Chapter 11

Making Good Technology Decisions

Use Personas to Build Right-Fit Digital Experiences

How many apps do you have on your phone? Unless you’re an avid flip phone user, you definitely have more than one. The average US smartphone user had 20 apps installed as of 2019 (Statista). I have 47 on my iPhone as I’m writing this, and that’s an all-time low. Most of them hover in the background waiting to be called upon, but I use the 20 on my homescreen as part of my daily routine. For example:

•  Safari helps me search for information and keep up with the latest news.

•  Slack connects me to my work team through synchronous chat.

•  Peloton tracks my daily workouts.

•  Axonify reinforces critical knowledge about my job.

•  Instacart lets me order groceries from home and schedule pickups.

•  Overcast streams podcasts during my morning runs.

•  Google Calendar makes sure I’m on time for my next meeting

•  YouTube keeps me entertained for a few minutes here and there throughout the day.

•  Gmail is . . . Gmail.

These apps have plenty of features and lots of content I don’t use, but that doesn’t lessen their value. I selected, installed, and positioned each with purpose, and I regularly assess their value as new options emerge. For example, Overcast is at least my 10th podcast app. I like it, but I’m totally willing to swap it out if I find a better alternative.

People manage to use dozens of smartphone apps every day, but they can’t figure out which platform to use at work to get timely questions answered. Should they send an email? Maybe they should drop a message on Microsoft Teams? Or is this topic supposed to be solved through the HR system? Unfortunately, employees typically don’t get to choose their work tools. This means that the inherent sense of purpose and value they have with their smartphone apps is missing on the job.

This goes for learning technology too. An LMS is just one part of a complex web of digital workplace systems. We can’t fix our company’s broken tech stack, but we can certainly do our best to avoid adding even more friction to an already prickly user experience. L&D must create a learning technology ecosystem grounded in clear purpose and value. It’s time to make learning at work as simple as using a smartphone.

The One Ring Fallacy

Technology is now the face of L&D, with the COVID-19 pandemic forever altering workers’ relationships with technology. According to the ATD’s 2021 State of the Industry report, the average number of formal learning hours used via technology-based methods jumped from 41.7 percent in 2018 to 56.1 percent in 2019 to 80.3 percent in 2020. Now, remote and hybrid employees rely on digital tools to access information and connect with peers. For example, 84 percent of organizations in the US use at least one learning management system (Statista). Frontline employees leverage handheld devices, smartphones, and mobile apps to engage with work in new ways. Digital activities are just one part of the workplace learning experience. Tactics like hands-on training, coaching, and classroom sessions also remain important. However, even these parts of the learning experience are more digitally enabled thanks to bots, interaction apps, and interactive guides.

Technology may be a ubiquitous part of work, but that doesn’t mean it’s getting simpler. Bringing together the right tools to give every employee an equitable experience gets harder as technology evolves and organizations become more complex. In the early 2000s, there were a handful of technology products focused on workplace learning. Today, there are hundreds—each with their own specialties.

The global education technology market was valued at US $89.49 billion in 2020 and is on track to see a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.9 percent from 2021 to 2028 (Grand View Research 2021). LMS. LXP. Microlearning. Coaching. Assessment. Personalization. Mixed reality. With so many tools available in the marketplace, learning technology often blends into a cacophony of marketing noise and unsubstantiated hype. It’s almost impossible to keep up with the latest innovations, even for someone like me whose job is to keep up with the latest innovations. When you spend all your time trying to solve the next big workplace performance problem, how can you really tell if the latest and greatest is actually the latest and greatest?

L&D teams only have so much time to explore new learning technology and so much money to spend on it. As a result, many are still searching for The Platform—that one tool that can address all their needs. Their request for proposal (RFP) documents are veritable kitchen sinks of bells and whistles. They’re sure they need a gamified SaaS (software as a service) solution that:

•  Recommends content just like Netflix

•  Makes content authoring and sharing as easy as TikTok

•  Can bend and flex to their always-changing company hierarchy

•  Meets all their industry’s regulatory requirements

•  Connects with every system they already use without any extra IT work

•  Has every feature available in offline mode—just in case

•  Is able to breach the space/time continuum under 88 miles per hour

Learning technology can do a lot of cool things nowadays, and vendors often promise their solutions can meet all your company’s needs. However, if we want to overcome a legacy of technology frustration, we must accept a frank reality: There is no one ring to rule them all (cough cough Lord of the Rings reference cough cough).

This isn’t just a learning tech thing. It’s a fundamental technology principle. Vendors and providers have finite resources and expertise. Their solutions can either do a lot of things OK or a short list of things exceptionally. There’s no such thing as a hardware or software tool that will do everything you want in exactly the way you want it—unless you build and maintain it yourself (more on that in a bit).

