Automation, artificial intelligence and new working modes are reshaping the business world, and lifelong learning has become an indispensable part of economic growth. 80% of CEOs believe that the biggest business challenge facing enterprises at present is to master more new technologies. Research shows that besides the nature of work itself, learning and development space has become the most important factor for employees to pursue happiness in the workplace. Human beings are constantly multiplying, and lifelong learning is our instinct, so we are constantly looking for ways to improve our work, and the "growth mentality" is based on this demand. Recruitment is an expensive zero-sum game (Company A hires the best employees, but Company B can't), and learning is the wave that drives all ships to sail.
However, we always have no time to study because of urgent work. A recent study conducted by Harvard Business Review and LinkedIn found that employees wasted 1/3 of their time on emails unrelated to work. In addition to the compulsory training courses arranged by enterprises, employees rarely use the traditional enterprise learning platform (learning management system), and often need to click repeatedly to enter the learning page. Therefore, in the four-quadrant rule of time management, learning is always unconsciously classified as "important but not urgent".
Knowledge workers (people who master and use symbols and concepts and work with knowledge or information) can only spare five minutes to concentrate on their studies every day, and they are bound by heavy work processes.
The question is, how can we really make learning an important part of our daily work? I believe there is a new paradigm that can help everyone, and that is "learning in workflow".
What is a workflow?
Although everyone's work experience is different, knowledge workers have a lot in common: there are about 780 million people who face computers for 6.5 hours every day, 28% of them spend their time on email, 65,438+09% on information collection, and 65,438+04% on internal communication (including formal meetings and informal meetings). These three things account for 665,438+0% of them.
Knowledge workers really need to spend time absorbing and disseminating information. Most people need to look up data in their daily work, understand facts, information and other people's opinions and share them with others. In fact, 38% of what we share with others online is either educational content or information and facts.
Learning in workflow is a brand-new concept: real learning must adapt to the environment and working life. Many people regard enterprise learning as a goal, which is actually a part of our life. Through excellent design thinking and cutting-edge technology, plans and experiences are established to truly integrate learning into work.
So, how do we establish a learning mechanism from workflow? Below we will analyze it from a personal perspective (bottom-up) and a corporate perspective (top-down).
Bottom-up learning
How can individuals eager to learn learn efficiently from workflow? Here are some practical methods:
Practice "metacognition" (cognition of cognitive process) and "mindfulness" (deep observation). We should stay awake and focused in our daily work, which has many advantages, such as improving our learning and development ability. For example, when we interview a purchasing expert, we should not only participate in it, but also learn his strategies and skills; You can also ask the product manager about the product attributes, the sales staff about the industry trends, and colleagues about his feedback on your demonstration effect. This kind of inquiry is the learning process, and most colleagues are willing to share it.
Get into the habit of making a study list. We experience many learning opportunities every day. When we have a certain concept of metacognition, we can notice more opportunities. Although we always miss these opportunities because we are busy with things, it doesn't mean giving up-write a list, first put curious concepts, ideas, practices and vocabulary in the browser favorites, then fill in the list and explore it when you have time. Take myself as an example. I always add what I want to learn to my favorites. As long as I find free time (often when I am tired at night), I will start reading articles and watching demonstrations, or just browsing, or learning what I have always wanted to do while playing. I feel very rewarding, and each of us can find suitable free time (such as commuting) to do these things.
Make good use of the tips given by tools at work. Technical tips such as Google Explore in Google Docs can help us with context research and provide suggestions in document typesetting and other processes. This kind of built-in tool has greatly improved compared with the well-known Microsoft Office paper clip assistant Clippy, and we need to keep an open attitude towards their suggestions in order to benefit from it. With the popularity of corporate communication and collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack, we will welcome more assistants.
Arrange fixed study time into the work schedule. We need to make our colleagues feel that learning is very important to us. We can discuss with the manager the reasonable period of study every week (say, one hour), add it to the calendar and stick to it.
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Help the company actively and professionally create the learning channels needed for the working environment. Different companies have different workplaces, and more and more employees use SharePoint, Slack and Teams for collaborative communication. If the company has not established such a platform, then create one. When sharing new things or anecdotes with colleagues on the platform, don't just send links. It is best to help you understand the reasons for sharing, explain what this content is about and why it is important, and mark and remind those who can really benefit from this information. Doing so will not only help others, but also benefit the company and make you learn faster.
