Source: Digital Transformation Index, 2019
A Learning Culture Complements Transformation
Let’s spell out the key benefits for transformation of the workforce and transformation by the workforce.
Clearly, digital transformation is taking place at an ever-increasing rate. Ideally, an organization witnesses zero gap between its digital transformation and its workforce transformation. Such perfection is not likely. Hence, effort should be made to increase the pace of workforce learning, skill-developing, and transforming. The closer that rate of change is to the rate of digital change, the more successful the transformation overall.
Another value to workforce transformation is its contribution to human asset management. The healthier any business’s attention to the value of its employees – its human asset – the stronger its workforce, more effective its operations, and greater its success. Investing in workforce transformation targets many of the elements of human asset management:
- Recruitment
- Onboarding
- Retention
- Development
- Talent Management
- Performance Management
A learning culture results from giving attention to workforce transformation as a factor of human asset management. The presence of a learning culture satisfies ambitious individuals looking for opportunities to learn and grow. It also supports ready access for those in need of knowledge and skills development resources. Finally, a learning culture is proven to create motivated, high-performing teams and organizations.
- Deloitte (2016): Millennials view training and development as the most important job benefit (over flexible hours, cash bonuses, free healthcare, retirement funding, and vacation allowance).
- Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline, 1990): “The rate at which organizations learn may become the only sustainable source of competitive advantage.”
- Jack Welch, former CEO at GE: “An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.”
- Dell’s market research study shows that 94% of employees tend to remain at a company that invested in their career development.
The nature of the current workforce – four generations simultaneously included – and the pace of change that requires new or additional learning, promote specific and diverse movement from the traditional classroom training.
Variety in Learning Methods
Flexible, blended modes of content delivery are expected by the workforce. The volume of workload, the nature of assignments, and increasing comfort with digital information drive individuals to want training in a variety of modalities. These include instructor-led classroom, virtual instructor-led, on-line video and e-learning, to name a few. Offering the full composite of these several modalities benefits the organization and its learning culture.
Social learning, a specific type of learning that is increasing in importance and utilization exponentially, includes both social-media and on-job, peer-to-peer experiences. Dell’s Gen Z survey of 12,000 individuals revealed that 75% of them preferred learning from others on the job to learning online. That is despite – or perhaps due to – their being digital natives with extensive familiarity with online learning. As well, 72% expressed that social media can be a valuable workplace tool. The several types of social learning too easily lend themselves to casual, informal, spontaneous ways to toss out information. A cautious, controlled, well-orchestrated program of social learning opportunities will better suit any company.