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The only thing more certain than death and taxes is constant change. The digital workplace and all things digital it brings continues to expedite the pace of change and amp up the complexity in how we work and live. As learning and development (L&D) veterans, who have monitored and engaged in the changing landscape of work and learning over the past 20 years, we are seeing, now more than ever, that the velocity of change is creating both opportunity and disruption to age-old standards of learning. How people learn, when and how often people need to learn and what learning looks like is being completely redefined.
There is no doubt about it that the lines of work and learning are now blurred, and we believe that there are five significant trends that are working together to issue a wake-up call regarding learning in our highly- digitized workplace. The trends are as follows:
* The VUCA environment : The volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) of our global; social; governmental; environmental; and economical systems results in an absence of certainty in what will be considered the critical competencies and skills of "tomorrow". The average shelf life of a business competency is no longer decades but rather just a few years. These forces continue to change how organizations are structured, led and managed, and how they engage with their employees, causing a dramatic change in the knowledge, skills and capabilities employees need to succeed.
* The information explosion : People and organizations are creating information at a staggering rate. Multiple channels (individuals, groups, organizations, etc.) generate information for various reasons. As a result, there is an increased need to help people aggregate, filter, validate and contextualize quality information to enable impactful learning experiences. This explosion also decreases the useful life span of information and learning content, causing organizations to lean more on curating learning versus developing it.
* The flattening organization : More organizations are using "connect and collaborate" managerial models and abandoning traditional "command and control" models. This breaks the misconception that contribution and capability start with the individual and increases the value of enabling skill building through social learning and peer/team collaboration, to foster a "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" perspective.