Earlier this week, we had the pleasure of hosting our first webinar of 2016 with special guests: Don Taylor (Long-time veteran of the learning space and currently the Chairman of the Learning and Performance Institute) and Carol Leaman (CEO of Axonify). The webinar focused on the results of a survey, which asked participants to identify the trends that are going to be ‘hot’ in workplace learning this year. Having moderated many of our webinars before, I can easily attest to the fact that this one was highly engaging. The chat window was very active. We had a total of 362 unique comments in a 60 minute session (which averaged out to a comment every 10 seconds!). Clearly, a lot of folks are excited for what 2016 will bring to the world of corporate learning. We are too! Here are three interesting takeaways from the webinar: 1. Personalization and Collaboration have consistently been important. For the last three years in a row, these two trends have consistently been in the top three results and don’t forget, this is a global survey. What we’re hoping to see this year is a better distinction of the difference between personalized and adaptive learning. If you’ve already started personalizing learning in your organization, you’re certainly on the right track; however, to make learning even more relevant therefore, engaging it has to also be adaptive. From a social/collaborative learning perspective, a real challenge that organizations will face this year (and in the coming years) is knowledge transfer from the baby boomers to the millennials. Does your organization have a way of identifying experts on certain topics? Have you also created a system that allows employees to have easy access to learn from these identified experts? 2. Microlearning is on its way up the hype curve. There was a lot of discussion on the webinar about the topic of Microlearning (In fact, we did a whole separate webinar on Microlearning in December of 2015). We anticipate that this year, Microlearning will begin to take center stage as a strategy to deal with knowledge decay and to help with increasing speed to competency. To really get the full value out of Microlearning, you need to combine it with elements of brain science, personalization and proven methods of engagement, like gamification. Toward the end of the webinar, Carol shared stories of organizations that have been successful at driving bottom-line results with this approach to learning. 3. The formula doesn’t need to be complicated. It needs to be focused. How to make 2016 a great year in L&D? share-play-find-try, or as Robert Mapstead put it in today’s @Axonify webinar: 分享游戏找到试试 — Donald H Taylor (@DonaldHTaylor) January 20, 2016 Toward the end of the webinar, an attendee asked a very good question: "How can we embrace, internalize and make happen some of these ‘hot trends’ in our organization - if we haven’t already started?" To this question, Don had a simple formula: Share, play, find and try. Firstly, share and learn from others, ask questions and network with others instead of spending hours researching something. Secondly, play around and try out what you’re going to do in order to get a feel for what it might be like in your environment. Thirdly, find a manager who gets it and is willing to try it out, no need to go big here, you’re just looking to build a case. Trying it out is actually the final step in the process. What we would add at the end here is to center your efforts around a business problem. This way when you’re building a case and presenting it to your stakeholders, you can demonstrate the potential impact on the business. Which trends are you most excited to see come to life in your organization this year? Which trends are you most afraid of? Tell us below and in case you missed the webinar, you can catch the on-demand version at any time. Written by Shum Attygalle

An Interview with Learning & Performance Consultant JD Dillon on metrics L&D should value to prove learning success in business I recently had the pleasure of speaking with JD Dillon (pictured right), an experienced, active and well-respected proponent for improving corporate learning and development. JD authors his own Just Curious Learning Blog and speaks regularly at the industry’s top learning conferences. Most recently, he served on the ATD 2016 TechKnowledge Conference Program Advisory Committee where he led a session entitled: Reworking the Puzzle: How to Build a Smarter Learning Ecosystem. Here’s what JD had to say about learning metrics and how to tie learning to bottom-line business results. Axonify: Most large organizations have an LMS in place. What are the top ten learning metrics you can pull from a typical LMS? JD Dillon: I’d really have to stretch to find ten useful pieces of data that I can pull from a traditional LMS. This data is typically limited to logistical details about specific training events and includes items like: Completions Level 1 survey feedback Level 2 assessment scores Training session dates/times Training hours associated to specific objects Assignment/registration info Organizational hierarchy info pulled from HRIS Axonify: How does this data help you understand and measure learning? JD Dillon: It doesn’t. While you can tell who attended and completed training and what they scored on any assessment, that doesn’t necessarily indicate learning, or more importantly, performance improvement. A traditional LMS doesn’t offer effective ways of tracking knowledge growth over time, or correlating training activity to real-world performance. Unfortunately, the limited data collection and reporting capabilities in an LMS prompt L&D organizations along with stakeholders to value the wrong data simply because it’s available. While I do care about resource utilization and formal training attendance, I really care about the connection between those data points and business KPIs, a connection that LMSs do not make easy to establish. Axonify: How do you or other professionals in your industry use this data (or is it just data that’s collected but not used)? JD Dillon: Based on my experience and ongoing conversations with peers across industries, I’d say that we don’t leverage data very effectively as an industry. This starts with a lack of effort in