8 Reasons to Invest in L&D

Everyone is cash strapped these days.  So, it is a tough ask to invest slim dollars into learning and development projects.

Here are some good reasons to make your case with the people who hold the purse strings, no matter if it’s a company, educational institution or government department.

1. Make sure your L&D team has the latest technology at its fingertips.   There are constant advancements in ways you deploy and create your learning management system. For example, hosting your LMS on a cloud-based platform is a service My Learning Space provides which can free you up from managing LMS performance. Let somebody else look out after the data migration and keeping the system up and running and secure.
2. Collaboration is key through “online communities”. If you are part of a dispersed L&D team, you should create online forums for swapping ideas on what skills really need to be mastered in any learning situation. This isn’t lip service. It’s a way to really share ideas that will make a better product, particularly in a decentralised workforce.
3. Focus on the content you really want, and this means be judicious with the free material that is available through MOOC’s and other sources like TED talks. The temptation is to adopt the attitude of, “Why re-invent the wheel?” But the reality is you should focus on the business requirements at hand and the content you will need to achieve those objectives.
4. Which brings us to the next point—most organisations already have heaps of training content that can be re-purposed and delivered over a learning portal.  This may include paper-based training manuals which can form the basis for a new learning program.
5. Many LMS companies are mindful that their enterprise solutions are not learner-centric but a human resource platform that happens to include an LMS. Not particularly user friendly. My Learning Space and Totara, are companies that focus on learner outcomes, not just a data bank of information that happens to include training.   We can show you how to best use existing content and focus on necessary new content development.
6. Blended learning has its place. Most effective elearning programs combine a suite of strategies to deliver the best outcomes for the spend.   eBooks, videos, and interactive scenarios are a good foundation for highly focused and short face-to-face training sessions. The skills can be practiced in context.
7. There’s a place for gamification in learning systems, but it can be overrated. Some companies spend a lot of bucks to create flash-based carnival games to teach concepts. The wheel-of-misfortune, tossing a virtual ball at a pop-up clown, and a shooting gallery may be fun to play in a virtual environment, but let’s face it, how much of that knowledge is sticking? And how much focused knowledge are you rewarding with gamification badges? Worth thinking about.
8. Don’t be afraid to blend all these approaches to create an engaging learning experience for your trainees. There is a place for all of them. A lot of hard work, trial-and-error, and technological advances make this a very exciting time for L&D developers to mix and match.

My Learning Space offers a free L&D health check, which will give you a good idea where you stand in the learning management system process.