4 Technologies to Boost Your Learning & Development Strategy

As attitudes towards learning in organizations shift away from a solely HR topic to one of a business advantage, Learning & Development (L&D) professionals are seeing more eyes turned on them to nurture employee-focused workplaces. And the markets show proof of this: the demand for L&D specialists increased 94% in July – September 2021, compared with April – June 2021; and HR Tech is among the top 3 of Europe’s most backed sectors in 2022, alongside Deep tech and Fintech.

Tackling these new responsibilities is an undoubted challenge that comes with growing performance demands. But thankfully technology is here to help automate and scale such tasks! Here are 4 types of technologies you can include in your L&D plans to support and enhance your company’s learning and development activities.

• Centralize L&D Courses in Ecosystems 
• Learn Anywhere with Mobile 
• Create High-Impact Content with Authoring Tools 
• Personalize eLearning Content with AI 

1. Centralize L&D Courses in Ecosystems

While learning ecosystems are not a new thing, they are here to stay. The term “learning ecosystem” refers to a digital environment that consolidates training content, learning analytics, and feedback tools, and is available to all employees, regardless of their geographical location.

Since there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for a learning ecosystem, it’s crucial to prioritize what’s needed for your company’s ecosystem before selecting a vendor. Typically, learning ecosystems include a learning management system, a knowledge database, intranet, survey tools, data management, reporting features, etc.

The benefits of a well-customized e-learning ecosystem include:

• Save time by consolidating corporate learning management
• Reduce costs related to in-person training
• Optimize software costs through global contracts
• Collecting and visualize data about all the learning happening in the company
• Track and measure learning KPIs and ROI

2. Learn Anywhere with Mobile

It is predicted that the mobile learning market could be worth $80.1 billion worldwide by 2027 thanks to factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, Millennials making up 75% of the workforce by 2025, and the growing number of mobile users.

The ability to learn on-the-go has a lot of benefits. In fact, 71% of Millennials say they connect more with mobile learning than L&D activities delivered via desktop or formal methods.

With a mobile-first audience, offering mobile learning opportunities is essential when developing your learning ecosystem. However, in addition to finding the right technical solution you might also need to adjust your content for microlearning. This means breaking content into multiple shorter modules as learners typically spend up to 10 mins on one interaction compared to 30 mins during desktop-based learning.

3.Create High-Impact Content with Authoring Tools

There’s no lack of authoring tools that can help you and your team produce the growing amounts of learning content demanded. The main challenge is identifying the right one.

Depending on your company’s requirements, such tools can provide you with pre-built course templates and tutorials you can adapt for your organization. Another advantage is that most of them provide step-by-step guides that allow you to build engaging learning materials, even with little experience on such tasks.

When selecting an authoring tool, consider the types of content it supports and what you would like to offer learners. Most advanced tools can help you create various types of learning materials: articles, videos, audios, quizzes, etc. while some of them are only focused on one content type.

4. Personalize e-learning Content with AI

The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in e-learning has led to massive optimizations and improvements in the process and outcome of work done by L&D professionals. Some examples include:

• AI-powered chatbots integrated in corporate e-learning ecosystems can assist employees’ navigation through learning materials and knowledge databases, while also collecting and analyzing data about frequently asked questions
• Adding AI algorithms to learning systems can help individual users achieve their learning goals faster by personalizing learning content
• AI-driven language tools like Milengo’s AI Voiceover Pro combine AI-optimized voices with human quality checks to deliver localized e-learning content while saving you up to 70% compared to the cost of traditional voiceover
• AI-based predictive analytics tools can analyze users’ performance, feedback, and knowledge gaps

In summary, as more companies reshape corporate learning to future-proof workforces and increase employee engagement, the use of technology is essential to drive and measure the impact of L&D courses in global workplaces in a cost-effective manner.

In this regard, one of the most important challenges for L&D professionals is to optimize their finite resources to create engaging content and deliver ROI – all while allocating time for personal learning and development. L&D teams who adjust to this new digital era of learning and embrace innovation to automate and assist their work will have a competitive advantage.