I’ve been to a lot of conferences. I’ve moderated sessions, sat on panels and had more hallway conversations about the future of work than I can count. And lately, nearly every single one of them circles back to the same topic: artificial intelligence. What it means, what it can do and what it means for the people whose job it is to develop other people.

Here’s what I’ve noticed, though. We’re very good at convincing each other.

We gather in these rooms L&D professionals, HR practitioners, talent leaders and we nod along as someone makes a compelling case for why AI changes everything. We workshop it. We debate it. We leave energized. And then we walk back into our organizations, sit down across from a CFO or a department head and … stumble. Because the language that lands in a learning conference doesn’t necessarily land in a budget meeting. And that gap between what we know and what we can communicate is one of the most pressing challenges facing L&D right now.

We’re an Insular Bunch. And That’s a Problem.

L&D, by its nature, attracts people who are plugged into the human side of work. We care about empathy, about behavior change, about the whole person. Those instincts are what drew most of us to this field. But they also create a kind of echo chamber. When we talk about AI needing to be deployed with empathy and thoughtful leadership, everyone in the room gets it immediately. Of course. That’s obvious. Why would you even need to explain it?

But put that same conversation in front of a FinTech team, or an engineering department, or a group of operations leaders and you might get blank stares. Or worse, polite nodding that masks complete disengagement. The concepts we treat as self-evident are anything but universal. And if we can’t bridge that gap, we risk losing the very people we need to bring along.

This is something I’ve been thinking about a great deal lately. It’s one thing for us to go to these conferences and strengthen each other’s convictions. But then what? How do we take what we know back to the broader organization and make sure the right things are actually happening?

Empathy Has a Branding Problem. So Does L&D.

In a recent conversation I had with Alexandra Hyland, an experienced L&D practitioner and keynote speaker, she put it in a way that stuck with me: empathy has a branding problem. The word itself can feel soft, abstract, or even irrelevant depending on your audience. And she’s right. If we’re asking business leaders to prioritize human-centered approaches to AI adoption, we need to meet them where they are in language that’s compelling to them, not just comfortable for us.

This isn’t just about word choice. It’s about framing. It’s about understanding what your audience is trying to solve and positioning the conversation accordingly. An elevator pitch that works for a CLO won’t work for a COO. The core message might be the same, but the entry point has to be tailored.

What Alexandra described the desire for practitioners to have language they can actually use with their leaders is something I hear often. And it points to a real opportunity for L&D to play a more strategic role. What if one of our key outputs, as a function, was giving HR and L&D professionals the tools to make the case for human-centered AI adoption in terms their business leaders would actually respond to? Not just the what, but the how specific, actionable language calibrated for different audiences and industries.

The ‘Empty Mandate’ Problem

There’s another dynamic playing out inside organizations right now that we can’t ignore. Leaders issue the decree: we’re going to use AI. It’s part of the workflow. It’ll be in your performance review. AI is the future.

And then … nothing. No guidance on what that means in practice. No clarity on what problems it’s meant to solve. No answer to the very reasonable question: what exactly do you want me to do with this?

I’ve seen this play out repeatedly. The top-down mandate arrives, people wait to see if it sticks and eventually as with many technology initiatives before it some just quietly wait it out. That’s not cynicism, it’s pattern recognition. We’ve all watched initiatives arrive with fanfare and disappear without a trace. Why would AI be any different?

This is precisely where L&D has to step in. Not just to build AI literacy programs, but to help organizations answer the harder questions: What are we actually trying to achieve? What problems are we solving? What does good look like in six months? Without that scaffolding, even the most enthusiastic adopters will flounder and the skeptics will feel vindicated.

Content Is Not Learning. This Distinction Matters More Than Ever.

Here’s where I want to be direct about something, because I think it’s a conversation our industry needs to have more honestly.

AI is extraordinarily good at generating content. It can take a subject matter expert’s 400-page technical document and spin it into a structured course in a fraction of the time it used to take. Platforms are emerging every day that make it easier and faster to produce e-learning at scale. And leaders are excited. Of course they are.

But there’s a distinction that L&D professionals understand and that business leaders often don’t: content is not learning.

Capturing institutional knowledge and presenting it in a digestible format is valuable genuinely valuable. But it is not behavior change. It is not skill development. It is not the thing that moves someone from knowing something to being able to do something differently. And if we let organizations conflate the two if we allow AI-generated content to be called “training” simply because it’s faster and cheaper we are failing in our core responsibility.

