A primary purpose of workplace learning programs is to build new skills and transfer knowledge about critical changes to ways of working. When done well, these learning programs also improve the engagement of the workforce and lift the performance of the business. But time and cost pressures often mean that evaluation of training outcomes isn’t performed or is at best a perfunctory exercise. Without relevant data, it’s impossible for learning leaders to align training initiatives with business outcomes. Instead, significant investments of time and resources are measured only by counting how many people have completed the activities in the required timeframe.

As a result of undertaking learning activities, learners and leaders alike expect to see outcomes for their respective efforts; be it new or improved knowledge and skills as well as the confidence to apply that knowledge for the benefit of customers and colleagues.

So, if everyone would prefer a more reliable way of ensuring that they invest their efforts and resources where it’s going to deliver results, how can learning professionals deliver an enviable level of guidance and support in the face of constant change?

Everyone needs to learn more — and faster, but there’s diminished appetite for course attendance. The pace of change means that any and every learner needs to be continually upskilled. This means we need to deliver more, not less, training and development initiatives, and we need to do so in ways that engage and instruct learners who are already oversupplied with content.

Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) can help. DAPs are a digital asset that can enable learning specialists to transcend these challenges and deliver targeted support that can be aligned with business outcomes.

Using a DAP allows organizations to serve learners with guidance as they use a system or process, with content that is customized and delivered in the flow of work, right where and when it’s needed. The content can be configured for different roles, workflows and levels of capability, and their level of delegation within the organization. Importantly, the user’s experience is improved because they are spared the distraction of finding material that’s stored elsewhere and is possible out of date by the time they need it.

Customers Have Learning Needs, Too

Increasingly organizations provide learning opportunities not only to their employees, but for their customers who want to be better able to self-serve and independently complete complex transactions. Enabling customers to easily navigate processes so they can transact unaided not only saves valuable time for staff who would otherwise be servicing those needs, but also removes frustration and escalations from the customer journey. It also enables highly qualified staff to devote their time to higher order activities.

Not only do these powerful platforms bring together the ability to provide content that’s aligned with outcomes, but also they give learners the power to give instant feedback about their experience of the approach and it’s suitability for meeting their needs.

Enabling Data-led Decision Making

DAPs offer powerful dashboards, revealing how the learning content is consumed and how successfully learners can complete their workload. Manually gathering feedback from learners after they’ve been trained is replaced with detailed analytics, showing exactly which content is effective and pinpointing which areas of activity need more support. These usage patterns make it possible to deliver adjustments to on-the-job instruction in real time, so learning and change practitioners target exactly what extra guidance is needed to lift capability and reduce errors.

Utilizing these powerful analytics dashboard means that we can finally move past thinking only in terms of course completions and hours spent completing learning modules, and genuinely only offer the training that’s needed which will, in turn, improve the business impact of training.

Communicating changes about updates to systems and processes is also transformed because it can be done at the point of consumption, rather than by delivering catch-all communications and hoping that impacted staff recognize when they need to adapt their approach. Learning to support the change can be targeted to just those who are impacted and reinforced until new behaviors are established. This makes it possible for organizations to provide an enviable level of change support, enabling staff to feel more certain about new elements of their roles in the face of constant change.

Learning and change specialists can deliver analytics and insights to business leaders, validating how learning outcomes are driving behaviors and outcomes and pinpointing where additional interventions are warranted. Leaders can then make more informed decisions about utilizing learning resources and optimizing their change budgets.

Ultimately, DAPs make it possible to deliver an intuitive learning experience, with contextual guidance and the data to show the connection between learning initiatives and business outcomes.

How to Get Started

Follow these three steps to begin using a DAP in your organization:

1. Establish a multidisciplinary team and run a pilot.

Learning is probably owned and delivered by a range of stakeholders from the training department, as well as subject matter experts (SMEs) in teams, and change practitioners delivering all-hands meetings and briefing sessions. Reusing existing content can be a great accelerator for your pilot and a multidisciplinary team will promote alignment and set the stage for new and enhanced collaborations between teams that are often siloed.

2. Co-create content. 

Put your specialist trainers, SMEs and support staff through the same onboarding training for the platform. Invite some end users along too and then co-create the digital content for a novel way of storyboarding your first round of workflows.

3. Start with bite-sized processes.

Keep the scope manageable and your approach to content development iterative, incorporating continuous learning for the pilot team so they can enjoy some quick wins. At the end of your pilot, get those team members to showcase their recommendations for publishing and governing digital content in your organization.

In summary, using a DAP gives trainers the arena to activate and optimize the adult learning principles that hit the mark with both new and existing users of products, systems and services. Implementing and maintaining your platform also has the added benefit of boosting engagement through the co-creation and governance of content. As a result, your programs are more likely to improve human performance and, consequently, business outcomes.

And because a DAP is a no-code solution, learning teams can work without drawing on the resources of coders, autonomously delivering guidance whenever it’s required by providing context along the way of the flow of the work or process. With some guidance on instructional design principles, nearly anyone can utilize the widgets and techniques for grabbing users’ attention and facilitating lots of repeated practice on critical learning objectives.

The analytics about user behavior provide data sets about the learning tips that have been most often used, and where learners abandon process steps, allowing for targeted interventions to improve the experience – and quite often the underpinning process, system or product. This is where we start to get real insights into the way learning and instruction translates into user behavior and on-the-job outcomes, and a genuine linkage to business outcomes.

It’s what the technologists have always promised us, and it’s been worth the wait.