From Novelty to Transparency
Just two short years ago, seems like a lot longer, I was writing and speaking about the “HR Perfect Storm.” With HR at the center, the storm was a combination of factors impacting organizations, executives and employees. An increased for demand for talent, rising consumer expectations and often inadequate technology or resources, HR was battening down the hatches. Just when everyone thought it could not get worse, the Pandemic arrived. Was 2020 as terrible as we believe it to be or was it the year we finally realized our true Learning Destiny?
Modern technology advances tend to follow an arch of sorts from their introduction through to overall integration and adoption. This arch starts with being “Novel” or a “Novelty.” There is great interest in the new tech, but not quite sure how it might work. The next phase is “Usefulness.” When the novel dissipates we find the value in how the technology can improve our world. The last phase is “Transparency” where the technology just melts away. This is where we see the true success and impact of technology. I firmly believe that with the world of HR Tech we are transitioning from the Useful phase to Transparent. This could not have happened without 2020. I’ll try to explain how this happened over the arch of Learning Management Tech in the past 20 years.
If we were to roll back the clock to the late 1990’s in many ways we would see the world of HR Technology much as it was just last year. Sure, the graphics now are smoother, and we have high speed connections so everything runs faster, but at the core it wasn’t much different than 2019 or early 2020. Back in the 90’s everything was exploding onto the “Internet.” Learning was online both through CD ROM’s and the beginning of Learning Management Systems. Experts were discussing the benefits of on-demand learning, distance learning and the 70-20-10 learning approach. Of course culturally, “Training” was formal, instructor led or online, but mostly compulsory or required for compliance. Sound familiar?
In 2000, online learning became somewhat of a novelty. Large corporations that could afford Learning Management Systems led the way to digital learning. Over time like most things, the adoption of learning platforms and online content became more pervasive and affordable. Somewhere around 2009 or 2010 it happened; the novelty wore off and the age of usefulness began. This is where I would suggest a malaise in the Learning industry overall arrived. Caught between limitations of technology, management and user expectations, innovation mostly existed with a few and was desired by many. I can honestly tell you I reviewed conference notes from an event in 2010 that were promoting almost the same topics and ideas in 2019.
Then came that fateful year of 2020. Most of us had anticipated 2020 for numerous “futuristic” reasons. It would be an iconic year with so much potential and then it wasn’t. Or was it? What I saw happen in 2020 to the field of Learning and Development was a renaissance of sorts. Unbound by tradition in an otherwise non-traditional year, Learning finally broke out of the malaise. What had been building over the past decade was a shelf full of good ideas that finally saw its time. Absent the typical excuse list, Learning & Development was now mission critical.
When the walls came down on the cubicles and offices the only connection between employees and employers was digital. In many instances the Learning Management System became a hub for the employee, their data and the information they needed to navigate through uncharted waters. Management took note of this as well. Suddenly, the system or systems that many had taken for granted over the years were now providing solutions that were never imagined.
The Pandemic Push is just what vendors and businesses needed to break free of the lost decade. Instead of conferences full of sessions about how someone moved one course to a mobile device for a specific group; companies were shifting entire libraries of content to their phones. Not just that, they were virtually meeting and mining employee data there as well. And if that wasn’t enough for Learning providers to deal with, Microsoft quietly snuck in the back door with Teams. Sure, Teams had been around for a few years, but absent a global change event, it was mostly leveraged in the IT departments. Fast forward to today, it’s hard to imagine a day without using Teams.
Two major milestones or markers have been set thanks to the Pandemic and global adoption of Teams. First, the expectations of the Employee Experience have forever changed. Second, those who continue to operate in a “behind the firewall” world are finding it harder to justify. The pervasiveness of an always on Teams environment accessible from any device, at any time, anywhere is a huge advance not just for technology, but for Learning & Development. Suddenly all our aspirations for on-demand, contextually based learning are being realized. Best of all, this is cutting across all industries and all levels of business.
The CHRO’s in many organizations now hold more cache’ than any executive other than the CEO. No surprise there; in my article on our “HR Heroes” I wanted to highlight the efforts HR Professionals were supporting to save their organizations and their employees while staying sane themselves. At the same time, the expectations for what our HR Systems could and should be changed drastically. It was not a surprise when Microsoft announced it’s Viva project to incorporate Learning into the Teams environment. But what has also followed is the race to leverage Teams as a Hub of an overall HR or Employee Ecosystem.
Look no further than my own company as we move forward in the HR Technology journey to the transparent interface. SumTotal has been a pioneer in the HR and Learning space for decades. The first true LMS to manage ILT and launch Online Courses is now positioned to leverage the Teams experience this year. As part of the ecosystem of apps and tools coming to Teams, the reality is that Learning has always been best when it is contextual and at the moment of need. SumTotal will be delivering tools to Teams that will ensure a near transparent learning experience to the end user. Seamlessly integrated into the application, users can search and complete training effortlessly; as it should be.
What has transpired in less than twelve months is a most impressive, yet overdue revival of HR Technology in the learning space. While this time has been challenging and detrimental to so many organizations and industries, it was exactly what Learning and Development needed to snap a 10-year funk. Inspired and driven almost organically by the forces surrounding us in the past year, Learning and Development as an industry and discipline is being pushed forward in ways we could only have imaged. It’s crazy to believe we had to endure so much to finally achieve this change. Perhaps thanks to the Perfect Storm of events, we are finally going to realize the true Learning Destiny!