I sat in on a session at a recent conference where a speaker from a major organization talked about how AI-generated content was scoring higher on effectiveness metrics than content their team had previously produced. In the same breath, he mentioned they’d let go of roughly 80% of their instructional designers. He put it plainly: I just got rid of a bunch of people who do the job that you do.

That’s a sobering moment for anyone in this room. But here’s the thing the answer isn’t to defend the status quo. It’s to make the case, clearly and compellingly, for what instructional designers actually do at their best. Not capturing content, but translating it. Not organizing information, but engineering behavior change. That’s not something AI does well. Not yet. And that distinction needs to be part of every conversation L&D is having with organizational leadership right now.

This Is Actually an Exciting Moment. Here’s Why.

I want to end on something that I genuinely believe: this is one of the most interesting times to be in learning and development in a long time.

For years, L&D operated as an order-taker. Someone upstairs decided what training was needed and we built it. The function was reactive, often undervalued and rarely seen as strategic. AI has, in a strange and somewhat ironic way, changed that dynamic. Because organizations are looking at learning leaders and asking: what should we be doing? Where should we focus? How do we prepare our people for this?

We don’t have to wait to be told anymore. We get to write the playbook.

That means getting comfortable with a few things. It means being willing to push back when AI is positioned as a time-saving silver bullet because the research doesn’t fully support that framing and because time saved is only valuable if it’s redirected intentionally. It means helping leaders understand the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. And it means showing up to those conversations with language calibrated for the audience in front of you, not the audience you left back at the conference.

We’re in a period of rapid change where nobody not the technology companies, not the consultants, not even the most forward-thinking L&D teams has it all figured out. But that’s precisely the point. The organizations that will navigate this best won’t be the ones with the most sophisticated AI tools. They’ll be the ones with people who can ask the right questions, build the right capabilities and translate between the human and the digital in ways that actually move the needle.

That sounds a lot like what L&D has always done, at its best.

So let’s go do it.

The post Stop Convincing Each Other: How L&D Must Lead the AI Conversation Beyond the Conference Room appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Artificial intelligence has quickly become one of the most talked-about forces shaping the future of learning and development. Every week, it seems a new tool promises to generate courses, produce videos, or automate instructional design in seconds. The promise is compelling: faster development, lower cost, and learning content at scale.

But there’s a problem with how many organizations are approaching AI in L&D today.

Too often, the conversation begins with automation. Prompt a tool, generate content, edit it quickly, and publish. The assumption is that producing more learning content faster will somehow translate into stronger workforce capability.

In reality, learning has never worked that way.

At Brandon Hall Group, our research consistently shows that effective learning begins with expertise, context, and clear business outcomes. Technology — including AI — should amplify those elements, not replace them. That’s why there needs to be a shift in mindset from AI-first automation to author-first augmentation.

The Problem with an AI-First approach

The earliest wave of AI-driven learning tools focused heavily on content generation. The workflow was simple: enter a prompt, generate a course or module, and then edit the output.

The advantage of this model is speed.

The downside is quality, relevance, and alignment.

AI-first approaches often optimize for volume. When learning is treated primarily as a content production challenge, organizations risk flooding their workforce with generic materials that may look polished but lack the nuance and context required to drive real capability.

Learning doesn’t fail because organizations lack content. It fails when the content doesn’t connect to real work.

Subject-matter expertise, business context, and performance objectives are elements that cannot simply be generated by AI.

This is why organizations should reframe the role of artificial intelligence—not as the primary creator of learning, but as a partner that supports experts and accelerates their ability to share knowledge.

The Author-First Alternative

A more sustainable approach begins with a simple principle:

Learning should start with human expertise.

Within every organization, subject-matter experts (SMEs) hold critical business specific knowledge — how processes work, how customers behave, and how decisions are made. Historically, capturing that knowledge has been difficult because traditional course development requires specialized instructional design skills, external vendors, and long development cycles.

This is where a modern, AI-enabled authoring platform can have meaningful impact.

AI-powered platforms like Easygenerator help organizations empower SMEs to transform their expertise into structured learning experiences. Rather than replacing authors, these platforms embed AI directly within the authoring workflow to support tasks like drafting content, generating assessments, refining tone, and structuring courses, making them didactically stronger.

