20 minutes a week: The short and long of corporate learning today

Twenty minutes. What do they mean to you? Time enough to watch a Friends rerun? Burn 200 calories on a stair master? Or, stare into space and blink 400 times? Interestingly, in the workplace scenario, 20 minutes is the time most employees set aside for learning. In a week.  

These 20 minutes per week are increasingly becoming the top priority for CEOs and HR leaders. Why? Because an organization has just these 20 minutes to leverage and deploy learning platforms and tools that are not just easy, intuitive, and compelling for the workforce, but also critical to business success. Given the automation, disruption, transformation, and somewhat express-outmodedness of skills, how do companies make sure its employees learn? In this ‘age of apps’ — where one does everything from order a meal, to find a vacant parking spot or book a ride with a few clicks in their personal worlds — and absolutely easy availability of information, what relevance does the good ol’ L&D function have in the corporate world?  

The modern organization needs to meet learners where they already are–connecting learning opportunities with their aspirations and engaging them through platforms and tools that they like spending their time on

As per LinkedIn’s workplace learning report 2018, 58 percent of employees prefer opportunities to learn at their own pace. 49 percent prefer to learn at the point of need. 68 percent prefer to learn at work. A recent ATD report tells us 94 percent employees say that they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. 

Let’s face it. In the ‘anything, anytime, anywhere’ reality of our existence, it’s very easy for the L&D function to become irrelevant. After all, employees can indeed learn anything anytime anywhere. They just need to go on to the Internet, or an app, or a learning portal, type in a few keywords, and bang! It’s all out there. Google, YouTube, Lynda.com, Coursera, Udacity, Udemy, the list goes on and on… have totally changed the learning landscape. 

And yet, learning emerges as a critical priority for global leaders and a strategic growth partner for businesses

The global corporate training market, which is over $130 billion in size, continues to grow. Why? Because it is this very digital disruption that makes learning one of the most relevant functions in any organization. Considering 85 percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven’t been invented yet, how does an organization make its people future-ready? How does one ride the wave of change?

The answer is simple. The modern organization needs to meet learners where they already are—connecting learning opportunities with their aspirations, and engaging them through platforms and tools that they like spending their time on. 

Based on our understanding of the changes taking place around us, we kicked-off multiple 21st-century learning initiatives that would help us transform how we learn at Genpact. From mobile learning to social learning, to video learning to self-driven, anytime, anywhere learning – the journey has been packed with innovative ways to make learning easier. 

At Genpact, our culture has always been rooted in the innate sense of curiosity to drive innovation and performance. Our legacy has been focused on learning and ties back to our employee value proposition – Learn.Grow.Succeed — which is structured around the premise of our future growth being dependent on our continued ability to build industry-leading knowledge, skills and careers. 

We believe the core driver of performance and success is the convergence of domain, digital skills and leadership. And our efforts have been to constantly innovate, experiment and refine our delivery in these areas, with an underlying philosophy of continuous learning. 

Over the years, we’ve been able to strengthen our domain expertise through a varied range of interventions across an employee’s life cycle in the organization. Programs such as BUILD are interventions that create a talent ecosystem with just-in-time resources to support business growth and continuity. Education @Work, the in-house Genpact University, is a premier employee engagement and talent development initiative. The university is the first of its kind in the industry and has evolved immensely over the years, with almost 150+ tie-ups. 

Considering 85 percent of jobs that will exist in 2030 haven't been invented yet, how does an organization make its people future-ready?

Genpact’s strategic pivot towards driving a shift into Transformational Services required us to build the digital quotient of our employees, based on the criticality of their roles and client needs. Our first intervention ‘Lean Digital 101’ was launched in 2016 and focused on certifying leaders in the organization to our business strategy and pivot. We moved away from classroom, went a 100 percent virtual, leveraged SME developed bite-sized content and video-based evaluations. Today, we have 90 percent of our eligible population trained on Lean Digital. 

Artificial Intelligence Development Program (AIDP), is our uniquely designed program that provides high-performing Genpact candidates with extensive AI leadership training. The program aims to fast-track the learning curve of the candidates allowing them to keep up with the ever-emerging technology of artificial intelligence. 

We are focused on strengthening our front line operational leadership talent pool by building strong, dynamic leaders internally, leaders who can contribute to the organization’s vision and lead it into the future. Programs like SEAL (School for Effective Aspiring Leaders) and GOLD (Global Operations Leadership Development), are our flagship interventions with innovative learning methodologies, world-class mentoring, opportunities to work on high impact projects and networking

Culture is the personality of a company. It is the set of behaviors and attributes that define its people – both in terms of who they are and who they collectively aspire to be. At Genpact, we are empowering employees with our culture framework – (CI)2. It stands for Curious, Incisive, Courageous. On a bedrock of Integrity. It isn’t a magical law. It’s an awesome attitude. It’s innovation-in-action. And learning is a key component that lies at the core of each of our tenets. 

We culminated both industry and employee’s needs to move towards a learning culture that is agile, flexible and inclusive, and promises a wholesome learner experience. We are also firm believers in ‘pull-based’ learning and our latest offering, EdCast, is the proof of the pudding. An AI-powered learning experience platform, EdCast is bound to take our learners’ experience to new heights. 

#1 Curate learning experiences

Curate. Not create. Over 3 million new blog posts are published a day. The amount of content on the web is expected to increase by 500 percent in the next 5 years. You don’t want to give your learner what experts call a ‘content shock’. Give them bite-sized, customized and curated information that they can easily break down and absorb. 

#2 Reframe the 70:20:10 learning framework 

Unlike the traditional belief, the ‘10’ in the formula needs to be used for change management. This is where we make learning pull-based and not reserve it for traditional learning. This learning model was created in the 1980s by researchers and authors Morgan McCall, Michael M. Lombardo, and Robert A. Eichinger. In the world of 2018, the key developmental experiences of successful managers need a slight makeover. 

#3 Offer holistic learning 

Foster a culture of continuous learning in your people by bringing ‘real’ benefits on the table—from critical communication to dealing with change and learning agility, to up-skill them with the 'skills of the future’. Be agile and nimble. And integrate technology with the talent landscape to drive value and growth for an employee.

#4 Ride the data wave

Be a part of the 20 percent of organizations that have initiated their ‘learning analytics’ journey. A recent internal study showcased a strong correlation between top performers and continuous learning.  This study is just a drop in the ocean of learning behavior patterns that can be drawn out from the data available through the LMS, LXP, HRMS, Recruitment systems etc. Go ahead, get insights on how to engage your learners to maximize learning performance and achieve business results from data.  

These are the top 4 things I feel any organization must do to match learners’ expectations in the backdrop of all the digital disruption. There are after all some secrets to success.