RR

THE FUTURE OF
LEARNING IS IN
THE REFLEXES

March 2018
Zachary Chertok
Research Analyst, Human Capital Management
As the learning and development (L&D)
community continues to idealize best practices for The Aberdeen maturity class
resource development and consumption, the framework is comprised of
three groups of survey
space still faces a lag from worker participation. To
respondents. This data is
resolve this, technologists are taking a cue from used to determine overall
social media-style end-user consumption. company performance.
Classified by their self-
The Trouble with Learning and Development reported performance across
several key metrics, each
In 2017, Aberdeen found that Best-in-Class companies are 72% more
respondent falls into one of
likely than All Others (50% vs. 29%) to use a learning management
three categories:
system (LMS). By the end of 2017, the difference in likelihood dropped to
43%. On the one hand, Best-in-Class companies (76%) recognized a  Best-in-Class: Top 20% of
stronger need to provide career opportunities to woo top talent. On the respondents based on
other hand, All Others (53%) recognized the industry value-add of on-the- performance
job training in a competitive talent market in which they were less likely to
 Industry Average: Middle
be competitive. While increasing LMS use is a Best-in-Class strategy,
50% of respondents
companies still face a massive problem  60% find that their LMS is little
based on performance
more than a content repository that drives little time investment from the
workforce to develop relevant skills.  Laggard: Bottom 30% of
respondents based on
By the end of 2017, Aberdeen found that more than 80% of LMS performance
deployments were fully automated with little to no human interaction,
Sometimes we refer to a
instruction, collaboration, or social engagement. In other words, the LMS
served as a one-way street for content deemed relevant by management, fourth category, All Others,
to be pushed out to the workforce through somewhat homogeneous which is Industry Average and
communications channels. Heading into 2018, Best-in-Class companies Laggard combined.
are 2.2 times more likely than All Others (24% vs. 11%) to incentivize
employee participation in the LMS. However, this is merely window
dressing, as opposed to a solution, for the fact that Aberdeen has found
more than 80% of companies overall, still only make content available for
employees to use at-will.

In Employee Wellness in 2017: Driving Employee Development and

Engagement (November 2017), Aberdeen found that the very elite of the
Best-in-Class make better use of their data related to employee
participation rates in content campaigns. One of the emerging strategies
is to enable managers to cross-reference resource consumption rates
and campaign participation rates in wellness, well-being, rewards
management, innovation management, and L&D, to better read employee

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interests and drive skills development based on those interests. In fact,
heading into 2018, 36% of companies plan to increase spend on pursuing
a data-integrative strategy that sheds light on these interests. Heading into 2018,
36% of companies
While Aberdeen has found that incentivizing participation is a proven
strategy to grow campaign participation, it still does not resolve the core plan to increase
problem for modern learning content or program adoption: The one-way spend on pursuing a
flow of content push.
data-integrative
Table 1: Communications Means Used to Promote L&D strategy that sheds
Best-in-Class All Others light on employee
interests.
Communicated recommendations 80% 72%
Social media interface 58% 52%
Mobile access 40% 39%
Social recognition/feedback 30% 23%
Mobile promotions/notifications 17% 12%
Source: Aberdeen (October 2017) n = 150
Aberdeen (July 2017) n = 273

Table 1 shows the top methods that Best-in-Class and All Other
companies use to communicate and promote learning management
content and program participation. By the end of 2017, direct
communications of content recommendations still reigned supreme.
Considering that the majority of companies focus the management use
case of data to drive stronger L&D based on employee interests, it should
come as no surprise that management recommendations, automated or
otherwise, constitute the largest use case. In fact, in Holistic HCM in
2017: Getting the Formula Right on Adaptive Learning (September 2017),
Aberdeen found that centering analytics promotes stronger alignment
between employee performance improvements, employee skills
development, and a rising rate of achievement of management goals and
objectives. Furthermore, in Building Holistic Employee Development: The
Performance Cycle (September 2017), Aberdeen found that the data
integration strategy across rewards management, wellness, well-being,
and L&D creates a higher probability of successful employee engagement
and development. Still, however, there is mounting discontent with the

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learning management ecosystem, as more than half of companies still
consider it to be a management-driven content repository.