The philosophy behind this approach is explored further in How L&D Teams Use AI: Lessons from Real Conversations, which highlights how organizations are using AI to remove friction from course creation while keeping subject-matter expertise at the center of the process.

The result is a fundamentally different model.

Experts remain the source of knowledge.
AI removes friction from the creation process.

That balance — human insight supported by intelligent technology — is the essence of augmentation.

Automation vs. Augmentation

One of the most important distinctions organizations must make in the AI era is the difference between automation and augmentation.

Automation replaces human activity.
Augmentation enhances human capability.

In industries like manufacturing or transportation, automation may remove people entirely from a process. But in learning, that approach rarely works. Training requires judgment, context, and alignment with performance outcomes.

AI excels at repetitive, time-consuming tasks. It can summarize text, generate quiz questions, translate content into multiple languages, or structure a course outline in seconds.

Humans bring something very different: understanding of the business environment, awareness of learners’ needs, and the ability to connect learning objectives to organizational goals.

When these strengths are combined, organizations unlock the real potential of AI in L&D.

Instead of replacing learning professionals or SMEs, AI becomes the engine that accelerates knowledge capture and course creation.

Scaling Expertise Through Employee-Generated Learning

Another major shift accompanying this author-first model is the rise of Employee-Generated Learning (EGL).

Traditional learning models rely heavily on centralized development teams. Every training request—from compliance modules to product training—flows through the same bottleneck. As organizations grow, this model becomes unsustainable.

Employee-generated Learning flips that dynamic.

With intuitive authoring tools and embedded AI assistance, employees across the organization can contribute their expertise directly to the learning ecosystem. SMEs can create training aligned with their day-to-day work, keeping knowledge accurate, relevant, and continuously updated.

This democratization of knowledge creation is powerful.

It allows organizations to:

• Capture expertise at scale
• Reduce development bottlenecks
• Keep learning aligned with evolving business realities

At the same time, L&D’s role becomes even more strategic.

Rather than acting primarily as content producers, learning leaders evolve into architects of knowledge ecosystems—setting standards, guiding learning design, and ensuring quality while enabling experts throughout the organization to contribute.

The Strategic Role of L&D in the AI Era

All of these developments point to an important truth:

AI does not diminish the role of learning leaders—it elevates it.

Experts will continue to provide the knowledge and context that organizations depend on. AI will reduce the effort required to transform that expertise into structured, accessible learning experiences.

As technology removes production barriers, L&D professionals are freed to focus on higher-value work: aligning learning with strategy, orchestrating knowledge ecosystems, and ensuring that learning experiences truly drive performance.

In this environment, partnerships between technology providers and research organizations become increasingly important.

Through initiatives like the Brandon Hall Group Institute and our Preferred Provider Program, organizations gain access to trusted partners, emerging technology insights, and practical guidance on how to integrate innovations like AI into their learning strategies responsibly and effectively.

These collaborations help learning leaders move beyond experimentation and toward scalable, measurable impact.

To learn more about Brandon Hall Group, click here.

About Easygenerator

Easygenerator is an AI-powered e-learning suite that helps organizations create company-tailored training at scale. Built for internal experts and L&D teams alike, Easygenerator is used by over 50,000 people across 2,000+ companies—including Danone, Electrolux, and Sodexo.

The post Authoring First, AI Second:</br> Why the Future of L&D Is Augmentation, Not Automation appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The world of talent and learning development is at an inflection point. Organizations are navigating tighter budgets, evolving skill demands and a rapidly shifting technology landscape — all at the same time. Based on Brandon Hall Group research and conversations with companies throughout 2025, here’s a comprehensive look at where things stand today and what to expect in the year ahead.

The Pressures Organizations Are Facing Right Now

If there’s one theme that cuts across virtually every talent challenge today, it’s time. Budget constraints consistently rank among the top organizational challenges and while financial pressures ebb and flow with economic conditions, the scarcity of time is a constant. As one analyst put it, “Money can’t buy you time in most places.” This reality shapes nearly every decision organizations make, especially when it comes to technology adoption.

