The world of corporate learning has evolved. To represent this shift in the corporate learning landscape, a new description is required, namely ‘digital learning’.

According to Josh Bersin, the learning and development industry is over $140 billion in size, and it crosses over into the $300 billion marketplace for college degrees, professional development, and secondary education around the world. Thanks to the rise of digital content and tools, training programs are being redesigned for digital access, allowing businesses and their employees to learn like they never have before.

This topic is foremost in the minds of business leaders. The 2017 Deloitte Human Capital Trends research discovered that 83% of companies rate digital learning as important, and 54% rate it urgent. This is an 11% increase from last year. As Bersin says, “In this world of automation, business transformation, and continued loss of skills, companies are realising that delivering on a compelling, digital learning experience is critical to business success[i].”

Digital Learning goes where the employees are

For more than 30 years, people have been attempting to adapt technology to corporate learning. Corporate learning has been through a swift shift in technology-enabled training and education, from the original video disk to CD-ROMs to e-learning to YouTube. Digital learning in the current corporate learning environment does not simply mean producing videos that are easy to view on your phone, it means bringing learning to where employees are.

In other words, this new era is not only a shift in tools, it’s a shift toward employee-focused design. Just as apps like Uber are used to locate a ride, businesses need learning and information support to be as easy and intuitive to use. An important factor to look at, are employees’ journeys at work, so that learning that is simple and easy to use in the flow of work can be produced.

Corporate learning evolution

 

Corporate learning has evolved extremely quickly. As Bersin say, “In only one generation we have gone from traditional corporate universities to e-learning, blended learning, talent-driven learning, and then continuous learning. Tools like Google, YouTube, Workplace by Facebook, Slack, and others have totally changed the learning landscape, so our job now is simply to ‘deliver learning to where people are.’”

 

[i] The Disruption of Digital Learning: Ten Things We Have Learned, Josh Bersin. (2017).