The Rest of the Story

Personalization and workforce-driven program development solves just

one half of the L&D problem  the management half. The other half
involves actual employee participation. Best-in-Class companies are now Best-in-Class
just 8% more likely than All Others (80% vs. 74%) to recognize an companies are 23%
inability to develop their internal talent to fill emerging skills gaps, as now
a majority of companies are hitting this crisis head-on. Furthermore, the more likely than All
Best-in-Class are 23% more likely than All Others (32% vs. 26%) to Others to recognize
recognize that low, or declining employee engagement has a massive that low or declining
impact on the relevancy of their L&D strategies. To this end, and as Table
1 shows, the Best-in-Class are responding much faster than All Others to employee
rising employee disengagement over time. engagement is having
The emerging Best-in-Class communications and promotion strategy for a massive impact on
L&D focuses on how to make L&D content and programs more the relevancy of their
accessible and consumable. While 40% of Best-in-Class companies are
focusing on traditional mobile accessibility, putting L&D in the hands of
L&D strategies.
employees wherever they are, 58% are taking it one step further to
consider how end-users will consume the resources. In that vein, 58% of
Best-in-Class companies are building L&D to be more like social media,
where the interface promotes the content and programs as an idle go-to
when employees have time to kill. Already, Best-in-Class companies are
seeing results: When it comes to L&D and management-driven campaign
management, they are 25% less likely than All Others (55% vs. 73%) to
suffer from declining employee engagement over time. In other words, the
Best-in-Class are building a more reflex-driven use case for L&D and
shorter-term rewards campaigns that go beyond the incentives to make
skills development a default go-to habit for employees.

Analyzing the use case also helps the Best-in-Class to open up the L&D
framework to install two-way communications between the managers
promoting the skills development and the employees participating in it.
Today, 30% of Best-in-Class companies are experimenting with or
expanding social recognition and feedback channels integrated into the
L&D ecosystem. The social feedback framework comes in two primary
flavors:

 Summarized Feedback: Once employees have completed a

course, they produce structured feedback through surveys,

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 comment forms, or direct communications with the manager,
facilitated by and recorded within the L&D platform.

 Real-Time Feedback: Employees submit feedback, program

suggestions, or content requests prior to, or during an L&D
program.

Social feedback channels facilitated through the L&D platform enable

L&D managers to account for the kinds of skills development employees
seek, while adding another layer of resource planning data to the
performance cycle that aligns employee goals with those of the
organization.

Figure 1: Top Reasons Employees Stay at the Company

Best-in-Class All Others

80%
Social feedback
76% 75% 78%
69%
65% 65%
60%
65% channels facilitated
55%
through the L&D
platform enable L&D
managers to account
Work is relevant to the Corporate goals are Personal goals are Job definitions are stable There are visible career
organization relatable and they offer recognized to chart growth tracks for the kinds of skills
personalized training
development
Source: Aberdeen (July 2017) n = 273
employees seek.
Figure 1 shows the top reasons employees stay with the organization.
The leading reason is that their personal goals are recognized as they
find their way into the organization. Along those lines, employees seek
easily recognized career tracks facilitated by work that is relevant to the
organization, and that fits within stable job definitions that clearly
differentiate employment levels. Fundamentally, employees seek growth
opportunities that first, allow them to pursue their career goals and
interests, and second, demonstrate that the employer has set goals that
convey the company is a good place to pursue mutual interests in the
long-term. In Building an Ecosystem for Performance: Integrating
Learning (August 2017), Aberdeen found that marrying these interests is
fundamental to renew and build employee engagement. While Figure 1
does not expressly call out the availability of a robust L&D environment,
L&D is a core component of internal career development. In Improving
Performance: Resources and Recognition are Must-Haves (February
2017), Aberdeen found that bringing L&D back inside the organization as
a core labor investment resource reduces turnover and provides stability

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for managers to better integrate the workforce with the goals of the
organization.

What Figure 1 also points out, is that equitable learning management

hinges on the interests of the employee and how those interests fit into
the organization. Employees at Best-in-Class companies are 17% more
likely than those at All Other companies (67% vs 57%) to join and stay
with the organization, because they have good relationships and
communications with their managers. A solid L&D ecosystem needs to be
reflective of this, as promoting the goals of the organization is essentially
nothing more than stringing together the goals of the manager into a
longer-term, bigger picture, and then fitting that bigger picture in with the
Employees at Best-in-
actions and results of other departments.
Class companies are
The Benefits of a Reflex-Based L&D Interface
17% more likely than
If 2017 was characterized by the introduction of adaptive analytics that employees at All
enable managers to be more prescriptive with content and programming,
2018 is being characterized by the atomization of skills development.
Other companies to
Boiling it down, this simply refers to making learning and development join and stay with the
consumable and metricized anywhere and everywhere. organization, because
As noted earlier, Aberdeen has found that studying how the end-user they have good
engages digital systems is fundamental to successfully atomizing learning
relationships and
and promoting it in a way that completes the performance cycle. Along
these lines, Best-in-Class companies are developing a social media- communications with
oriented user interface (UI) that aims to capitalize on making L&D a their managers.
default reflex whereby employees engage it in their idle time, akin to how
social media feeds are consumed and updated.