From a broader talent management perspective, three challenges rise to the top:

1. Financial constraints. Budget limitations remain the single biggest barrier to how organizations manage, develop and deploy their people. This is unlikely to ease in the near term, meaning L&D leaders must become even more skilled at doing more with less.
2. Voluntary turnover. While the job market has shifted somewhat, retaining top talent — especially high performers — remains a strategic priority. The focus now is less on a red-hot labor market and more on keeping key contributors engaged and committed for the long haul.
3. Upskilling and reskilling at scale. Skills have been a headline challenge for years and that hasn’t changed. The pace of change is accelerating and organizations are under pressure to continuously identify the skills they need, develop them in their workforce and do it fast enough to stay relevant.

The Hidden Skills Challenge

Here’s an interesting contradiction in the data: while skills are a top concern, two foundational activities (defining skills and competencies for roles and tying those to individual development plans) rank at the bottom of the list of perceived challenges. In other words, companies don’t feel particularly challenged by those things.

But that may not tell the full story.

In practice, building and maintaining a skills ontology is extraordinarily labor-intensive. Once created, there’s a natural temptation to “put it on a shelf” but skills frameworks are living documents that require continuous maintenance. More importantly, many organizations are still struggling to connect skills data to the actual work being done, the people doing it and the development opportunities available to them. That alignment of skills to people to work to development remains elusive for most.

It’s possible that organizations are underreporting how hard this really is.

Measuring Learning: Still a Work in Progress

Despite years of conversation about learning impact and ROI, most organizations are still measuring learning at the most basic levels, including completion rates, smile sheets and simple assessments. Very few have made meaningful progress toward measuring behavioral change (Kirkpatrick Level 3) or actual business results (Level 4), let alone calculating a true ROI.

This is a perennial challenge and it hasn’t gone away. Organizations continue to struggle with connecting what happens in a learning program to outcomes that matter to the business. Until that link is made more clearly, L&D will continue to fight for its seat at the strategic table.

The Technology Landscape: What Companies Are Adding

When it comes to learning technology, a few trends stand out:

• AR/VR and simulations are gaining traction as companies look to immersive tools that go beyond traditional eLearning.
• LearnOps platforms are growing in interest; organizations want tools to manage the business of learning, not just deliver content.
• Analytics and video remain high priorities as companies look to make more data-informed decisions and leverage richer media.
• LXPs still have a place, with about 30% of companies considering adding one, though the line between LXP and LMS continues to blur.
• The LMS sits at the bottom of the “adding” list, not because it’s irrelevant but because most organizations already have one (or several).

Notably absent from the list? A single line item for “artificial intelligence.” That’s not because AI isn’t important; it’s because AI isn’t one technology. It’s the engine powering all of the above.

How AI Is Actually Being Used in Talent and Learning

As of mid-to-late 2025, only about 11% of organizations said they weren’t using AI in any meaningful way. For everyone else, AI is showing up in a variety of forms:

• Content creation (61%) is the clear leader. AI is helping teams dramatically reduce the time it takes to develop learning content: not by replacing human judgment but by generating frameworks, outlines and drafts that people can then refine and polish.
• Support tools and chatbots are widely deployed, particularly for just-in-time performance support.
• Combining AI-powered tools to build custom platforms and workflows is how about 30% of companies are operating.
• Personalized learning is an active and growing use case, with AI helping surface the right content to the right learner at the right moment.

From a broader talent perspective, organizations are also exploring AI for:

• Improving employee engagement — Using AI-driven interactions to maintain connection and motivation.
• Automating processes — Stripping out time-consuming manual workflows so teams can focus on higher-value work.
• Personalizing development plans — Using AI to synthesize a wide range of data points into a more complete picture of each employee’s needs and growth opportunities.
• Optimizing talent allocation — Getting smarter about where to deploy people and when to invest in development.
• Predictive attrition analysis — Perhaps the most forward-looking use case, using AI to identify patterns across the organization that might signal flight risk, well before a manager would notice on their own.

On that last point, it’s worth noting: performance reviews alone are not sufficient predictors of future potential or attrition. The power of AI in this context lies in its ability to pull together data from across the organization, things humans wouldn’t think to correlate and surface patterns that would otherwise be invisible.

