The development dilemma - are learning platforms the problem?

Speaker A: GO1 is helping organizations deliver the right learning for the right person at the right moment. With trusted, personalized learning delivered in the flow of work, GO one makes development feel more relevant, more natural, and more useful to the people it's built for, because learning should be built around people, not platforms. For more information, visit GoWon.com

Speaker B: foreign.

Speaker A: And welcome back to the HR Grapevine podcast. I'm, um, your host, as usual, Benjamin Broomfield, head of content here at HR Grapevine. And today is the first in a really special series of episodes in partnership with Go1, in which we're exploring perhaps one of the most important challenges facing our workplaces today. Why workforce development has to leave the platform, and what leaders need to consider next. Learning was designed around platform systems and administration, not necessarily around how people actually grow at, uh, work. And employees have adapted accordingly. Go1 research shows that while the need for development has never been higher, traditional learning infrastructure is increasingly disconnected from the realities of modern work. And at the same time, as I'm sure all of you in the audience are very well aware, AI is accelerating those expectations around personalization, guidance and support for employees on their learning journeys in the workplace. People increasingly expect development to feel more like the intelligent, contextual experiences that they encounter with consumer technology every day. So over the course of this series, we're going to be exploring what could happen next, why this platform centric model is breaking down, what learning should actually feel like instead, and why operationalizing that shift is becoming more complex across modern organizations. No doubt leaving all of you in the audience with some really great insights to take away and apply back into your organizations. Joining me for the first episode in this series is Go1 CEO and co founder, uh, Chris Egeland. And today we're asking and hopefully answering a big question, are, uh, learning platforms the problem? So, plenty to dive into over the course of the episode, but first and foremost, a very warm welcome to you, Chris. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker B: Thanks for having me, Benjamin.

Speaker A: Looking forward to it. Brilliant. Well, to kick off, we're going to start with a stat. I think it's a good place to begin, and I know GO one have done some great research here. So most companies invested heavily in learning platforms over the last decade, but only 7% of employees turn to those systems first when they need to grow. So what does that number tell us about where the model is going wrong at the minute?

Speaker B: Yeah, it certainly is pretty confronting, I think, when you sort of put it in those terms. For organizations that have invested heavily in systems like Learning management systems and LXPs they've evolved over the past decade or so. It really is quite stark. At the same time, our research demonstrated that at least about 47% of people indicated that they needed some form of development support multiple times in the last 30 days. And yet, as you said, only 7% of them actually went to their learning system as their first port of call. So I think that's pretty stark when you put it in those terms and arguably demonstrates a, uh, sort of misalignment of both investment and, and actually what's needed to reach people in this, like, really critical upskilling moment.

Speaker A: Definitely. And there's, I think, a lot of studies out there, or just even pretty much any organizational leader you talk to who are going to be working through some of these challenges with low engagement at the minute. And I think there's that tendency to frame that perhaps as an employee motivation issue that, you know, just people are not showing up to work for whatever reason. But is that something you think organizations have actually been, you know, measuring and approaching wrong, looking at the wrong thing? If we're saying that this area for development is just not existing for them in the workplace at the moment?

Speaker B: Yeah. So I think it's, um, fundamentally not necessarily a motivation issue. And I think our research demonstrates that there is kind of a thirst and a hunger for people to learn and develop, particularly in this really uncertain moment in time in the middle of this sort of AI transformation shift and the big economic sort of moment that we're in. Our research so clearly demonstrates that people want to actually learn and improve. But then you think about, well, how has this been kind of engaged with and measured historically? Largely, I think L and D leaders have been quite restricted partially due to the technology that's available to somewhat, I guess, basic measures, of course, completion and consumption isn't really actively a measure of was the learning effective? Did it reach people in the right moment? And so 55%, I think, of employees from our latest research show that learning and development is, unsurprisingly, most useful when it's directly related to their work. And I actually think that's what's most exciting about now, this AI transition is some of those, I guess, promises of learning and development over the past 20 years now actually might be possible. And I think that's a real opportunity for those L and D&HR leaders who kind of run headlong into this.

