The Digital Adoption Show | Upskilling the Future Digital Workforce

The Digital Adoption Show today features Lou Tedrick, the Vice President of Learning & Development at Verizon. Lou will answer a few unsaid questions including How to Create an Outstanding Learning Strategy to Prepare Organizations for the Future of Work.

Lou is a Human Resources professional with extensive knowledge of organizational development, learning, and development, and employee relations. At Verizon, Lou is responsible for enterprise-wide learning and development opportunities including leadership development, product training, CS and sales skills training (consumer and business channels), HR/compliance training, IT technical training, tuition assistance, and L&D operations monitoring and analytics. Lou manages a virtual team of over 900 learning professionals across the globe.

10:17 -What are some of the common digital transformation or learning initiatives that companies should focus on to upskill their employees?

• Have a strategic workforce planning process and very specific roles as part of a broader job taxonomy. It helps build a clear picture of the critical skills needed for the future
• The technology that's going to be required for the future, not only for our employees but for our business, we need to have highly technical folks. We should always look for ways to keep our technical staff on the cutting edge and at the forefront of technology skills
• We're starting to see people asking us for more work in the areas of leadership, empathy, and generally on how to treat people in an engaging way. So that they feel excited and energised about coming to work. Now, the focus for us is on how to ensure that this paradigm shift continues in a consistent manner

16:32 -What are consumer-grade technologies, and then how can enterprises and companies leverage them for creating a better learning experience for employees?

• Consumer-grade technologies are those we use in our lives outside of work, and we expect them to operate the same way inside our work 
• These platforms are being designed in such a way that we can create really engaging learning experiences, that could be as near to face-to-face as possible
• It's so hard for our employees to keep everything in their minds. What they really need is that simple, digital information at their fingertips while they are supporting a customer while doing their work in the flow of work. Organizations should understand that, it's high time to start engaging employees in the flow of work

24:44 -Why do you think there is such a discrepancy in employee behaviour? And how can companies overcome it?

• Successful companies are those, that truly look for the voice of their employees, appreciate their voice, know about where their employees can pivot, and where you can balance employee needs and business needs together for the same goal
• You have to create those types of experiences that are frictionless for employees which are really appealing to them, and also allow them to develop and grow with a business that offers flexibility

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Charles Jennings is the Managing director at Duntroon Consultants and, he has worked as Chief Learning Officer at Reuters and Thomson Reuters. He was responsible for developing and implementing learning and performance strategies for 55,000 employees across the globe. Charles has led learning and performance improvement projects for multinational corporations, government agencies, not-for-profits and many other organisations.

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Shubham Bagdia, Enterprise Sales Manager, EMEA, Whatfix and Charles Jennings. They discuss. the topic - is 'The Learning Paradigm to the Performance Paradigm: Challenges and Opportunities.'

2:39 - What are your opinion on 'learning while doing and the fundamental differences between training and learning? 

• The vast majority of learning occurs as part of working. We need to take into account the fact that we learn essentially by doing
• Learning is a product of experience, and learning can only take place if we attempt to solve a problem. Formal training is not enough, the learning that matters happens as part of the work

19:03 - What is the best way to transform learning methods into performance metrics that focus on the inputs and outputs of a business?

• It's almost impossible to demonstrate business value by using learning metrics, Most often it would be things like, are our customers satisfied, or our first-time resolution of problems. Also, other business challenges, like our sales pipeline aren't strong enough, our delivery, our execution isn't fast enough, it could be a whole range of things
• The key role of l&d is to have a business impact and to make sure that our businesses can survive and thrive. Because if we don't do that, we can spend our lives helping people develop their careers, but their careers are not going to stay in our organisation, they are soon going to be somewhere else, in some other organization

26:17- What does the digital learning experience involve? Why should learning professionals be aware of it? 

• If we can create opportunities for work, and new challenging experiences, and then follow up with opportunities for conversation and reflection, it will create connected learning experiences. We need to weave learning into the critical things we need to do
• The need to focus on changes in the current learning methodologies, how are we able to create targeted business enablers there, and what value addition we are able to create over there

Charles Jennings Linkedin

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

People often talk about the change in work trends since Covid-19 floated, and how we all are preparing ourselves to deal with post-pandemic conditions. Don't you think that this has opened up our eyes for the future of work or it has already arrived?