Predictions for 2026: A Sneak Peek

As highlighted in Brandon Hall Group’s HR Outlook 2026 book, several significant shifts are on the horizon:

1. The Flexible Learning Ecosystem

Organizations will move away from centralized, monolithic learning platforms toward a more interconnected ecosystem of tools: specialized solutions for content creation, skills tracking and delivery, all working together. Blockchain-based credentialing may start to gain traction as a way to build a verifiable, portable digital record of an individual’s skills growth. AI agents will play a growing role in delivering learning directly within the flow of work.

2. Cognitive Offload Curriculum

The idea of embedding learning directly into the workflow, via co-pilots and agents, will become more mainstream. Rather than pulling employees away from their work to “go learn something,” tools will identify learning moments in real time and deliver targeted support right where people are working. This makes “learning in the flow of work” less of an aspiration and more of an operational reality.

3. Neural Learning Integration

Organizations will pay greater attention to how the brain actually learns and use those insights to inform the design and delivery of learning programs. Expect to see more science-backed approaches influence everything from content structure to pacing and reinforcement strategies.

4. Learning as Personal Brand Currency

Learning won’t just be something the organization does to employees; it will increasingly become something employees actively build and own as part of their professional identity and career trajectory.

5. Hyper-Personalized, Just-in-Time Learning

This is one of the most significant shifts on the near-term horizon. AI tools are finally making true personalization achievable: surfacing the right learning opportunity for the right person at the right moment, whether they’re in their email, their CRM or a project management tool. Proactive, micro-interventions will help employees address skill gaps in real time before small problems become larger ones.

6. Mastery Guild Models

Organizations will experiment with community-based expertise models that formalize how knowledge is shared, developed and recognized across teams and departments.

7. Predictive Learning for Employee Retention

Building on predictive attrition capabilities, organizations will start using AI-powered insights to proactively design and deploy development opportunities that address retention risk, turning learning into a retention strategy, not just a development one.

The Thread That Connects It All

Across every one of these predictions runs a common theme: seamlessness. The goal isn’t just more learning, or faster learning, or cheaper learning. It’s learning that feels like a natural, invisible part of how work gets done, as intuitive and integrated as the tools people already use every day.

We’ve been talking about “learning in the flow of work” for years. The difference now is that the tools to actually make it happen are finally here. The organizations that figure out how to put them together — intelligently, intentionally and with a relentless focus on outcomes — will be the ones that win the talent game in 2026 and beyond.

The post The Intelligent Learning Organization:</br> Trends, Challenges and Predictions for the Year Ahead appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

• Learners need to learn how to learn and how to solve problems flexibly. 
• These processes are critically important for working memory to succeed.
• Learners’ brains need to focus on learning experiences with dynamic spatial and temporal structures.
• Studies confirm that learners presented with neurocognitive-based learning show far better results with attention, working memory, and mood.

This is simply how the human brain learns. Cognitive learning focuses on more effective use of the brain. Cognition is the mental process of gaining knowledge and understanding through the senses, experience, and thought. Cognitive learning strategies encourage learners to reflect on the material and how to apply it to current and future situations. This develops improved problem-solving skills and critical thinking. It’s this learning through experience that makes practice so critical. Brandon Hall Group research finds that companies applying these cognitive and neuroscience learning principles are more like to say they are prepared for the future of work than those that do not.

Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Silver Preferred Provider Vertex Professional Services works with their client partners to imbue these concepts into the development and delivery of their learning. And they do it within some of the most high-stakes, complex environments in existence like aerospace, military, and defense. In these high-consequence industries, practice becomes critical because improper execution on the job can have immense consequences on the business, as well as the health and safety of employees. Giving people a safe place to hone their skills before they are faced with real scenarios is critical.

Together, Brandon Hall Group and Vertex Professional Services presented a webinar that looked at the benefits of learning by doing, the challenges of putting it in place, and strategies for moving forward. The recording can be found here. 

The post From Learning to Doing appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Brandon Hall Group recently partnered with Smartchoice® Platinum Preferred Provider Docebo on a webinar exploring the personalization of the learning journey. The session incorporated results from our recent survey, Building Personalized Learning Across the Organization. The data highlighted some of the challenges around personalization at scale, as well as which elements are most critical for getting personalization right.

We have distilled the data into a KnowledgeGraphic that is available for you to download here. In addition to important data points, the KnowledgeGraphic also contains some critical questions companies should be asking themselves, as well as key takeaways. The KnowledgeGraphic also highlights the benefits personalization delivers for both learners and the business. 

