10 Methods To Enhance Worker Upskilling In 2021
Content curation and employee training
The pandemic has accelerated massive change across all industries and sectors and brought L&D back into focus to help companies train their employees with the latest and most in-demand skills to compete at the highest levels. While continuous skill development has always been an integral part of L & D’s modus operandi, the pandemic has only increased the need for it.
According to the LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2021, education and retraining are high on the list of L&D experts (59%) as their top priorities worldwide. Deloitte’s Future of Learning Post COVID-19 report also mentions that at least 85% of organizations want their employees to develop some key human skills such as resilience, emotional intelligence and empathy.
The need and expectation are now clear that skill development must be a top priority on the company agenda [1].
Opportunities to promote employee training with content curation
One of the most effective and successful approaches to skill development is content curation and recommendation. At a time when content is abundant and learners are having a hard time choosing the right one for them, content curation helps them scour the ocean to find what meets their needs and is relevant to their needs [2].
In addition, skills have a shelf life, which means that training needs to be updated regularly to keep up with new skills as they emerge. Content curation helps fill competency gaps as it satisfies the need for continuous learning and development, and adds up-to-date, up-to-date content to learners. Learning curators can create micro-learning experiences broken down into learning paths or categories that fit more easily into learners’ schedules than formal training courses. Learners can complete competency training by accessing these bite-sized blocks of information based on need, time, and convenience.
Curating competency-based content to fill competency gaps
There is more to curating content than just collecting content or resources and sending that content randomly to learners. Learning curators identify, collect, rate, categorize and conceptualize content according to the learning needs of their learners before circulating it.
For this reason, curated content is considered one of the best training aids for skills development. Based on the skills learners need based on their needs and role in an organization, curated content can be shared with them in the format most suitable for them.
By offering the most relevant information, content curation can help learners avoid the burden of searching through endless resources to select the right content they need to develop the skills they need. This will help reduce their cognitive load and ultimately achieve focused learning.
Here are 10 things to keep in mind while using content curation and recommendation to fuel skill development in 2021 and beyond:
- Align the content strategy with learners’ needs by making sure they have the right platforms to express their feedback and provide input on what exactly they need to keep content relevant.
- Select the areas of competency for training that can clearly add to the business objectives. Emerging skills need to be focused as they can help learners adapt better to the changing world of work.
- Use competency-based content recommendations as learning resources to provide timely performance support, complement formal training, and promote informal and social learning.
- Build a dynamic team of curators who focus not only on curating content, but also reinventing strategies based on feedback and usage patterns. This ensures that initiatives like these are successful, engaging and motivating for learners.
- Give learners the flexibility to access the curated content however they want – on demand, on the go, and on any device of their choice.
- Encourage learners to make recommendations and contribute by highlighting how they have benefited from content recommendations.
- Offer learners tailored learning pathways based on their areas of interest, needs, and roles in the organization.
- Maintain continuous analysis and refinement of content to maximize the value of competency-based content recommendations.
- Schedule regular updates and refinements with feedback and input from subject matter experts to ensure the relevance of the curated content for learners.
- Archive the resources so that you can continue to access them in the future.
Bring away
With skills development set to dominate corporate learning landscapes in 2021 and beyond, it’s critical to curate relevant content to align it with new skills. Competency-based content curation will continue to be a crucial element of the L&D toolkit to support employees with further training and retraining.
References:
[1] Top employee development trends to watch by 2021
[2] 5 ways in which content relevance can lead to faster acceptance and impact of learning content
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