designing learning towards the collection of meaningful data. Then, because our systems do not support effective data collection/analysis, we are left with limited options. We also do not stress data analysis as a core L&D competency, which limits our ability to improve the situation in terms of selecting better systems and designing to ensure measurable outcomes. The order-taking nature of L&D also disrupts our ability to meaningfully use data, as it requires focus on long-term objectives rather than short-term deliverables and check-in-the-box completion. Finally, we limit ourselves by separating "training data" from "business data." It can be extremely challenging or impossible to locate and correlate information from various business units, including sales, customer service, quality, HR, L&D, etc., and therefore people often don’t make the effort. This means we fail to gain valuable insights into performance. Axonify: What data would be meaningful for measuring learning and tying it to business results? JD Dillon: Trends. An effective measurement strategy must take long-term changes in performance into account and connect them to learning opportunities. This starts with subjective and objective performance measures. In addition to hard metrics like sales, customer satisfaction, and quality feedback, we must collaborate with managers to capture behavioral insights into performance that don’t specifically appear in reports. At the same time, we must select and effectively integrate systems and processes that help us collect data on how employees are using support resources, including learning content. This includes everything from employee traffic flow through content repositories to knowledge assessment scores and practice session observations. We can then identify trends over time from this "learning data" and connect these patterns to changes in performance. This will help us ask more informed, meaningful questions when performance gaps are identified as we look for the best ways to support the organization. Axonify: How would you recommend L&D professionals get started on identifying and measuring the most important learning data? JD Dillon: Get more comfortable with data, especially information outside the traditional realm of L&D. Do your research. Take advantage of shared resources. Enroll in online classes to enhance your measurement, reporting, and analysis skills. Then, focus on performance. Find partners who have access to and experience with high-value performance data within your organization. Work to become experts with this reporting so you can, not only speak the language of the business, but also design learning and support strategies that target the right data for the purpose of finding meaningful connections. Continue to use learning data to inform your questions and decision-making, but focus on the measurements that are most valued by your partners across the business. Is this your challenge? Next week, we’ll feature a post about how to turn learning measurement on its head. We’ll take you through a business-first approach that focuses on key business objectives and then uses those objectives to drive your learning programs. Written by Richele Black

For L&D to prove real business value, it’s more important than ever to couple employee learning more tightly to business results. What we’ve discovered—and companies including Walmart and Bloomingdale’s, have proven—is that when you focus on business objectives first and then create a corporate training program that aligns with those objectives, you can achieve the goals of the business and, ultimately, prove impact. Sounds simple enough, right? Not so fast. Unfortunately, the reality is that many organizations we speak with have this process backwards. They create corporate training programs that may provide all kinds of interesting information, but this information doesn’t line up with key business objectives that help individuals, teams, departments and divisions achieve specific goals that really have a measurable impact on the business as a whole. To achieve any business outcome, employee knowledge and behaviors must be aligned with this outcome. Think of it this way, what your employees do each day directly impacts their ability to achieve performance objectives. And what they know directly impacts what they do. So, here’s our 4-step approach for applying a business-first approach to learning in a real work environment: Begin with the end in mind: Focus on business objectives first. Then, define departmental and individual objectives. Ultimately, you need to understand the specific business outcome(s) you want to achieve. If you don’t know what the corporate goals are, you can’t create a training program to support these goals. So, the first thing you need to do is to work with the business to obtain these objectives. An example of an overall corporate business objective might be to reduce work-related injuries by 10%. To meet this objective, the warehousing operation determines it needs to reduce forklift accidents by 50%. For each individual forklift operator, this might mean s/he must meet an objective of no more than one forklift safety incident per year. Define the job actions (behaviors) employees need to take to achieve those objectives The second part of the process involves digging deep into the ideal behaviors (job actions) that workers will need to perform consistently to achieve those outcomes. One fairly common source of forklift accidents is tipovers caused by improperly loaded items. If we break this down further into specific behaviors that are required to prevent tipovers, these might include: Keeping each load within load limit recommendations. Positioning the load according to the recommended load center. Not adding extra weight to counterbalance an overload. Keeping loads close to the front wheels to keep the lift truck stable. Identify the learning content employees need in order to be able to perform key job actions (behaviors) Once specific behaviors are defined, the next step involves building knowledge so employees have the information they need to perform these behaviors correctly. We recommend using microlearning content delivered in short bursts (as frequently as daily) to build