develop their skills and to stay relevant in a fast-moving digital, agile environment. A solid strategy and conviction to be proactive is needed to advance digital transformation and ensure a workforce that is prepared to solve new problems across a varied landscape of changing business services and solutions and ever-evolving customer demands.

About the Authors

Kerry Hearns-Smith

Kerry joins GP Strategies with over 20 years of experience in senior roles working with Fortune 100 companies around the globe on engagements - transforming organizational culture, learning, and the employee experience. She is a life-long learner herself and her current sweet spot includes taking L&D from yesterday’s organizational driven formal learning to the future with learner driven digital, on-demand, and adaptive learning ecosystems.