Speaker A: Definitely. Obviously we speak about AI, and I think it's pretty difficult not to factor into this conversation. Obviously, I think there's a lot of opportunities that we're seeing AI is having, in terms of what learning technology can do and how it can support staff. At the same time, a lot of challenges in terms of, uh, implementation and perhaps further concerns from employees as well. Do you think that AI has just really creating this sort of gap that we have between what employees are needing and what employees are able to deliver, or is it more so that it's really now just exposing a bit more of sort of, uh, a disconnect that already existed between how people learn and how people are working?

Speaker B: I think it's absolutely just exposed an existing gap and maybe just accelerate it like it is in so many other areas. And I think that's probably twofold. I think one is the difference between kind of measuring consumption and then measuring capability. That is something that's historically been quite difficult to do because it requires the, I guess, synthesis of large sort of disjointed data sets together to look at, um, someone's capability and is it improving. And the second is, I think our expectations, and kind of rightly so, in terms of how you consume and learn are, uh, evolving. You know, when you get a instant, somewhat useful answer that gets you 75% of the way there from, you know, Claude or Chatgpt, you know, no wonder people want to kind of stop going to this somewhat archaic learning platform. They've got to click nine times through to actually get to the information that they need.

Speaker A: Definitely. Well, I think we've pretty firmly established that there's a bit of a problem at the minute. There is that disconnect, and that's something obviously for, uh, all workplaces to really look at tackling, especially at this really important time for work and how it's being reshaped. So I know it's something that you've argued for a while that the future isn't necessarily just throwing a better platform m at this. Right. It's something that is more looking at how workforce development is directly embedded into work. It may be useful to get a bit more of an idea in terms of what that might look like in practice, how you see that taking shape within organizations.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I think go back to, like, the desire, and you mentioned before only is there a motivation issue or a tools issue? I think there's been a really surprising level of alignment between sort of employees and managers in a lot of our recent research. So, you know, you have 80, 83% of employees that kind of expect and want learning to flow up, to show up in their workflow, and then you kind of pair or Compare that to our uh, manager research, which says that actually about 85% of managers, they actually want development support for themselves and for their team that already starts to mold and adapt to some of their existing management and leadership processes. So there's some really surprising amount of alignment between both employees and managers on this point. And the trick is implementation, kind of like, where do you start? Because obviously this isn't something which is just going to click your fingers happen tomorrow. The really, I think straightforward, I guess, no regrets, places to start, I think consolidating your learning experiences in those tools most commonly used by your team to do their work. Unsurprisingly, things like Microsoft Teams and Slack are probably, you know, the two most kind of common hubs for some of this that we see in terms of increasing engagement and relevance and ultimately capability building, but also moving through into your CRM or even sort of Microsoft Office, effectively sort of prioritizing the learning and upskilling, being wherever your team spends the most amount of time and the most amount of time collaborating.

Speaker A: Definitely. And I think what we're coming really into is this question of trust, trust that people have, obviously in the team around them, but also in the tools and the ecosystems that they're going to be using. And I think especially as learning does become transformed by AI, uh, having that assistance there, having that personalization, you also want to trust the tools and systems that you're using. And I think that's the word that we come back to a lot of times with AI, uh, tooling in particular. As well. So I mean, why is it that you think that having those trusted ecosystems, that blend of support between leadership within your organization, the processes that can support the technology as well, why are those trusted ecosystems so important to really bedding in that learning into the, really into the flow of daily work?

Speaker B: I'm sure we've all had those experiences where we've asked uh, ChatGPT or Claude A question and got an answer that's extremely confident in the result and it's completely wrong. And that's just sort of an example. And of course the foundation models are going to sort of improve, uh, and sort of hallucinate less. So even if that improved though, if you still think about what is the most effective version of sort of professional upskilling and learning, particularly in the workplace, I really believe it sits at the nexus of like a trusted layer of sort of knowledge and content at uh, the base of it, by sort of industry experts combining that with, with contextual knowledge about the company. What's the value set of the company, what's the strategic priorities of the company, and then blending that with the, I guess, personal preferences of the learner to make it really relevant to their role. I think only when you have all three of those parts do you hit the bullseye for what will ultimately be a really rich, capability enhancing and sort of culturally aligned company relevant sort of training path. And that I think is the exciting promise of this is be able to combine those kind of three separate components.