Let’s consider your smartphone again. Imagine you had to force yourself to use one app as a calendar, messenger, inbox, and browser. Sure, you’d only have one button to press, but you’d also be missing out on a ton of functionality provided by specialized apps. The same goes for learning tech. As long as L&D remains focused on finding the “one ring to rule them all,” they’ll miss out on opportunities to provide even more right-fit digital solutions that meet their workforces’ needs.

RedThread Research explained the continuum of workplace learning technology application in the 2019 report The Art and Science of Designing a Learning Technology Ecosystem. On one end, an organization relies on a single platform due to limited complexity; low tolerance for risk; focus on top-down, compliance-driven development; and limited budget. On the opposite end, a company leverages a range of tools to support a complex workplace, enable exploration-driven learning, and maximize technology investment (Figure 11-1).

The MLE Framework helps you find your spot along this continuum. With its layered approach, the framework aligns learning tactics with the tools needed to facilitate a right-fit experience. It also reinforces two critical observations about L&D tech:

•  Any tool that helps people solve problems and improve performance can be classified as a “learning technology,” regardless of who manages it.

•  Technology-enabled learning is about introducing right-fit digital capabilities, not finding the perfect platform.

In a world where the average organization uses 11 different learning technologies, the MLE Framework provides the structure needed to make the purpose and value of each tool clear and consistent to L&D and its stakeholders.

Before your team starts buying and implementing learning platforms, you must acknowledge and align on the reasons for applying technology to support learning in the first place.

7 Reasons to Apply Learning Tech

Every organization applies technology to enable learning and performance in different ways. Regardless of who owns a technology or which marketplace category it fits within, every learning tool should be evaluated against the same set of foundational criteria:

•  Scale. Technology helps L&D reach distributed audiences in ways that would otherwise not be possible. It eliminates the need to spend lots of money to fly trainers around to every location to deliver classroom sessions. It enables small-but-mighty L&D teams to support large, diverse audiences with limited resources.

•  Speed. Technology enables L&D to deploy solutions as soon as they’re available. People don’t have to wait until they’re able to attend a scheduled session to learn something new. Digital solutions also provide an expanded range of methods and modalities that accelerate learning content development and deployment.

•  Consistency. Technology eliminates the “this is how we really do it here” problem. It makes sure everyone gets the same information, no matter where they work or who their boss is. Digital learning reinforces required job knowledge and behavior when consistency is critical to success.

Scale, speed, and consistency have been driving the proliferation of learning technology since the 1990s. They’re the reason companies often opt for e-learning programs over instructor-led training. However, they’re just part of the learning tech value proposition. If you’re only implementing a tool to gain scale, speed, and consistency, you’re missing the mark when it comes to building a right-fit learning digital experience. Modern technology can help us make a much bigger impact through these additional dimensions:

•  Context. Technology brings learning out of the classroom and into the flow of work. It enables employees to access whatever resources they need in the moment rather than having to wait for a scheduled activity. It also allows L&D to break content apart so it can be consumed iteratively when people have time.

•  Connection. Technology brings together the people who know and the people who need to know. It transcends physical and temporal barriers to enable people to build expansive knowledge networks on which they can rely to support their performance.

•  Personalization. Technology can now go beyond scaling the same learning program to a distributed audience. It can also apply data to personalize the learning experience to the individual. L&D can maximize its value proposition by making sure every employee is focused on the development activities that most benefit them and the organization.

•  Equity. We talked about the opportunity gap in an earlier chapter. The unfortunate reality of workplace learning is that everyone often does not have access to the same opportunities. Employees may be disqualified based on their role, status, location, disability, or other factors. Technology helps close this gap by making development available when, where, and how people can best access it, no matter who they are or what they do.

It’s easy to get distracted by cool features and fancy functionality. Who doesn’t want to create practice simulations in VR or use an AI assistant to automatically author content? However, to paraphrase noted chaotician Ian Malcolm, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Keep these seven criteria in mind as you select and apply technology to support learning. Every tool may not check all seven boxes, but your overall tech stack must enable these concepts to maximize the potential of your learning ecosystem.

Designing Persona-Based Digital Learning

The “one ring” approach to digital learning assumes that every employee uses technology the same way. This isn’t the case in most organizations. For example, three people may be employed by the same pharmaceutical company. While one works in a heavily credentialed, lab-based scientific role; one works remotely in medical device sales; and one works on the manufacturing line. Their everyday work experiences are different. Their knowledge and skill requirements are different. And their relationships with workplace technology are different. Does this mean they need completely different learning platforms? Maybe . . . and maybe not.

A modern digital learning experience is built a lot like your smartphone. It’s constructed with a series of components—chips, sensors, operating system, applications—that blend to shape your user experience. I like my smartphone when the layers function seamlessly. That means I can focus on using the smartphone to solve problems and not worry about how it’s constructed. However, when the battery starts to go or the OS chugs when loading an app, I quickly get frustrated and start thinking about getting a new phone. Unfortunately, employees can’t opt out of their learning ecosystem (without opting out of their jobs, too). Therefore, L&D must design a digital infrastructure that functions as seamlessly as possible within the day-to-day workflow (Figure 11-2). You must also continue to make upgrades to make sure the infrastructure keeps pace with changing employee needs.