Whatfix's EMEA Partner Partnership Director Paul Toffis hosts today's episode along with the powerpack ladies from Guidehouse, Myra Travin, and Kristen Wright who believe that learning is no longer important while intellectual mastery is the new normal.

Listed below is a brief description of our guests.

Myra Travin is a Managing Consultant at Guidehouse in a Specialist designation as an Educational Program Manager and Learning Solutions Designer with more than two decades of experience in implementing programs in global IT, Leadership, Change Management, and Performance Management/Learning Metrics.

Whereas Kristen Wright is a Change Management Director at Guidehouse with a Ph.D. in English and over ten years of communications, change management, program management, and leadership experience.

To Unfold the organizational Intellectual Mastery and how they crack it, check out the episode.

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Toby Newman, a Learning and Development Manager at Here Technologies, an Open Location Platform firm with its headquarters in the Netherlands and a captivating learning culture. He has worked in a variety of businesses and sectors throughout the course of his 15-year career in learning and development, including telecoms and retail.

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Gokul Suresh, Head of Growth and Field Marketing, Whatfix and Toby Newman on How can individuals and organizations take control of their learning journey.

11:36 -How are you continuing to build the learning culture, as an L&D leader?

• A learning culture is where individuals set up a certain mindset and live by a certain ethos for a certain cause. An ideal learning culture is built when people held each other accountable to that mindset, it is more of a bottom-up approach in an organization where each individual holds accountability and the learning culture build over time
• During the course of a learning journey, people build a growth mindset which is an insular mindset. It's all about my positivity, my self-development, and my self-awareness, whereas a learning mindset takes a growth mindset and adds sharing to it. Sharing is where you start to push the growth mindset and help the community outwards

16:07 -What's your opinion on the learning while doing methodologies? And what role curiosity plays in staying ahead of the curve?

• Just-in-time training or learning means that I am doing something, for instance, in Excel, I have to stop doing what I'm doing, go off, find how to do it, and then come back and start work that's just time training. To enable just-in-time training you start to incorporate technology into your individual learning habits. Whether it be a learning experience platform, or even things like chatbots, or all those kinds of things
• Digital adoption platforms help stay ahead of the curve because learning in the flow of work is more than a mindset, people can’t spend much time figuring out how to do it during the course of work. Learning while doing methodologies is the blend of technology with your mindset

34:29 -How do you think we can have more organisations think about psychological safety?

• One of the troubles with the challenges with psychological safety is that you've got to give it time, you've got to start thinking about holding each other accountable. You need to empower not just the manager to work out how they think it's right to be a psychologically safe environment but also the employees and the individual contributors of that team, needs to feel to have the incentive to come forward and talk about it
• Managers that understand how to really develop a team and how to get the most out of a team should be engaged in learning, because they realise that if they can develop their team, and not just get my team to develop with them, then achieving targets, KPIs comes automatically
• So if we're creating a great psychologically safe environment, then everything is positive. There are no negatives to that. Unfortunately, not every manager either has the time or the inclination to do that. Because they're so focused on their targets. There is always a big push from our senior leadership on the importance of improving and self-development, developing and investing in technology to help people develop

Toby Newman Linkedin

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Gokul Suresh, Global Head of Growth and Field Marketing, Whatfix and Emily Sheetz on Creating a bridge between work and the future of ways.

12:31 -How do you tackle the friction between people from diverse backgrounds to utilise technology in work?

• Most of our time is spent on a new hire and ensuring that the people are getting on board and understanding the business. We also spend a lot of time making sure that all of our learning materials are up to standard and that the new hire really gets prepared
• You've got people from different speciality areas trying to upskill and develop themselves. You've really just been forced into dealing with this and you can't be technically not savvy anymore. You have to have some willingness to engage with technology to get your work done and stay a good employee and stay connected with your team

36:27 -What do you think would be the future of L&D? What does it look like?