Speaker A: Definitely. Obviously we've spoken about the fact that really perhaps that idea or concept of throwing uh, a shiny new learning platform at this problem is just not going to work anymore and hasn't really worked for a few years. It is much more about that ecosystem. I think maybe one of the other challenges now from an HR and learning development leader perspective is that whilst they may have that understanding, it's not just them, um, who's involved sort of in this process now because of how important upskilling has become to the workplace, that growing understanding of how important it is that we have employees who are consistently developing, they're learning new skills just to sort of cope with that shared pace of change. Really there are now more stakeholders involved in some of these buying decisions. I think from the research there's a really good sort of finding that you had which is that more than 85% of it, finance and legal stakeholders are reporting increased involvement in learning technology decisions compared to two to three years ago. So there's a lot more people involved in this process. But at the same time it's never been more important to make sure that this process of buying a platform and really bedding it into the process is being done in a way that works for employees rather than just from the perspective of the individual. So what do you think that shift means for HR and LND leaders now in terms of their operations, having to deal with those different stakeholders when it comes to implementing and really weaving in uh, a really trusted platform into that ecosystem.

Speaker B: So on the one hand I think people can interpret that as a, uh, kind of a negative sort of reflection in terms of it adds complexity and it makes it hard to do my job as a HR leader and all those things. I actually don't see it that way. I actually think this is a really important component to elevate learning and development into part of like the core business infrastructure layer, um, on kind of two vectors. So the first is an actual technology one. So what we're just talking about around learning, showing up across different elements of your business technology stack and kind of being ubiquitous as a kind of skills and learning layer across them all. And the second is actually the role of the L and D and HR leader, uh, in the context of the organization and to elevate that role and that individual into a position where interfacing with those stakeholders is necessary to achieve that infrastructure piece. If you think about if you were going to implement a new payroll system, a very critical piece of infrastructure for your business that would require lots of cross functional stakeholder buy in security, uh, engineering, hr, finance, all those players, which comes that increased scrutiny. But actually in return for that, I think you actually get a more effective, more embedded solution that will ultimately deliver much stronger learner outcomes.

Speaker A: M and I think overall that's definitely a frustration for obviously leaders across it, finance, legal like concepts of sort of tool fragmentation, having these really disparate systems that uh, you know, sat in different parts of the organization, they're not speaking to each other. There's no sort of cohesion or centralized approach there, which I think can create a lot of difficulties obviously for those leaders, but also for employees as well when they've got a million and M1 different platforms that they're expected to know how and when to use. But obviously you know, there's still going to be a case in some situations for, you know, for being able to implement a new platform, being able to implement a new tool. So what's a good uh, response for L and D leaders to have at their disposal when perhaps some of those other leaders say, you know, not another tool, we don't need another platform, we don't need this extra thing on top, let's just work with what we have. How can HR and learning leaders handle that one?

Speaker B: So I think there's a big difference, particularly in this sort uh, of world of contextualized and sort of personalized learning, between another platform that redirects your learners to another system and adds a lot of friction to the process versus another kind of tool or piece of technology that enhances your existing infrastructure and your technology stack. So really kind of the procuring of a new tool should, I don't think we look through the lens of hey, adding a new system and adding a whole new interface. It actually should be, is this helping us consolidate onto the Rails and infrastructure that you use to run the business today or run the business in future. So it's not fragmentation of user interface, not fragmentation of login, it's not fragmenting people's attention, it's actually a consolidation play and you should be being really Disciplined around where you want your employees to be at any point in time. And that will help avoid the fragmentation, definitely.

Speaker A: I think, um, really what we're maybe moving towards here is, well, we love a buzzword in the HR and learning and development space. You know, that learning in the flow of work, continuous learning, embedded learning. All of these things that we've been throwing out for quite a few years.