knowledge and keep it top of mind. For our forklift example, microlearning content around keeping each load within load limit recommendations could include information about: Acceptable load weights Acceptable container sizes How to lift a load properly Continually monitor job actions (behaviors), measure results and adjust to optimize impact By defining granular behaviors, like those above, as well as the specific content that helps employees understand and apply these behaviors, you have a consistent way to observe these behaviors and measure each operator’s results. For example, a manager could regularly document the desired operator behaviors, such as: # of loads kept within recommendations. How frequently the operator positions the load properly. If the operator ever adds extra weight as a counterbalance. Average distance loads are held from the front wheels. By continually measuring knowledge growth against the application of defined behaviors on the job, you can easily identify where employees are having success and where they are having difficultly. Similarly, by measuring behaviors according to defined objectives, you can determine if these behaviors are actually having a positive impact. If you notice any issues, this allows you to adjust defined behaviors and associated learning content proactively to help identify the right knowledge and the right job actions to achieve the business objectives you set out to accomplish. For example, if the operator is still experiencing tipovers, documenting the behaviors will help identify where operation can be improved, which will also identify where the operator needs either additional learning or mentoring to achieve the defined objectives. This becomes an iterative process: evaluating job behaviors and comparing them against performance, identifying deficits, and delivering learning to eliminate the deficits. From here, L&D tracks learning success on each of the learning topics, correlates that with data regarding improvements in observed behaviors, and works with managers to relate behavior improvements to performance improvements. It’s an easy step, then, to link performance improvements to achievement of departmental objectives. We hope you’ll give this approach a try and look forward to hearing your results. Written by Carol Leaman

Post game celebration, confetti flying. Tons of fun even though our Steelers didn’t make it Garret Grahonya is still feeling the effects of Super Bowl fever. The L&S Toyota sales consultant beat out thousands of his peers from every district across the United States in an Axonify-inspired competition Toyota ran to increase product knowledge. The top prize was an all-expenses-paid trip to Super Bowl 50 in Santa Clara, California—only awarded to 3 employees (one from each division). We wanted to hear more about the Grahonya’s Super Bowl experience, get the deats on the competition and find out about how he uses Axonify at the dealership he works at in Beckley, West Virginia. Here’s what he had to say: Axonify: When were you introduced to Axonify? Garrett Grahonya: Axonify was introduced as an additional learning tool for us about a year and a half ago. Most of us utilize the app through our mobile phones and tablets. I use it primarily on my phone. We get little alerts and it will let us know when we have available questions to answer. Axonify: What do you think about the knowledge platform? Garrett Grahonya: I like the format. The way Toyota has set up its training with Axonify is through microlearning sessions. You have a lot of things going on throughout the day and you don’t want to be immersed for long periods of time doing training. But with those quick everyday reminders on certain facts and certain tools they want you to know, once those become a little repetitive, it becomes ingrained in your daily activities when you’re with the guest. So, I really do like the format in that it’s kind of short, quick learning and you can take that and go without feeling like it’s a chore. Axonify: Has Axonify ever helped you in a sales situation? Garrett Grahonya: It definitely helps to differentiate. We have so many different makes and models of cars and it helps give you the specifications to talk about. You’ll have some people come in and they’ll want to know differences, like why is this car five thousand dollars more. And you need to be able to answer that pretty quickly or you kind of lose your legitimacy as a salesperson. So, all of the specifics that are given to you in Axonify—each and every answer—if you can hold on to that information, it’s definitely going to help you sell a few more cars in our case. Axonify: Do you think it’s helped you sell more cars? Garrett Grahonya: Absolutely! It’s tough to put a number on it, and there are so many things, like the market criteria that make it hard to pinpoint the numbers, but last year, I had my best sales year ever. And, of course, being goal-oriented, you always want to improve upon that, but I definitely felt Axonify helped to contribute toward that. Axonify: You definitely have a lot of product knowledge to emerge as the winner (in your division) of Toyota’s nationwide competition that’s based on knowing information about its vehicles. Garrett Grahonya: It’s kind of instilled in our dealership to be on top of the product knowledge. If you’re going to be there, you’re asked to be a professional and to really know your skill and know your product and the whole customer service side as well. So, they’re very big on making sure that this knowledge is instilled in their sales associates. After 10 years, it’s kind of become ingrained in me. You see people come and go and the success that follows for those that embrace that versus those that don’t. So, you have to stay on top of your game and you’ve got a lot of competition too. We’re in an area with a lot of dealerships. So, you have to set yourself apart a little bit. Axonify: Can you tell me more about the product knowledge competition you participated in through Toyota? Garrett Grahonya: It was primarily Axonify based. The Axonify application was the starting process for the whole competition, which started in October or November last year. Every day, we’d each have three questions. (It was only a micro session, so