Top-down learning
How will HR create new skills for enterprises in the future? Nearly two-thirds of them answered that it would be achieved by recruiting people, which is actually very expensive. We once had a customer who calculated that building these capabilities from within the enterprise would save six times the cost than recruiting talents from the market.
So, how can enterprises use workflow to better cultivate employees' skills? Although there are many factors that restrict employees' learning in large companies, there are also many factors that can promote employees' learning. The key is that employees are willing to improve their own systems, processes and culture, so as to enhance their overall skill level.
Ensure that the company's knowledge system is accurate and easy to use. Employees will always search for information. Most of them look for answers from platforms such as Google or YouTube. At the same time, enterprises can spend time designing and improving internal systems to help employees search for content more effectively. The old, chaotic and unreasonable internal system is wasting the company's resources. Creating a company portal is actually very simple. The key is to solve key problems, such as the search results must be practical (very simple, but few people do it), which requires that every content can be properly marked and maintained. We can cooperate with the IT department to clean up the labels, and we will soon be surprised to find that the website has become easy to use.
Share content internally. With technical support, we can first build an organic learning system in some departments of the company and gradually benefit all organizations and departments of the enterprise. For example, an article about complex business contract negotiation shared by two account managers on the enterprise internal platform can be identified and marked by the algorithm and automatically pushed to more sales teams for learning.
Use API to migrate shared content to internal system. The emergence of API economy (the sum of economic activities based on API technology) makes the integration of workflow content easier than ever. Nowadays, when building most software, developers will consider interoperability (that is, the ability of different computer systems, networks, operating systems and applications to work together and share information), which is usually realized through API (Application Programming Interface). Slack, Teams, Atlassian and other platforms all have open APIs, that is to say, through Zapier, IFTT and other knowledge integration technologies, we can implant the learning content shared by employees on the above platforms into the internal system.
Establish a learning channel in the company's communication software. We can create and promote a special online learning platform, invite business leaders to share their opinions, and encourage active employees and opinion leaders to share new content. Sharing by company executives is equivalent to loudly and clearly conveying the message that "learning is crucial" to employees.
Add a chat or dialogue interface. We can add intelligent chat function to the commonly used work software of the company, and simply and directly combine study and work. The more intelligent the chat robot is, the more realistic, less aggressive and more practical the answers it gets when communicating with it.
Use e-mail to study. E-mail is still an important part of knowledge workers' daily work and one of the most common foreign communication media. Although this method is not new, the efficient use of personalized email may be the most effective way to integrate learning into employees' work. 94% of enterprise executives regard e-mail as the most important means to obtain new news. With the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other regulations on privacy becoming stricter, the disorder of e-mail inbox will be reduced, and personal e-mail will become more and more valuable accordingly.
What do business leaders think?
The concept of "learning in workflow" has aroused the resonance of "chief learning officer" all over the world. The enterprise learning industry worth $360 billion is always buried by other glamorous business achievements, largely because the effect of specific learning projects is difficult to measure (although the effect of training on individuals and society is beyond doubt). However, as enterprises begin to pay more attention to employees' professionalism and happiness, the prospect of enterprise learning industry will change. The following are three views of learning leaders to break the traditional model:
In 20 19, chief learning officer shulte of P&G Company explained why learning is more important than ever, and how the company's strategy reflects this: "At P&G Company, we believe that' the fastest learner will have the last laugh' because we realize that trial and error, quick feedback and adaptability are the most important in the ever-changing and uncertain market. In order to help our employees learn faster, we are changing the way we manage learning and development, paying more attention to the actual business situation and the individual needs of employees, so that employees can obtain information more conveniently, get support suggestions to improve their work performance, and receive well-designed training that can be directly applied to work. "
Helen Smyth, design manager of digital learning group in Inberry Company, emphasized the importance of design thinking in making a correct enterprise learning plan: "The learning opportunities and technology deployment of an enterprise are usually decided by the core team, not based on what can really help employees achieve promotion at work. In order to solve this problem, we should ask learning experts to fully understand the real work needs of employees and ensure the design of learning products and services that match the real needs. "