The top 5 ‘trends for 2020’ articles for L&D
It’s that time of year when ‘Trends for 2020’ articles become popular, so I’ve curated a round-up of the top 5 articles on key trends for 2020 that are specifically relevant to L&D professionals and those working in the digital learning tech sector. I’ve called out a few relevant highlights from each article but recommend you dive into these for some great insight into what’s kicking off the new decade.
If you’re short on time, head straight to the summary for my Top 5 Considerations for L&D in 2020 which distils the insights from these industry experts calling out UX, creating a culture for learning, a focus on human-centred skills, personalisation and upskilling & outsourcing as key themes and poses some essential considerations for your L&D strategy in 2020.
1. The 10+ Most Important Job Skills Every Company Will Be Looking For In 2020 – Bernard Marr (Futurist, Strategic Business Technology advisor)
Digital skills like data literacy & tech savviness feature in the list, but it’s the decidedly human-centred skills topping the bill, with critical thinking, adaptability & flexibility, creativity, emotional intelligence, cultural intelligence & diversity, judgement & decision making, and collaboration making up 7 of the top 10.
Leadership skills are also called out, demonstrating a continued need for excellent management leadership training, preferably alongside tailored mentoring and coaching. Some other skills are called out as an afterword around self-management skills, such as self-motivation, time management, and embracing change, which demonstrates the need for continued support for employees wanting to improve their personal effectiveness. Another afterword is stress management, which organisations could best foster with a solid strategy around health & wellbeing.
2. Top Digital Experience Trends for 2020 - Gartner
Gartner have identified 9 digital experience trends they recommend organisations explore in 2020.
Taking the user experience (UX) a step further with ‘multiexperience’, which will enable users to use touch, voice and gesture on their digital journeys with a unified approach across devices. Think ‘Minority Report’ for learners interacting with content. Obviously, with many corporate environments still 10+ years behind the curve of change (see Josh Bersin’s diagram ‘How Corporate Training Has Evolved’ for a timeline where you can consider where you currently sit), this will still be a fair way off but an interesting future direction, nonetheless.
Agent Interfaces – use AI to shift user’s attention from how a tool works to what they want to achieve with it. Chatbots and learning in the flow of work, anyone?
UX Research Renaissance – understanding the human psychology of successful design and designing great user journeys is increasingly seen as a key differentiator between organisations wanting to get the competitive edge. The same can be applied to L&D specific products and tools. There is no better opportunity for this than in the L&D digital transformation sphere, where this can be applied to L&D products and tools to drive learner engagement, staff retention, employee satisfaction and ultimately ROI through upskilling at the point of need. Make sure that the UX is prioritised as part of any learning initiative.
3. 18 Ways L&D Will Change By 2020 – Sean McPheat (CEO, MTD Training Group)
Although originally published in 2015, it’s always interesting to look back and see what’s transpired from earlier predictions of the future. So almost 5 years on and we can absolutely see learning being social and the need for it to be embedded in an organisation’s culture. A rise in apps and platforms enabling user generated content, and the rise of LXP’s facilitating more personalised and career orientated learning experiences. (Check out my article on the LMS vs LXP).
Sean mentions ‘a blurring between learning & work’, where L&D becomes part of the core working experience for most people pointing towards learning in the flow of work, and ‘a blurring of professional and private lives’, with technology being so integrated in our lives for our entertainment, learning, networking and work they will be ‘synergistically driving each other’. There is no doubt that these two trends must be facilitated by mobile – and that’s staff being enabled to use personal devises for work as much as it is providers providing app-based products. There are no excuses for providers not offering their tools via an app these days. With 5 billion people in the world who have a smartphone (that’s 65% of the total world population!) who is going to navigate to a browser to use a platform or tool?
Virtual collaboration rooms were billed to be the new learning classrooms. With the sharp rise in corporate use of Slack, Teams, Yammer and G-Suite (including Google Drive and Google hangouts), some learning providers have introduced integrations that facilitate learning in the flow of work. For a blended approach to learning programmes these tools also facilitate invaluable collaboration, ideas generation and peer to peer learning. Also you’ll often see your teams adopting consumer apps like WhatsApp and Facebook for communicating and collaborating and effectively creating their own digital classrooms to hang out in.
Finally, the article proposes that a ‘business’s tolerance for complacency will be lower than ever’, which dovetails neatly into the critical need for upskilling your teams for the modern economy (see article #1 with the most important job skills for 2020) and for embedding a culture for learning within your organisation so that your people can thrive.
4. Top 10 Digital Transformation Trends for 2020 (Forbes) – Daniel Newman (CMO Network)
Forbes have published this list of 10 digital transformation trends of which I’ve picked a few that will be key to L&D.
5G & faster wifi – user’s expectations will continue to rise as they get used to faster speeds, and the sophistication of the kind of L&D content that could be delivered to end-users will increase, meaning organisations will need to up their game when it comes to innovation and learning design.
Xaas – Everything-as-a-service will gain more momentum in the tech sector as more providers evolve their cloud solutions, providing everything in their portfolio as a service. This should certainly mean more platforms are scalable for smaller businesses with fewer users. This should enable smaller companies (with smaller L&D budgets) to have a more innovative provision of digital L&D content & tools.
Analytics –L&D will need to be leveraging sophisticated insight and providers should be providing the tools to empower this. You’ll also see ‘data literacy’ as one of the top digital skills for 2020 as the ability to visualise and interpret data becomes a more mainstream and required skill for every team.
Customer Experience (CX) / UX – putting the customer and user first and at the heart of any design. This is an essential paradigm shift that will make or break tech providers if they don’t embrace it, and a shift that L&D need to be prioritising in their strategies.
AI & Machine learning – this links in with CX/ UX as we see LXP style functionality being adopted by LMS providers and users expecting a more ‘consumer grade’ experience.
5. Fosway HR Realities Research - 2019-2020
Headline findings from this research by this leading HR Industry Analyst (involving 200+ HR leaders) echoes some of the key themes from this 2020 trend round-up, namely; future-fit skills, UX and increasing agility.
71% of HR leaders find it difficult to hire the skills they need in the modern economy and 22% find it very difficult.
93% of organisations find it difficult to hire the skills needed to succeed in the modern economy.
UX continues to be a significant driver for organisations looking to buy new systems.
Increasing agility is one of the biggest business drivers for HR leaders (89%)
Take a look at the paper for a more in-depth view.
So, finally you might be wondering what to do next. Here are my top 5 key questions for L&D to start considering as we head towards 2020.
Top 5 Considerations for L&D in 2020:
1. UX - Are your L&D tools and platforms engaging learners and providing the user experience that they would expect? Are you prioritising a seamless user journey?
2. Culture for learning - What are you doing to embed a learning culture that encourages the notion of ‘learning, unlearning and relearning’ (Alvin Toffler) and learning in the flow of work?
3. Human-centred skills - How are you facilitating the behavioural skills of the future (that Josh Bersin argued should be called ‘power skills’ as opposed to the often named ‘soft skills’ in this recent article) so that your workforce can thrive in the digital age?
4. Get personal - How are you ensuring a more personalised and skills orientated learning experience for learners?
5. Upskilling & outsourcing - What are you doing to upskill your teams for the modern economy, or outsource to supplement your internal workforce? There’s no doubt that internal employees need to be upskilled to stay relevant, but to enable transformation you also need an agile approach to hiring-in niche expertise. How will you approach your L&D digital transformation? Do you need support to find suitable partners?