Training & Technology: Adam Weisblatt on The Opportunities in the Confluence of Forces

At this year’s Learning Solutions Conference & Expo we will be exploring the many ways that technology has and continues to change the world of training. The Technology & Training blog series invites members of The eLearning Guild community to share thoughts about the growing relationships between technology and training. 

Today we welcome Adam Weisblatt of Neilsen Global Talent as he examines the opportunities that advancements in technology provide to the world of workplace learning.

The forces that affect the Learning and Development industry come and go. Sometimes they don’t have the impact that was promised. Sometimes they return and are treated as if they are new, but being new doesn’t guarantee that they will have any more impact than they had before.

However, in the confluence of forces we find the opportunities to make impactful change.

Electronic Learning had been around for decades but it was the proliferation of the Enterprise Intranet that made it practical. We have been using Social Learning since we were huddled in caves, but for global organizations it wasn’t until the adoption of Social Platforms that let them leverage this age old tool for learning consistently across their population.

It’s not just technology that drives these changes, it is business need. More than just the needs of speed, resilience, innovation and globalization, there is now a need for relevance. Because of the erosion of the employer/employee social contract, even if you work full time for a company, you are still an independent service provider. Your service, whatever it may be, is directly dependent on your ability to leverage what you know and what you can do.

Individuals can’t afford to drink from the firehose of the L&D Catalog. They need to find what is relevant fast. We humans are relevance finding machines and with the Internet we are getting better at it every day. People will find what they need on their own and they will judge what L&D provides as just another channel.

This confluence of the needs of the organization and the individual and the ever expanding access to technology is the opportunity that can transform what workplace learning is. The buzzwords around this dynamic may come and go but the impact is inevitable.