• Every company is a technology company, whether you're in health insurance, medicine, or any number of industries, you are actually in the technology industry, because technology is everywhere, and it is everything
• The pandemic has really proven that, if you're not able to get down with technology, you are at a severe handicap, and become super obsessed with targeted learning
• People are working at a job, and they're not in school. You should learn enough about the people, and deliver learning to them that is relevant and meaningful at the moment of their need

43:38 -How do we provide contextual help to a person so that they can upskill consistently? 

• Digital Adoption technology is so strong in learning principles. The Digital Adoption platform is a virtual assistant next to you who can walk you through a technology or a software application
• It is so extraordinary and practical and also solves so many issues that people have with using new software and the business challenges associated with it
• For Instance, I would have loved to have somebody sit next to me, the first time I got the iPhone, and I didn't even know how to make a call, I would have loved embedded help, where I could say, hey how do I make the call, ask the dumb questions to this technology 

Emily Sheetz's LinkedIn

Follow us:  Twitter | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Mark Nemeth Director, Leadership Development & Learning at Insulet Corporation, shares his first thoughts on the mention of Digital Adoption and Digital Transformation, he interestingly quoted, "If I had more time, I'd write you a shorter letter."

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Gokul Suresh, Global Head of Growth and Field Marketing at Whatfix and Mark Nemeth on How to use Emerging Technologies to Enhance Traditional Approaches to L&D.

11:02 - What works over different learning methodologies? Are there any other methods you vouch for?

• We have an R&D lab within learning and development, where we are testing out new learning modalities, to see if they work with this corporate population that is very diverse. It's really important not only to offer diverse learning modalities but also to blend them into the offerings that you have
• If learners prefer to consume information socially, let them have that connection and provide them with the ability to bounce ideas off of other people in the room. There's a lot of content management and knowledge management, as an L&D professional it's your responsibility to make sure that the right kind of concepts is at those levels and proceed with the newer ones
• In a world where it doesn't matter where you physically are, as long as you can connect to your brain, there are some things that are just good to see physically in front of you. For Instance, when we talk about creating a vision and a mission or a purpose statement for your team, we use the analogy of a mountain and climbing a mountain

19:53 - Why does that organization prefer traditional learning methods when there are so many other options? Why is that mindset so hard to change?

• You get muscle memory and you get used to delivering information and facilitating conversations in a certain way we all do. Being in front of a room and facilitating conversation in person, there's so much data you get, just by seeing people's body language and their responses to different concepts, but it's really hard in the  digital space
• We have been masters at old learning modalities and now we have an opportunity to get more comfortable with new-age digital learning modalities. The more you lean into new learning modalities, the more they actually disappear and, if you close the distance, you get actually a closer, more intimate, more powerful and inspiring connection with the people you are trying to train than if you just stay with one modality or one style, regardless of how used to it you are
• Everyone has the support of their companies to try new things. When you try it, you will discover a whole section of your population that gets unlocked, and you can see better engagement all of a sudden than you had before

Mark Nemeth's LinkedIn

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Dr Jerry Zandstra is the Chief Strategy Officer at MindSpring. He was the Director at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Gokul Suresh, Global Head of Growth and Field Marketing at Whatfix and Dr Jerry Zandstra on How to create a learner-friendly learning and training experience?

10:46 -How do you handle a situation when you have to satisfy everyone's wants while yet making it comfortable for them?

• You should ask yourselves, What do you want the learner to build or believe at the end? Who is that learner? Sometimes learning teams get stuck on thinking the learning is about the team that is creating, and you lose focus on the end user
  Spend a lot of time thinking about the learners and focus more towards what would be their experience and what is their current depth of knowledge
• The training needs to be ideal for an employee who is just starting his/her career with a year of experience and also an old veteran who is on the job for a very long time. Focus on the training methodology where both get the opportunity to learn

18:12 -How do you ease the adoption of a complex software setup in a Large Organization? 

• To ease the software adoption, once you have gone through the needs assessment and understood what the requirements are. Microlearning can ease the adoption of a complex software
• The idea of micro-learning is to create small bite-sized pieces of information and deliver them just in time when people need it. A two-hour course on a new piece of software, won’t be an ideal experience for anyone. Instead, if you let them play with the software and you help them with the prompts, that will help the users take the consecutive steps
• Don’t feed information whatever you can in a two-hour session, rather push information toward the user in their time of need and let them learn it on their own it's a very strong and powerful learning experience you can deliver when you're able to pull rather than have things pushed

23:51 -How we can derive ROI from the learning experience? What specific critical KPIs should L&D professionals be keeping an eye on?