Speaker B: Finally time to real that, that promise.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, exactly. We've been dreaming of it for years, but I think now is where the technology is catching up. But actually that, that buy in and understanding across the organization as well, that this is the best way for these tools to be implemented is not as that standalone disparate system that takes employees out of where they need to be, but something that's embedded into what they're doing, you know, day to day, week to week, month to month. So perhaps, um, in terms of, uh, maybe some advice for a chro heading, you know, into the rest of the year 2027, all of these challenges that we talk about in terms of the pace of change, transformation within the workplace, um, you know, new skills that need to be picked up quicker than ever before. Is that something that you would say then to stop investing in or you know, another area that you would recommend for them to start prioritizing in? Is it time for them to realize that that vision?

Speaker B: So obviously I think upskilling and reskilling is probably in its most important moment, at least in my lifetime. But it was fundamentally necessary for I think nearly all organizations to go on a culture evolution, culture change journey as we move to a more kind of AI native way of working. And also from a skill perspective, fast forward a time horizon. Everyone will need to be capable and confident to use a variety of AI skills. So it's fundamentally maybe the most important moment for an L and D leader in like 35 years. Right. So it is a really exciting time. But uh, then the kind of, the worst thing you can do in response to that is to kind of panic and start buying a whole bunch of different tools that don't actually achieve the outcome that you want. And I think really like you're solving for, I guess like distilling it down. You're solving for probably like three things you're solving for like contextual delivery and contextual learning where your learners already are. It's time to stop wasting time on engagement campaigns and those sorts of things. We used to make it as easy as possible and as relevant as possible where people are. The second is the trusted source of the information. You don't want your, I think, learners learning from Reddit threads or whatever the latest ChatGPT model is pulling on to determine the answer. So you need to have a trusted sort of source of information, which is both external subject matter experts and so external content sources and internal knowledge libraries to be able to merge them together into a sort of contextually relevant experience. And then the third is you want measurement that ties to actual output, not course completion. We were so, I think constrained in the learning industry for many years that of course completions were used as an inherent proxy for kind of progress and capability improvement. But it really is a suboptimal measure. And so you want to be able to tie much more effectively the learning experiences to Are people doing more. Are they doing it more efficiently, more effectively, and ultimately performing at a higher rate?

Speaker A: Absolutely. Well, it's certainly, I think, uh, a fairly substantial change in mindset and approach to maybe what a lot of learning leaders and HR leaders will have been taking over sort of certainly the last few years. I think it does represent a, uh, fairly big shift in terms of what we're discussing. But like we said at the episode, obviously that disconnected approach is just something that is not working. And when you have such a small share of employees who are turning to those fragmented, isolated system to learn rather than anywhere else is really, I think a sign that we do need a fairly sort of drastic change in action. But I, uh, completely agree that panicking is not the right way to go. So maybe if you could leave sort of our listeners and HR, ah, and L& D leaders out there with, with maybe one either sort of shift in mindset or one thing that they should really change off the back of this conversation in terms of their approach, what would you leave them with?

Speaker B: So I think it goes back to where we started the conversation where if you only have 7% of your employees turning to these kind of fragmented legacy learning systems as their first port of call for when they need to grow, that is such a tiny number that the concept of how do we get more people to come to a learning destination, even if you run some beautiful engagement campaigns, is not going to move the needle on that number materially at a moment where the ability for an organization to support their team to reskill is, as we've said, more important than ever. So I think kind of stop asking, well, how do we get people to come to our beautiful learning hub and start asking, well, how do we make it show up where the work is and what is contextually and personally relevant to the learner. And so I think reframing it that way means that you will actually change a lot of the behaviors and priorities for the better, I think.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Well, I think it's some really great partnering advice to leave people with, but the conversation is not finishing here. Like I said at the top of the episode, we've got two more fantastic, uh, episodes coming up in this series with GO one where we're going to be diving into this really, really pivotal challenge. Like we say, I don't think there's been any more important time as an HR or learning leader, um, and so being able to rethink how we're approaching learning, but doing that a really sort of structured and non panicked way, I think, uh, as you say, Chris, is the right way to go. So really looking forward to those next two conversations that we have with other folks from the Go1 team are going to be diving into this problem even more. But for now, Chris, just want to say a huge thank you for joining us for really helping set the scene, uh, a lot, I think in terms of how we've traditionally been thinking about learning platforms and the problem with that approach and why there is that real case and need for change and some fantastic advice in there as well in terms of what that change can look like. So thank you for joining us and for, uh, all your words of wisdom.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me.