Elearning! Feb-Mar

FEB-MAR 2015

Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.

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20 February / March 2014 Elearning! consumerization information more intelligently where it is needed through social fltering." 3 BYOD (Bring Your Own Device): Granted, BYOD is a disruptive phenomenon. But managing growing workforce expectations around mobility can further integrate employee work life and home life. Your employees use many devices, and they expect to use any device or application anytime, anywhere. 4 MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses): These courses promote unlimited participation and open access via the Web. MOOCs — first introduced in 2008, emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012 — further enable employees to integrate their work lives and home lives. 5 Independent contractors: As a com- pany gets "fatter," use of experts, contractors and consultants become more the norm. If the needs and wants of an organization can be perfectly matched with the products and/or services of an independent contractor, both the organization and the contractor can proft. In today's world, according to McCulloch and Rogers, "learning needs to be woven into the fabric of what employees are doing, not necessarily as a separate activity. Tere will always be a need for classroom, focused learning, particularly around formal recognition (like certifcation). Te only true competitive advantage employees and employers have is the ability to learn and then apply that learning for success." ALGORITHMS AND ANALYTICS Forward-thinking corporations can take a hint from some of the most popular technological advances that are today being offered to consumers. Services like Yelp, Netflix, Kickstarter and even Match.com can have productive and profitable business applications. YELP is a peer-group rating system with 138 million monthly users who post 61 million reviews and ratings. Corporations have begun using this kind of technology for projects that are enhanced by initiatives utilizing crowd- sourcing. Just think about how employees are currently working on projects. Even on an individual basis, group ratings can be instrumental in helping solve problems, and they give other employees the opportunity to congratulate a peer on a "job well done." With this technology, an HR director can also make performance reviews very dynamic on a yearly, quarterly or even project-to-project basis. Potentially, a company can ultimately get all the "star-system" ratings incorporated into one rating for a particular employee or contractor. NETFLIX, the motion picture and TV show "smart" service is what's called a "conscious delivery mechanism." It's used by 44 million subscribers. Because subscribers can comment on what they watch, it's also has an extremely social component. And the system itself can also make recommendations based on an individual's viewing habits. Te algorithms that drive Netfix are the same kind of algorithms that can drive career-development components of a learning or talent system. Employees interested in adding to their education can get courses or MOOCs tailored to their new-found interests. Such a system could also recommend other courses that are pertinent to what that employee needs to get to the next level. One other beneft of this type of technology is that it is a perfect vehicle for making peer and social recommendations ("I loved this class," "I hated this class," "Take this class instead"). KICKSTARTER is a technology that provides revenue crowd-sourcing for unfunded or under-funded but otherwise worthwhile and/or popular projects. So far, Kickstarter has provided more than 70,000 projects with $1.3 billion worth of funding. And Kickstarter projects not only potentially repay with interest, but the technology allows for a reward system (for instance, a red carpet pass to a movie opening that has been produced with Kickstarter funds). In the enterprise, you might have a project for which volunteers are needed. Te project itself might help those volunteers skill-build and can provide rewards by participating in the project. One of this magazine's Learning! 100 companies is an interesting example. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) global leadership development program builds teams of managers from all over the organization who don't even know each other. Te teams are charged with recommending new corporate initiatives. At the end of the project, instructors and managers vote for the program that has the most business impact, and that program is Much of the impetus to adopt consumerized learning comes from younger, computer-savvy workers. And by 2020, Millennials will comprise 50 percent of the domestic workforce.

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