The topic is important because personalization is the perfect antidote for the one-size-fits-all learning environment, where people feel little to no connection with learning. This outdated approach has not served organizations well in the past and stands little chance of being effective as the rest of the world races past to a more personalized digital future. The number of daily technology interactions that aren’t personalized gets smaller every day. It makes no sense to keep learning among them simply because there is too much invested in “the way we’ve always done it”.

Learning needs to be at the forefront of digital transformation, ready to deliver experiences that prepare the workforce to make the most of their digital future. And even if the future is not so digital for some industries or organizations, personalization is still a huge part of getting learners engaged, keeping them engaged, and driving performance. 

The post The Evolution of the Learning Experience appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

In 2021, Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Silver Preferred Provider Latitude Learning conducted a series of interviews with these kinds of organizations to see how they were responding to the pandemic. Some of the key takeaways at the time were:

• Large organizations can turn on a dime. Most of these companies were able to adapt and adjust and find alternatives to in-person training rather quickly
• Trainers want to train. The people responsible for delivering the training could not be stopped. They found ways to make it work.
• Virtual meetings took over. Meeting platforms were the go-to solution for most companies in the early days. It was clunky at first, but most saw their approach evolve over time.
• There is no replacement for hands-on training. There are just some skills that are best delivered hands-on, especially in a heavy equipment or automotive environment.

Now, two years after those interviews, we have seen training in the extended enterprise quietly shift back to the way it was pre-pandemic. Not quite completely, but the idea that there was no going “back to normal” has definitely been dispelled. The need for hands-on training remains, and there has been a steady shift back to the classroom. This is not inherently a bad thing but is not quite what most people were predicting.

To explore these dynamics a bit more closely, Latitude Learning is partnering with Brandon Hall Group to deliver a webinar that looks at where extended enterprise training is now and how we got here.

The post Extended Enterprise Learning: Has the Pandemic Changed Anything? appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

But training in this environment is exceptionally challenging. First, these workers tend to have a high turnover rate, which means training needs to be quick and effective to keep everyone up to speed. Another big challenge is that in many of these locations, the workers do not actually work for the company that owns the brand. Further complicating things is the reality that frontline workers make up the majority of the workforce in the franchise business model. These employees are often without access to a computer, making mobile learning critical to their training and development

In this franchise environment, the network of stores, restaurants, or dealerships has a variety of different owners.  Some owners have just one single location while others own a vast network. At the same time, there are often company-owned locations as well. This presents training professionals with a wide variety of dynamics within which to create high-quality, consistent learning experiences. And consistency is key. Whether around town or around the globe, customers expect a consistent experience.

This means the people who are tasked with keeping customers happy need to have the skills and knowledge to excel. Brands must ensure employees in regionally, nationally, or globally distributed locations know and adhere to the standards set by the parent organization.

Left to their own devices, franchisees may adopt their own training methods, resulting in an inconsistent customer experience across locations. Customers don’t know that “their” store is not owned by the brand parent, so they would not understand why things are done differently. A consistently positive customer experience requires standardized training across all locations. Failure to build a successful franchisee and store training program could result in inconsistent quality, operational inefficiencies, and a loss of brand loyalty.

Brandon Hall Group SmartChoice® Silver Preferred Provider Schoox has solutions that are engineered for the complexity the extended enterprise brings to learning. They work with larger, global clients that operate multiple franchised brands, and they are able to deliver simple, powerful learning with the consistency, branding, and mobile capabilities these organizations require. Rather than a one-size-fits-all LMS, Schoox is flexible enough to meet the needs of any organization, whether they are training internal employees or vast extended enterprise network.

The Schoox platform also has robust tracking and reporting features, which are critical in an extended enterprise environment. The learners are not employees, so it can be difficult to measure whether learning is having the right impact. Schoox simplifies that.

The extended enterprise consists of a variety of audiences in addition to franchisees. It can also include customers, resellers, channel partners, association members, and more. Training these audiences effectively and consistently takes technology that is designed for their complexity. 

The post Managing the Complexity of Franchisee Training appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

The start of the new year has many L&D professionals thinking about where things are headed. Of course, this requires some reflection on what exactly happened in 2022 and what we can learn from it, but it also requires a strong commitment to change, since change is going to be the theme for most things from now on.