• The learning and development team are highly educated and creative. They want to build and after they've built, they don't spend any time thinking about how to market it efficiently. It's a bit of a difficult framework because most people that are in learning and development don’t actively look up to the ROI metrics
• Generally, a metric could be anything from reducing injury, increasing purchasing power, gaining market share, and improving efficiency gains. It all has to do with your initial learning objectives. Decide the requirements and build it and once it's built, focus on how we measure it. Have metrics which you will be able to measure and demonstrate
• One of the biggest challenges in L&D is, learning teams want to build and deliver the experience. But, how do we know that the learning experience is successful? It isn't just about the learner enjoying it or you have got good feedback over there. There should be physical numbers and you should start focussing on improving them from time to time

Dr Jerry Zandstra's Linkedin

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Dr Britt Andreatta is an internationally-recognized thought leader who creates brain science-based solutions for today's challenges. Former Chief Learning Officer for Lynda.com and Senior Learning Consultant for Global Leadership and Talent Development at LinkedIn, Britt is a seasoned professional with more than 25 years of experience. As CEO of 7th Mind, Inc., Britt Andreatta draws on her unique background in leadership, neuroscience, psychology, and learning to unlock the best in people and organizations. She regularly consults with businesses, universities, and nonprofit organizations on leadership development and learning strategy.

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Dr Britt Andreatta, sharing insights with Gokul Suresh, Head of Marketing at Whatfix, on How Organizations Can Use Brain Science to Lead Successful Change Management Initiatives.

8:32 -What’s the entire idea of amygdala hijacking for success?

• Our brain can sometimes kick off the freeze response when we are not in a life-threatening situation. When it does, it shuts off our logical brain and also our self-awareness which is what makes smart people do things they later regret

15:34 -Three-phase model of learning Vs Learning By Doing

• The three-phase model of learning is how the brain learns. Learning happens first, we have to take that information in
• The second phase is to remember, so if that learning doesn't get pushed into long-term memory so we can access it for weeks or years to come, that learning is a waste of time
• Finally, most professional learning has to do with behaviour change. When you're changing behaviour/ habits, it's thinking about what are the words and actions you want to see people doing and making sure your learning event is truly getting them on a path to do that in the way that you want
• In professional learning, a big part of how we learn is by doing it and we can't get around by sitting in a room and listening to information. Unless you get up and start doing it, you have not yet formed a neural pathway in your own body. That's how we get people to true behaviour change

17:47 - What are the best practices for designing and delivering the learning modules to the employees?

• Good learning aligns with the way how the brain naturally learns. Users' attention span waves after 20 minutes. Try to build chunks of content in 15-minute segments followed by a processing activity that not only drives behaviour change but also then pushes that learning into memory
• Learning is long-lasting if you can attach it to something the learner already knows. Scientists call these schemas and then spend time in practice. So think about how can you attach this new thing that you want them to know, to something that they're already doing or already aware of
• It takes 40-50 reps of behaviour to form a habit and yet, most learning events don’t include any practice. Give people the opportunity to wire that new behaviour. It'll make the whole transition go faster and better if you're helping them get there

29:25 -How to tackle the technology adoption challenges? 

• You need to consider how various things need to play together and be sure to explore compatibility because sometimes one solution while it looks great, and seems to have all the bells and whistles, it doesn't play with another core part of your business or another system that it needs to
• Do thorough reference checks to make sure that the organization you are hiring has successfully done what they are bidding for you

Dr Britt Andreatta's LinkedIn

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Beth Loeb Davies is the Former Director of Learning at Tesla. With 25+ years of experience in delivering cutting-edge talent and learning solutions as an employee of Tesla, Microsoft, Apple, and Gap, and as a consultant. 