you were only taking it for a couple of minutes). So, out of the week, you could total 21 possible answers. First, it started out that had to participate every day. The current totals weren’t that important. Then, as time went on you had to get 80% correct or do training at least 3 days minimum. So there were different criteria. Every now and then they would throw in an activity on one of Toyota’s websites where you had to go in and participate or make a comment on a certain topic or things like that, but the majority of it was based on the questions through Axonify. If you got all the points for that week, say week 1 was a 50-point week and you had to do 4 different tasks, including answering a certain number of questions for that week, you would be rewarded 50 points. The next week, the criteria would be a little tougher and there would be more possible points. So, it was more and more important as the competition went on to make sure you met all the criteria because if you missed out on those points, it would be really tough to compete with the folks who were getting those points. Once that first 11 or 12 weeks went by, then the qualifiers were announced and we went on to a jeopardy-type competition. I think there were 5 topics with 4 questions, each with numeric values, just like in jeopardy. So, you went online to the jeopardy game Toyota created to answer as many questions correctly as you could in a set timeframe. And if you got the answer wrong, you lost the points. Once the time was out, you risked points, based on the topic given for the final question round. They would give you a topic and let you know what the question was going to be related to and, based on your confidence level, you would risk the number of points you felt comfortable with to go into that final question. So, after all of that was said and done, the tallies were taken and, then, they weeded that down into one person in each category in each of the competing regions. And then all of that took place a second time in the exact same format, except in the finals format there were two rounds of questions, instead of just the one. And again, the same final jeopardy format in which you would total your answer or tally your points and risk the appropriate amount that you felt comfortable with going into that final answer. So, after all that was said and done, there was a period of waiting before they announced the winners. Axonify: How did Toyota notify you that you had won for your division and that you would be sent on an all expenses paid trip to the Super Bowl? Garrett Grahonya: Well, they sent me an email. It was kind of funny. My wife was already in bed and just before midnight (I kind of stay up a little later than I should sometimes), I decided I would just check my email for work purposes. I had received the email a couple hours prior that I was the winner. And so, here I am, almost asleep and I need to get up early for work the next morning. I have no one to talk to this about because my wife’s in bed and I’m the only one up, so it was a couple of hours before I was able to calm down a little bit. It was very exciting. But, it was kind of strange. Normally, you want to celebrate or call someone, but at that time of the night, that really wasn’t appropriate. So I had to sit there all by myself with all that nervous tension and excitement and wait until the following morning. I woke up my wife a little early that morning to make sure she knew what was going on. Axonify: Tell me about your experience at the 2016 Super Bowl. Garrett Grahonya: Toyota really did a great job. Knowing other people who have won trips through the company, I’ve always heard how well you’re treated and pampered and that definitely held true. We were picked up at the airport in a fancy car and they had reservations at one of the nicest hotels. We had a large bus that could have probably seated 50 people for only a dozen of us. We had a tour guide, a representative from Toyota that handled all the planning of where we needed be and when and they made sure we were just really taken care of. At the game, we had access to a really nice restaurant that was in the stadium from a prominent chef, Michael Mina. Really top end. We were in the lower level, right below the CBS broadcast booth, pretty close to the end zone where most of the score was taking place at the the beginning of the game. So, we got to see quite a bit. We were very close to all of the announcers and we saw several famous people too on the trip. So, it was really exciting for us, being from a small town here in West Virginia. They just really pampered you and made sure everything was very seamless. So the representatives from Toyota were great. All the people from San Francisco were great. It was a very friendly city and they were really on their game in terms of making sure the people coming in for the Super Bowl left with a positive experience, which we all did. Axonify: Are you planning to try and win next year? Garrett Grahonya: Well, sure, Yeah. Now that I know it can happen it’s even more of a boost of confidence. Axonify: What’s your strategy? Garrett Grahonya: Just to try to be diligent. You know, do the training every day. With new products coming out every day, just try to stay on top of the changes and vehicles. It’s an ongoing evolution with all of our products, so we have to really try and stay on top of that and just study and take advantage of all the resources that are available to us through the dealership and from Toyota. Axonify: Now that you’ve had this experience, what would you say is the main benefit of Axonify? Garrett Grahonya: The ultimate benefit is the regularity of having the information in front of you for the benefit of your job. You know, we all want to do great at our job. If you have all the proper tools, all the answers, all the information your customers are requesting as well as some of the information, maybe they don’t know they’re requesting, if that helps you sell even one more car, then it’s been a big benefit. And we all feel like that’s what Axonify has done. Axonify: How would you describe Axonify in one word? Garrett Grahonya: I’ll do two words: Moving Forward. That’s Toyota’s slogan and I think that it helps us move forward.

