Will social media change the training landscape?
Companies are using social media tools to build brands for their products and services, capture new knowledge and best practices for company processes, collaborate across the organization, increase innovation, recruit new workers, and train employees, but they are also using them to recruit top talent and onboard new employees. By reframing the use of social networking technology, companies can increase communication, collaboration, problem solving, and competitive advantage with little cost. – From The Changing Learning Landscape, by Paula Ketter, American Society for Training and Development (read the entire post here)
Social media is not just changing how companies are marketing to their customers – it’s changing how they train their workers as well. Today’s demand for real-time information has changed the training landscape nearly as much as the Internet did. New buzzwords are emerging on the training landscape that is actually driving more business for training companies, while making the training experience for workers much more engaging. Nano learning, for example, means short stints of learning that last from 90 seconds to 3 minutes. Often it’s delivered via a mobile device to an salesperson in the field, or a remote worker at home.
Companies that deliver a wide variety of training services like Carlton Training may benefit the most from this kind of training deployment. Instead of developing day to week-long programs, many training companies will be developing modules that could be as short as five minutes. As information changes, the ability to change one module without having to rehaul the entire program will be a huge cost savings.
Internally, many companies are setting up special wikis that are replacing information found formerly on the company’s intranet including HR policies, onboarding materials, and of course social media policies themselves.
Training and development will eventually become as real-time as many other of the communications-based activities all companies must do in order to grow. Instead of measuring their social media success by customer engagements, they’ll be measuring employee engagement as well.
Tags: social media and training, training, using social media for training
September 2nd, 2010 at 3:31 am
I’ve noticed one good case of this – as a colleague who trains people in computing systems has moved from real-life training to online internet-led systems. A little less human though, but the commute’s less!
I notice that my learning style has changed – although I’ve not experiences Nano learning. Although that’s less of a result of digital technology, and more because I have 12 minutes to read on my commute! I’d be astonished to learn that people can genuinely learn sensibly in such short a time!
September 2nd, 2010 at 5:42 am
Your facts are too good and much informative.I’m much impressed with your blog.thanks for sharing this with all…
September 2nd, 2010 at 10:07 am
I’ve actually noticed that since I have access to a virtually unlimited wealth of information at my fingertips, my retention for information has dropped significantly. It’s not like how it was when we had to go out and painstakingly research.
September 14th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Impressed idea…developed a tool that will change the way small business reach.
September 26th, 2010 at 1:29 am
This is very interesting. This could be a great way to help us train guides for our tours, it gives the opportunity to send updated information out to guides who may be in different locations. Nano learning could also be a good idea as the back ground to the tour is complex and very detailed.
September 27th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Elayne, I’m determined to get to New Zealand to go on the tour!
December 16th, 2010 at 6:34 am
Maybe social media is changing companies they train their workers, but it will disappear in time as every short (middle) time fashion bubbles…