Figure 2: Contribution of Reflex-Based L&D to Best-in-Class Talent

Process Benefits
Best-in-Class All Others
64% 63% 60%
47% 45%
38% 37% 38%
30% 33%

Ability to fill a position on Ability to recruit More than 50% of the Ability to hire a top 3 Average employee tenure
time per expectation Internally more than 40% workforce is highly candidate more than 50% is more than 5 years
more than 50% of the of the time engaged of the time
time
Source: Aberdeen (July 2017) n = 273

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While making L&D a social reflex and fully atomizing learning programs
are in early stages of adoption, Aberdeen has already found some
intrinsic, talent-based benefits to pursuing this type of systematic
approach. Figure 2 (see previous page) shows the most prolific of these
benefits.

The strongest benefits pertain to how companies have improved their

ability to source skills, and, at times, whole positions from within the
existing workforce. Just as employees at Best-in-Class companies seek
stable employment opportunities that include career development at the
same employer, the Best-in-Class drive stronger retention by building out
those career tracks through strategic skills development in timeframes
that are beneficial to the company.

Getting Prescriptive with Learning and Development

The future success of learning and development lies in the ability to

produce and deliver content and programming in terms with which
employees can relate and on terms which they will accept for use and
consumption. To build a successful L&D strategy, Aberdeen recommends
the following steps:

 Inventory: Take stock of your current content and program

offerings. In particular, take note of how the content is developed,
how programs are administered, and the response rate of the
average workforce.

 Centralize: Consolidate content and program management

behind subject-matter experts capable of marketing program
development to the workforce. While content and program
development should continue to come from wherever career track
potential and skills needs emerge within the company, centralizing
the actual delivery makes the L&D strategy more responsive and
nimble while developing a singular marketing organization for
internal training opportunities. As an added bonus, link the L&D
marketing strategy to the employer brand to draw external data
into the L&D strategy, while promoting career opportunities for
prospective employees.

 Metricize: If not already done, bring together use-case metrics

from rewards management, wellness, and well-being to begin to
learn about the interests, stresses, strengths, and weaknesses of
individual employees, teams, and the workforce as a whole. Try to
identify strategic skills gaps as they emerge, and be sure to plug

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 emerging employee interests into the content and programs
recommended for them.

 Socialize: Ingratiate the L&D access methodology into the

average workforce behavior toward technology-enhanced media.
Be sure to remember that all organizations are different and that it
is vital to understand how your organization specifically adopts
and responds to different media promotional methods. Your actual
methodology may result in several different delivery types to
accommodate multiple generations, multiple work-training
requirements, and multiple, preferred consumption strategies. As
denoted by the Best-in-Class, the goal is to work toward a social
experience that promotes content and program accessibility as a
reflex whenever an employee has idle time.

 Atomize: The final component in the reflex-based training delivery

model is to atomize the training options and components of each
program. Atomization simply breaks down courses and content
into their fundamental components, zeroing in on micro-skills
development that can build into larger skills deliverables while
filling in smaller gaps along the way. Atomization also ensures that
employees can actually consume learning and development
resources completely in idle time, such as waiting in line to buy
something at the supermarket.

Related Research
Building a 21st Century HCM Ecosystem: Bringing People and
Technology Together; January 2018

Employee Wellness in 2017: Driving Employee Development and

Engagement; November 2017

Building an Ecosystem for Performance: Integrating Learning; August

2017

Improving Performance: Resources and Recognition are Must-Haves;

February 2017

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About Aberdeen Group

Since 1988, Aberdeen Group has published research that helps

businesses worldwide to improve their performance. Our analysts derive
fact-based, vendor-neutral insights from a proprietary analytical
framework, which identifies Best-in-Class organizations from primary
research conducted with industry practitioners. The resulting research
content is used by hundreds of thousands of business professionals to
drive smarter decision-making and improve business strategies.
Aberdeen Group is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.

This document is the result of primary research performed by Aberdeen

Group and represents the best analysis available at the time of
publication. Unless otherwise noted, the entire contents of this publication
are copyrighted by Aberdeen Group and may not be reproduced,
distributed, archived, or transmitted in any form or by any means without
prior written consent by Aberdeen Group.

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