As the old adage goes, "The customer is always right!" So, I decided to ask some of our customers how they would characterize the Axonify Employee Knowledge Platform in one word. They’re definitely right. Here’s what they had to say:   Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s Imperative. If you are not doing a program like this today, you are missing opportunities in your organization really to improve them and add value in the process. Dorothy Tenute - National Training Manager at Toys"R"Us Canada It is innovative. It delivers results. It’s user-friendly. That was way more than one word. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers The one word that came to my mind was vibrant. And I think it is because, in my mind anyway, vibrant describes a very vivacious alive, colourful, kaleidoscope of possibilities. Peter Sprague - Senior Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Ceridian HCM Easy and impactful. I’ll take three words. Brittny Kinnaman - Learning and Development Specialist at Bimbo Bakeries Fun is the word that I hear the most from people and I think it it’s fun, so fun. Kaven Delarosbil - Communication Advisor at Uni-Select Human. I would say human because we develop our employees; we train them; we support them; we are there for them, So, yeah, I would say, human. Mia Phillips - National Manager of Dealer Education Strategy and Digital Solutions at Toyota Engaging. I would call it engaging… I would say that the precepts and principles around Axonify, the bite sized learning, when you need it at your fingertips, easy access has actually changed our mindset about training and learning all together. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers Axonify to me just makes me want to shout on the house tops because there are so many possibilities and so many avenues of delivering content to people in a way they can understand it. Want to learn more about why our customers love using Axonify in their environments? Check out some of our customer success stories. Written by Richele Black   The post In a word: Here’s how Bloomingdale’s, Toys"R"Us, Toyota and others describe Axonify appeared first on Axonify.

Everyone’s excited about the promise of microlearning and rushing to jump on the bandwagon. But there’s a misconception out there: If you simply break large training topics into smaller ones—for instance a 30-minute video into 1-minute clips—your training will be vastly improved. That’s just not true. Micro content isn’t enough by itself In fact, chunking learning topics into microlearning "bites" does nothing more than break the content down into smaller segments. While your employees can digest a small bit of knowledge much easier than a large slab, If you don’t use microlearning properly, you’re going to spend significant time replicating the existing problems of traditional training across hundreds or thousands of training modules. Let’s say you’ve chunked a 1-day onboarding program (perhaps 5 hours of content) into microlearning chunks. This means you might have between 50 and 100 microlearning chunks of approximately one to five minutes each. Do you expect an employee to log onto your LMS and systematically click through each chunk? The sheer volume of chunks would make even the most dedicated learner turn tail. Besides this, the same problem exists: The content still doesn’t lend itself to helping employees build up knowledge on the entire subject so they can remember it and then apply it on the job. 8 Microlearning Essentials A Microlearning solution must do the following for it to produce real learning results that have a significant impact on the business: Deliver bite-sized content in a consistent and effective way, using proven techniques for reinforcing information. This allows employees to thoroughly learn a topic, retain that knowledge for the long term and apply it on the job. Support multiple content formats (i.e. text, video, images, etc.) that allow information to be presented in the most effective way for learning. Provide personalized and adaptive learning experiences that fit with each employee’s job demands, adapt with his/her learning path and align with preferred ways of learning. Offer a gamified learning experience to engage employees continually in learning each and every day. Include modern social elements for collaborative learning with individuals across the organization. Ensure learning can be accessed from multiple devices, including mobile. Make all learning bites available on demand to allow employees to quickly search and select learning at the point they need it for the job. Offer tracking and measurement capabilities for measuring learning effectiveness and tying it to business results. Microlearning can be an extremely powerful tool to bring knowledge to your employees when and where they need it for the job. And when it’s delivered in a consistent, ongoing way, you have the ability to drive continuous learning, build up knowledge over time, and produce real behavior change that leads to improved job performance and significant business impact. Is this achievable? You bet! Read our new Microlearning White Paper to find out how you can deliver big impact in small bites. Written by Laura Martin The post The Microlearning Myth: Why you need more than bite-sized content to drive learning success appeared first on Axonify.

