Ibec Academy | News and Emerging Trends

Learning to Learn in New Ways- A Core Competency for the Future

16 Nov 2021

The last 18 months has changed how we all work, live and interact with each other. Organisations need people who can learn in new ways, innovate and demonstrate resilience. How we prepare for the future and learn to lead ourselves and others in the months ahead, is something that we all need to learn quickly. Those who have an openness to learning and developing new skills, will be best positioned to help build and grow their teams and organisations.

In the 2021 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey, executives identified “the ability of their people to adapt, reskill, and assume new roles” as the top-ranked item to navigate future disruptions, with 72% selecting it as the most important or second most important factor. 41% of executives said that building workforce capability through upskilling, reskilling, and mobility is one of the most important actions they are taking to transform work. Employees also recognised the need to change as well, with 60% of the 10,000 workers in the 2021 Voice of the European Workforce study identifying “capacity to adapt” as the most relevant skill they will need to thrive in the workplace. So, learning to learn and being open to learning are critical competencies for every level within the workforce in the years ahead. Those who embrace this competency and develop this attitude are more likely to succeed as well as gaining personal mastery in their area of expertise.

Although developing your people and ensuring learning is central to every role is critical, building many of the core skills of management, leadership and the soft skills of emotional intelligence, interpersonal skills, coaching, influencing, dealing with conflict and more, have traditionally been developed in a face to face format.  2020 completely changed this.  We were all forced to rethink our approach to learning and development, especially at a time when learning new skills and equipping managers to support their people, while managing performance, engaging their teams and building the culture online, were critical.  New methodologies and ways of teaching and designing impactful learning had to be designed quickly as developing people could not be put on hold in the last 18 months.  The new normal is very different from before, and one that is continually evolving, so our approach to learning and development must continue to evolve and to reflect this.

Online learning has now become central to the way we continue to work and grow, to equip our people with the opportunities to learn new skills, knowledge and ways of working remotely. A key factor to consider as part of any programme design is that most people forget about 50 percent of what they learn within one hour of learning it and within one week, individuals only retain about 10 percent of what they originally learned, unless the learning is reinforced, practiced and applied. When on-line learning is designed in the right way, there is evidence that it can be more effective in a number of ways. Some research shows that on average, participants on programmes retain 25-60% more material when learning on-line compared to only 8-10% in a classroom. This is mostly due the fact that students can learn faster online; e-learning requires 40-60% less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting, because participants can learn at their own pace, going back and re reading, skipping or accelerating through concepts at their own speed. However, in order to get the full value from this new form of learning, there needs to be range of collaboration tools, engagement methods, case studies and reflective learning exercises to promote inclusion, discussion, review of ideas, and ultimately learning that makes a real impact.

Coaching is also a key way for organisations to embed a culture of learning retention and application of the learning. It takes a significant commitment to reinforce skills and methodologies, but it's well worth the effort. When managers coach their teams using a formal or dynamic process, it is likely to have a significant impact on results.  Learning and development, when combined with good, consistent coaching that's tightly integrated into the company's business processes, and delivered in a way to reinforce what the workforce has learned, drives behavioural change and leads to performance improvement. 

Designing programmes that are based on the learning needs of those taking part is even more critical now, as an increased sense of collaboration and involvement in the design of the programmes is key. Also, accountability and ownership for your own development is essential as learners need to see the value and importance of learning new skills, for them to really benefit from the development and to apply the learning to their own situations. 

Critically, investing in the personal growth and development of all levels of staff within the organisation, needs to be strategic priority for every organisation now. Developing a thinking and learning culture needs to become a core element of every business as the world of work continues to change at a rapid pace.  We have learned so much over what has been a challenging time, in terms of how to develop our people in new ways and with new methodologies. Organisations that recognise that all our people will need support and development for them to adapt and to grow, and who recognise that being people centred, are likely to thrive. Now that people are working some or all the time from home, learning is a way to focus on growing the skills needed to perform at your best and to deal with the challenges ahead, so learning to learn in new ways is here to stay.  

Jenny Hayes, Head of Ibec Academy