The fourth industrial revolution is very different from the first. That was when employees would work for 12 to 16 hours a day, under dangerous and dirty working conditions, with the sun as the only source of light. The pay wasn’t even sufficient to meet their basic needs, while wages for women was one-third of that for men.

Today, the work environment is all about learning, growth and self-actualization, at least in terms of one’s career. A recent survey by PwC revealed that 35% of millennials believe that excellent training and development programs are an important feature of their ideal organization. When they don’t get that, it leads to low motivation levels and disengagement.

Another reason why L&D is important is that it makes your employees future-proof. An employee who has access to constant learning has the tools to tackle the constantly evolving corporate landscape. In fact, according to a report, Towards a Reskilling Revolution: A Future of Jobs for All, around 1.4 million jobs would be disrupted by technology by 2025. With the right L&D, employees can stay informed regarding the latest trends and practices, and be prepared for what comes next.

Successful L&D Needs Self-Paced Learning

With everything changing, the learning process needs to evolve to suit the needs of today’s workforce too. The traditional forms of corporate training no longer provide the agile learning needed for success in the 21st century, neither do they satisfy the learning needs of the modern employee. This is where self-paced learning can help. Here’s how.

Convenience

Millennial and Gen Z employees lay great emphasis on work-life balance. In fact, according to a survey by Deloitte, 16.8% of millennials judge their career opportunities on the basis of work-life balance. Self-paced learning gives them the ability to strike a balance between the two. Such learning is not confined by space or time. It can be done at the convenience of the employee, from home, while traveling, or during breaks at work.

No Scheduling Issues

The convenience is not just for employees, but also extends to the organization. Scheduling training is a huge task, especially for larger organizations. With self-paced learning, the issues of scheduling, rescheduling and cancellations can be eliminated. With this type of training, the L&D department is freed of the cumbersome task of coordinating timings across roles, departments and locations to ensure timely training.

Fits All Styles and Needs

Different employees require different learning speeds and content. Some can quickly grasp concepts, while others need more explanations. With self-paced learning, learners can proceed, as the name suggests, at their own speed. They can also go over the same content multiple times or seek related content for better understanding. This also increases the effectiveness of the learning process. It is also beneficial for fast learners, since they do not have to wait for others to move forward.

Improves Ownership

By its very nature, the responsibility of learning is put on the employee. This helps improve the motivation to learn.

Overcoming the Problem of Monitoring

With there being no fixed schedule, the question that arises is how does one monitor learning progress and training completion? Many L&D experts face the problem of not knowing whether the learning tools provided are being used by the employees or not.

In such cases, the use of a robust AI-powered LXP can make all the difference. They can provide key analytics of content consumption, learning progress, how much time is spent on particular segments of the training module and recently viewed content. In addition, customized details reports can be automatically generated to track training success. 

On the manager’s dashboard, other information, such as total time spent in the last 30 days, concurrent users, number of direct reportees and more can be made available. These analytics also prove helpful in providing constructive, personalized feedback to each employee.

Self-Paced vs Self-Guided

The fact that a learning program is self-paced does not mean that it is also self-guided. In fact, most training platforms provide some sort of guidelines and structure, which supplement the training. However, it also has a degree of flexibility associated with it. If an employee is already familiar with a particular topic, they can skip it and move to the next. This approach has been found to be much more effective than traditional training. 

Self-paced learning is a great choice for providing training for the current generation of employees. However, to deploy such training successfully, a powerful LXP is required, which offers the right tools and features for an engaging, interactive and intuitive experience.