Robust employee knowledge is a critical component of optimal performance. After all, if employees don’t know, they can’t do. Unfortunately, when it comes to arming employees with the knowledge they need to execute their roles to the best of their ability, many organizations skip an important step: providing on-demand access to information. This is one of the most critical components of workplace knowledge. Here’s why… In reality, your organization’s information—the sum of all of the product details, processes, policies, and procedures that dictate how you do business—is the real foundation on which all other knowledge is based. But, rather than provide employees with direct access to the entirety of this information, managers typically engage in what I call "perceived importance" and decide what bits and pieces should be made available. This puts employees at a considerable disadvantage, as they are unable to take ownership of their own knowledge to meet their performance needs. And yet we often complain that employees always need to be spoon-fed! This hierarchical approach simply isn’t how information moves nowadays. After all, no one attempts to drip-feed you information at home. You are free to search the Internet and make the decisions necessary to locate the best possible information when you need it. It’s time we provided this same autonomy to employees as the foundation of our learning and performance strategy. It won’t be easy, and you can’t expect to change your organization’s approach to knowledge management over a few weeks, months, or perhaps even longer. But, for the long-term good of your people and your business, you have to get started. Here are 5 important steps you should take to establish on-demand access to information as the foundation of your learning and performance ecosystem: Establish a single-source repository When they don’t know where to go for information on the Internet, people typically start at a single access point: Google. Leverage this established behavior by curating all of your organization’s information in a single online repository. Move away from complex file structures, email attachments, and shared network drives and give your employees a single, searchable place to go when they need to find information quickly to do their jobs. Organize content by topic, not role Many existing knowledge management systems are hamstrung by hierarchical silos. Each team builds their own space with their own information and restricts access to just their own people. Again, this assumes that people only need certain information to do their jobs and inhibits collaborative learning. Overcome this problem by building and organizing information by topic rather than role. This will cut down on duplicative work and break down unnecessary silos through shared information. Install an organizational curator There’s A LOT of knowledge floating around your organization. Unfortunately, the majority exists only in the minds of your employees. Many companies take the time to formally document only vital processes and procedures—often, as required by regulation. To collect the full scope of organizational knowledge, create the formal role of curator. In addition to their content development ability and deep familiarity with all parts of the business, be sure this person (or team) is a skilled researcher who can both locate valuable information and, through effective curation, transform it into meaningful shared knowledge. Enable employee contribution As I mentioned, tacit knowledge is a massive gap when trying to collect shared organizational knowledge. A single curator likely cannot handle the total amount of information within even a medium-sized business. To truly scale your curation efforts, turn on the "save" button and allow your employees to contribute their knowledge. Provide simple, low-barrier opportunities for people to share their knowledge in the ways they prefer, such as basic text, documents, or video. Motivate employees to share valuable, relevant information in a timely way to support not only the organization, but also their peers and customers. Where necessary, establish guidelines and approval workflows to please all necessary stakeholders. Leverage peer recommendations, such as content ratings or other social triggers, to help bubble the best, most relevant information to the top and further simplify the user experience. Connect everything L&D does to curated information As the foundation of your learning and performance ecosystem, this curated information should be the basis of everything L&D does. When you hold an instructor-led event, be sure the information on which the course is based is available to employees. Deploying short bursts of microlearning for reinforcement? Link the content back to your shared information so employees can learn even more about the most important topics. Simply stated, don’t train it unless it’s available to all employees all the time. Establishing on-demand access to information as the foundation of your ecosystem will not only help you make better use of the other components in your learning and performance strategy, but also create an integrated, user-centric support system that enables your employees to truly boost their knowledge. How do you enable on-demand information access as a foundational component of your learning and performance strategy? What role does information access play in your larger ecosystem? Share your thoughts in the comments below! Written by JD Dillon The post Are you missing this critical step when trying to build workplace knowledge? appeared first on Axonify.