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Gokul Suresh, Head of Growth and Field Marketing at Whatfix and Beth Loeb Davies on How HR & Learning Departments Ensure Digital Transformation Success

10:09 -What's your take on the whole fresh perspectives and the change from the existing notions of HR and L&D?

• Fresh perspectives are essential for HR and are imperative to stay updated on the latest practices and trends
• In order to keep learning and stay updated on the trends, it’s better to avoid antiquated processes and procedures because people are tired of such HR practices

12:47  -Why invisible learning and development is that significant?

• L&D would be focusing a lot on infrastructure, tools, and how to create an environment where everybody keeps on learning all the time. This also means that our roles in learning and development may be less visible and it's not necessary to deliver an adequately planned session with a speaker and attendees 
• The idea of invisible learning and development is, that we've created tools, infrastructure and methodologies that help people in our organization learn all the time and most importantly enable learning in the flow of work

20:03  -What's Tesla's secret sauce for customizing training according to workstyle and culture?

• Tesla looked at the employee culture during the recruitment process in order to recruit employees with a mindset that allows them to succeed in the company’s culture
• Some people might be proficient with technology and others not. Since everyone has different comfort levels and technology access, we should focus on designing different solutions for them

Beth Loeb Davies LinkedIn 

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew

Kelly Palmer is Chief Learning & Talent Officer at Degreed. She is the co-author of "The Expertise Economy: How the smartest companies use learning to engage, compete and succeed," which focuses on the urgent need to upskill the workforce with the skills needed most for the future of work. 

The latest episode of the Digital Adoption Show features Gokul Suresh, Head of Global Growth and Field Marketing, Whatfix and Kelly Palmer on Why Adaptive Learning Is What The Future Workplace Needs.

Quick Takeaway:

• Bringing leaders’ attention to the future is the goal of the workplace futurist.
• The Expertise Economy demonstrates how the most creative companies in the world use learning to engage customers, compete successfully and prosper. Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and Education department spoke with business leaders about reskilling and upskilling the workforce.

7:44 - What is your take on the Workplace Futurist?

• The world of work is changing and all leaders need to think about what's going to happen in the future, the people who are preparing now for the future are those who are going to be most successful and it's hard to think too far into the future
• Technology is impacting the world of work and learning, we should be prepared a few years ahead for the technology that's going to be coming. We have to be ahead of what's coming at us and not be complacent, not just work with the tools we have, we should be anticipating and need to prepare accordingly
• A lack of planning can make you realize that you are not at a great competitive advantage for your company and that you're falling behind in terms of innovation. The whole idea behind a workplace futurist is to think about all the things that are happening in the future, but also to help push others to think about what's happening in the future and to get ready for that

20:57 -How can businesses adopt and execute upskilling and rescaling to drive digital adoption?

• The subtitle of the expertise economy is how the smartest companies use learning to engage, compete and succeed. There's a difference between just getting knowledge, and then actually being able to do something with the knowledge that you gain
• You've really got to help employees with guidance around what skills are going to be most critical for your company moving forward and digital adoption solutions can help you solve the challenge
• Amazon is now spending $700 million on upskilling and rescaling their workforce, they understand that automation is impacting their company and their employees in big ways. Amazon is up-skilling the employees to acquire new skills so they can work in other parts of Amazon or outside Amazon. So that's kind of the idea organizations are focussing around upskilling and rescaling strategy

32:18 -What's the difference between a learning experience platform and a learning management platform?

• For decades, the only technology that learning organisations have relied on is a learning management system and it was designed for an administrator so that you could track compliance training and people could register for in-person classroom training
• Most people in L&D believe that the learning management system really has a negative influence on employees and most employees aren't happy with that. A Learning experience platform is not an LMS. It's not a place where you create content, it's actually the layer on top of learning platforms that helps people build a learning ecosystem
• The future is headed in terms of technology really focusing on the learner rather than the administrator and also giving the company a view of what people are doing as well as the individual

Kelly Palmer Linkedin

Follow us: Twitter  | LinkedIn

Subscribe: The Digital Adoption Show

Love what you heard? Leave us a review!

Subscribe to The Digital Adoption Show:
Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3W7uoul
Apple: https://apple.co/4cD0Ewo
Website: https://bit.ly/3XWXtew