We have seen a steady, but not complete, transition away from traditional, event-based learning. Organizations are incorporating more microlearning, games, simulations, and other digital/virtual experiences into the environment. The goal is to get employees what they need, when they need it, in a way that makes the most sense and has the most impact. The future will see more of the same, as well as an embrace of even more emerging technologies.

Recently, CEO and co-founder of Smartchoice® Platinum Preferred Provider LearnUpon, Brendan Noud, sat down with Brandon Hall Group’s COO Rachel Cooke for an episode of Brandon Hall Group’s Excellence at Work Podcast. The discussion focuses on the future of learning, with Noud drawing on LearnUpon’s 10 years of working with clients to meet the future. The pair dive into the trends we’ve seen, the trends yet to come, and what it all means for both learners and the business. 

The post Learning and Development for an Uncertain Future appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

Organizations need a more agile, adaptive, and accessible approach to learning. According to Brandon Hall Group’s Transforming Learning for the Future of Work study, the number one reason organizations are having difficulty developing the skills the business will require in the near future is that they do not have the people, time, or financial resources to support that need.

These are the kind of challenges that cannot be solved by simply buying new technology. While the right technology plays a huge role in the modern learning environment, it is much more important to find a partner that can help meet all of L&D’s challenges. The right employee training development approach requires the right strategy, the right content, and the right technology to effectively build skills.

Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice^Ò Bronze Preferred Provider AllenComm helps its partners with its clients to look at the Learning function in its entirety. The number two challenge in that same Brandon Hall Group research is that organizations have not identified the skills they need, nor the gaps that exist. AllenComm begins its partnerships with a full analysis of what skills gaps exist and to what extent, then brings in the right content, experiences, and technology to match those needs.

And when it comes to technology, companies that are satisfied and finding success are more likely to say that their provider is a partner. Nearly half (45%) of companies say their current learning technology ecosystem is not adequately meeting their needs. And one of the key drivers of that, cited by almost 80% of companies, is that their provider is unable to be a partner for the future.

AllenComm has distilled its broad array of services and offerings into exactly what organizations need: a partnership for building skills. Their clients sometimes need help in just one area, or in some cases across the entire spectrum of training development. Working as a true partner, AllenComm is able to fit their solutions to the need.

The post Finding the Right Partner for Employee Training and Development appeared first on Brandon Hall Group.

This has created fertile ground for the explosive growth of virtual reality and other immersive tools for learning. This also comes at a time when equipment is cheaper, bandwidth is better, and processing power is faster – making VR an enticing option for solving many of learning’s challenges. 

Once only a tool for sci-fi, entertainment, and gaming applications, VR has made a strong showing for training people by replicating hazardous environments and situations. Rather than send a first-time worker to the top of a skyscraper skeleton to teach them what to do, we can send them up virtually, ensuring their safety.

But VR has become so much more than that. Far from just dangerous environments, VR is enabling all kinds of new training experiences. People from anywhere around the globe can collaborate visually in the same environment. People can practice public speaking, sales pitches, or difficult conversations in a realistic environment without having to physically put people together. It is even being leveraged to broaden the approach to diversity equity, and inclusion by allowing people to experience things from a different point of view.

Exploring the Future: Virtual Reality’s Role in Learning & Development

Many organizations still shy away from VR because they don’t know where to start. To fix that, Brandon Hall Group Smartchoice® Platinum Preferred Provider ELB Learning offers CenarioVR. It is an authoring tool that allows companies to build their own virtual reality content — without requiring any coding or programming experience. With this tool, subject matter experts can upload any 360-degree video or imagery to the tool to get started. From there, CenarioVR has the ability to embed hotspots for interactivity, animation, and other objects within the environment.

The content does not have to be published on VR headsets, though. Companies that have not gone down the equipment route just yet can publish to mobile devices (can move images around with your fingers), the web, or even right to an LMS (or you can publish from CenarioVR, just like any other LMS with tracking). Whatever platform is used to access the content will provide as immersive an experience as possible. And because VR experiences include a lot of activity, everything is trackable via xAPI and SCORM. This provides a ton of useful data that is just not available from a static eLearning course.

As Meta continues to sort out the Metaverse, we may not all have to carry around a VR headset just yet. But when it comes to providing impactful, immersive learning experiences, VR is a technology that almost any organization can and should consider.

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