This past week, we had the pleasure of hosting a special webinar with Dani Johnson from Bersin on the topic of learning measurement. According to Bersin, the importance of using learning measurement as a way of demonstrating business impact is growing in importance; however, many L&D organizations are not very good at it. Here are three suggestions for how you can approach learning measurement with a new mindset: Don’t be afraid of it. We don’t have the tools to measure. We don’t have the people to measure. We don’t have the time analyze the little data that we do have. We don’t have budget. Fears around learning measurement are very real, but the truth is to fight this fear you need just one weapon: focus. With the correct focus, you can realign your tools, people, time and budget around impact. Start specific, start small, but just start. When you are thinking of a place to start, consider a business outcome first and work backwards from there. What behaviors will lead to a business outcome, what knowledge is required to perform those behaviors and what content is needed to fuel that knowledge. The more specific the outcome, the easier it becomes to measure the pieces that lead to it. Don’t think it’s impossible. Many other departments in your organization - Finance, Marketing, Sales, Operations - are using data to make decisions and demonstrate impact. They have been for a very long time. The argument that the tools for learning measurement do not exist is now simply untrue. There are many platforms in use today that can help piece together the measurement puzzle. What’s missing is the mindset. As the lens on learning measurement continues to get more focused, many L&D organizations are looking for ways to sharpen their existing measurement practices. What were some of your big takeaways from the webinar? If you missed it, you can catch it on-demand at any time. Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. Written by Shum Attygalle The post Learning measurement: Fear, initiative and possibility. appeared first on Axonify.

It’s Monday and I’m tired. But, I’m tired for the best possible reason. I just spent the past week with my Axonify teammates immersed in the world of learning and performance as part of the eLearning Guild’s 2016 Learning Solutions Conference & Expo (#LSCon). With this year’s theme "Sharing What Works," LSCon offered members of the learning and performance community a chance to come together and share stories. Successes and failures. Challenges and triumphs. It was a reminder that many L&D professionals are trying to solve the same problems within their unique organizations and can, therefore, provide significantly greater value by reaching out for support from talented peers as well as knowledgeable experts within the learning community. The Axonify team was hard at work throughout the event, delivering 5 sessions, exhibiting on the expo floor, and engaging in countless insightful and inspiring conversations with learning professionals who are passionate about making people better at the jobs they do every day. We were also honored to be recognized alongside Bloomingdale’s for the award for Best Alternative Vendor Solution during the DemoFest exhibition. When reviewing the conference schedule a few weeks ago, I noticed a series of emergent themes. These 5 themes were further reinforced as I attended sessions and spoke with participants throughout the event. Here’s my perspective on their significance: Modernization of Learning Multiple sessions addressed the future of learning, especially the evolution required within the next 5 to 10 years to ensure L&D continues to provide the best possible value to organizations that are constantly facing disruption in an ever-changing marketplace. While cutting-edge learning technology will certainly play a big part of this evolution, L&D professionals must also identify new and expanded roles to play while building their own professional skills along the way. Specifically, L&D must improve its ability to leverage the full workplace ecosystem and ask better questions by examining organizational data. The Human Side of Learning Regardless of industry or role, the people supported by L&D have one thing in common: they’re human. This reality, along with continued insights into the way our brains work, has pushed the science of learning into the forefront of industry discussion. L&D is beginning to recognize inherent capabilities and limitations while looking for ways to tailor training and performance support solutions to maximize human potential. Microlearning L&D professionals are trying to get past "microlearning" as a buzzword and find ways to bring the idea to life within their organizations. In addition to selecting the right tools, we must help L&D recognize that microlearning represents a paradigm shift in the way we support workplace learning. And rather than focusing just on the size of learning content,organizations must leverage bite-sized training in tandem with proven memory-building concepts, like interval reinforcement and retrieval practice, to realize its true value alongside other strategic learning and performance support capabilities. Gamification We’re entering a period of improved understanding and renewed excitement around gamification. Not only are we seeing more and more data on the effectiveness of game mechanics within the workplace, but L&D is able to integrate these concepts more seamlessly into learning solutions to create personalized, social, and mobile learning experiences. If L&D is strategic about its understanding and application of game mechanics, organizations will be able to reach employee engagement levels similar to those attained by consumer technologies. Video Using video to support learning is far from a new idea. In fact, the oldest "training video" available on YouTube dates back to 1941 (automobile sales). However, given the growing ubiquity of video in our everyday lives and ease of production, thanks to smart devices, L&D is exploring new ways it can be applied to aid learning and performance. As part of a series of sessions on the topic, I led a discussion on the ideal ways to leverage video, including applications beyond standard instruction and demonstration. My goal was to share ideas on how L&D can engage employees with immersing video storytelling along with interactive opportunities now available, thanks to livestreaming technology. While it’s impossible to document everything I took away from LSCon, these ideas were some of the most significant. I’d love to hear about your experience too, so feel free to share your key learnings in the comments below. Written by JD Dillon The post We are Better Together - Reflecting on 5 Key Themes at LSCon 2016 appeared first on Axonify.

Axonified customers use our Employee Knowledge Platform in a variety of applications and industries. We wanted to learn more about how Axonify is helping them to achieve their unique goals, so I asked them to share their experiences. Here’s what they had to say: Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s Axonify is giving us the ability really to educate associates, make them aware of changes in their behavior to really make a safe environment. We’ve had a lot of success with the program and the process and it has saved our organization, this past year, over 2.2 million dollars. Peter Sprague - Senior Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Ceridian HCM It solves a problem that’s been here for the 25 years I’ve been doing training and development. It just simply makes sense. It’s kind of like, "Why wouldn’t you do this?" is really how I look at the product. Mia Phillips - National Manager of Dealer Education Strategy and Digital Solutions at Toyota They told us. I mean they just talked about how great it was that Toyota was "tricking them" into learning about the product. How they’ve sold more vehicles as a result of Axonify, as a result of knowing the product better. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers Axonify has really made it more fun, more engaging, more relevant to the job that they are actually doing, so that our cashiers can actually see why they’re doing the training, why they’re preforming it the way they are because it’s actually teaching them what they need to know to be successful. And that’s what it’s all about. Brittny Kinnaman - Learning and Development Specialist at Bimbo Bakeries We identified safety, because of the manufacturing environment that we work in, as really a primary goal for us and saw the potential of Axonify to really do a lot of work with our safety program and building our safety culture across the company. As far as I know, since we’ve launched, two of the sites actually hit new safety milestones. Kaven Delarosbil - Communication Advisor at Uni-Select Warehouse employees, they don’t have emails; they don’t have computers. So, before we couldn’t reach them. We couldn’t communicate directly with them. So since we have the Axonify system, every time we have a communication from the management we push it through the platform. So, now we can reach all our employees across Canada. So, even in the office or warehouse, everybody gets the same message. Peter Sprague - Senior Manager of Sales Effectiveness at Ceridian HCM I’ve had a manager say to me, "I know this rep is not using Axonify because we were in a meeting and the client asked a question that I know is in Axonify and the rep couldn’t answer it. And I know other reps can answer that question, and I can answer that question, because I’ve had it before." So, that tells me it’s making a difference, right where we want it—in the interaction with the customer. It tells me, content wise, we’re developing the right content—which I think is a huge challenge for us—to make sure we’re giving them what they need. So, those are ways that I can tell it is making a difference. Dorothy Tenute - National Training Manager at Toys"R"Us Canada With omni-channel, it’s about how do we make things easy for the customer so they can shop how they want to shop and kind of like when and where they want to shop and how they want to shop. And so what’s great about the Axonify platform is, first of all, it enables us to reinforce those messages and that key content to our frontline employees. But, we’re also kind of mirroring the same philosophy. You’re able to get learning very quickly. It’s accessible. Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s When you think about Bloomingdale’s, 35% are millennials. They don’t want to learn in a classroom; they don’t want to learn from a book; they don’t want to learn from the posters that I had by the coworker door. They want this interactive process and we’re being able to satisfy that with Axonify. Rodric Hampton Mitchell - Senior Project Manager for Southeastern Grocers We’ve been able to, through the Axonify development process, determine the behaviours, specific behaviours that we want our associates to be able to exhibit when they’re interacting with customers. And when you do that, and every single associate in every single store, it makes a huge difference in the shopping experience for our customers. Kaven Delarosbil - Communication Advisor at Uni-Select The knowledge growth increased by, if I’m not mistaken, 18 or 20%. Mia Phillips - National Manager of Dealer Education Strategy and Digital Solutions at Toyota Through Axonify, it has gone from 68 to anywhere between 84 and 85%. So we’ve seen huge increases in knowledge retention. That’s been extremely important. Brittny Kinnaman - Learning and Development Specialist at Bimbo Bakeries Really, Axonify will teach anything you put into it. So, there is a lot of potential to really do anything you need it to do. Dorothy Tenute - National Training Manager at Toys"R"Us Canada I don’t want to think of what the environment would look like without Axonify. And what I see happening with Axonify is we truly are creating a learning culture in the stores and that informal learning culture. Chad McIntosh - VP of Loss Prevention and Risk Management at Bloomingdale’s In my 40 years of experience, this is probably the most innovative program that I’ve put in place in any of the positions that I’ve been in Retail and Loss Prevention. Want to learn more about how our customers are using Axonify in their environments? Check out some of our customer success stories. The post Bloomingdale’s, Toys"R"Us, Toyota and others tout the benefits of Axonify appeared first on Axonify.