Much like designing a smartphone begins with understanding the user’s needs and preferences, building a digital learning experience starts with understanding the needs of your business and persona of your users, incorporating five components: outcomes, experience, data, capability, and digital.

The Outcome Component

What are the biggest priorities related to employee performance within your organization over the next three to five years? Remember, skill requirements are a moving target given the constant pace of business disruption. You may not be able to nail down specific learning goals for the longer term, but beginning the process with a focus on business outcomes will help you avoid the mistake of implementing technology for the sake of implementing technology. If your company plans to open offices in new regions and expand its workforce by 30 percent over the next two years, your tech stack must be ready to enable these outcomes.

The Experience Component

Outline the defining characteristics for each of the employee personas within your audience. Remember, focusing on personas rather than job titles or roles allows you to leverage common attributes and reduce the need for additional solutions:

•  Function: Does this persona work independently or directly with your company’s customers and products?

•  Foundation: Was this persona hired for a specific skill set or are they expected to learn how to do their job?

•  Scale: Does this persona have a unique role or do they share their workload?

•  Time: Does this persona have autonomy or is their workload heavily managed?

•  Location: Where does this persona do their work?

•  Access: How does this persona access learning and support resources within the workflow?

•  Motivation: Is this persona focused on meeting foundational job requirements or long-term career goals?

•  Measurement: Are this persona’s performance outcomes determined by subjective or objective measures?

Use these characteristics to design a right-fit experience for the persona. This wireframe represents the various ways tactical support should be experienced within the day-to-day workflow for each employee who fits the persona. Your design is not meant to represent 100 percent of the workplace learning experience. People will always find their own ways to develop their knowledge and skill. Instead, your design should focus on the best ways L&D can provide timely, reliable support on the job. This includes factors such as access, activity, and content:

•  Access: Which devices will be used most frequently to access digital learning and support resources within the flow of work? There’s a good chance mobile devices will play a key role in your digital experience, regardless of audience. Nevertheless, it’s important to understand how devices are used on the job so you can align your learning tech stack accordingly. Someone who works in operations may only have access to a handheld scanning device while on the job if they need to search for information. An employee who works in the corporate office •  likely has more options, such as a company-issued laptop or smartphone, to access digital learning.

•  Activity: What kinds of learning activities will be most common for this persona? An operations worker in a safety critical environment may have a variety of required training activities, including compliance, core job skills, reinforcement, and ongoing support. A corporate employee who’s already a specialist in their role may have some required training but spend most of their formal learning time focused on building new skills as part of ongoing career development.

•  Content: What types of content will be needed to foster knowledge and skill growth? An operations worker focused on your company’s process, products, and services may rely mostly on internal content. A corporate employee looking to develop additional skills may have the time to explore a wider range of content options, including open-source materials from online libraries.

Repeat this process for each persona within your audience to make sure your experience designs align with their workplace contexts. Note any personas with unique experience elements as well as those with overlapping requirements. This will help you align your technology decisions with clear purpose and value for each persona within your audience.

The Data Component

Now that you know what your end result should look like, it’s time to fill out your digital learning experience. Let’s start with the foundation: data. You’ll need the right data to power your digital learning experience and achieve your organizational goals. Your learning tech must be able to access, capture, apply, and output this data. Therefore, before you select your tools, you must outline your requirements for data input, capture, and output:

•  Data Input: What data will you need to pull into your learning experience to power your design? For example, you will likely need to access people data, such as employee records, to provision users within your digital systems and target training accordingly. You may also require operational data, including business KPIs, to determine the impact of your learning programs and adjust your strategies. Identify the types of data available outside the learning tech stack, how it is stored, and if or how it can be accessed to enable right-fit learning experiences.

•  Data Capture: What data will you need to capture within your digital learning experience to power your design? Most LMS platforms collect basic learning data, including course completions, test scores, and survey results. Will this be enough, or will you need additional metrics, such as user feedback, knowledge growth, or search results? Make a list of the data points that must be captured within the learning experience to optimize the experience for each employee.

•  Data Output: What data will you need to push out of your learning experience to power your design? This may include familiar requirements, such as learning data exports, visualizations, and reporting. You should also explore advanced learning data practices, such as sharing skills data with workforce management tools to inform scheduling, talent acquisition, and mobility functions.

This data conversation should not happen within an L&D silo. Collaborate with internal and external partners to clarify your data requirements and capabilities as you construct the digital experience. We’ll dive into the connection between the MLE Framework and measurement practices in more detail in the next chapter.

The Capability Component

Next, you must figure out how to bring your persona-based learning experience to life through technology. In a traditional procurement process, this means filling out a lengthy RFP spreadsheet with a laundry list of feature requirements. Some organizations try to accelerate this process by using an RFP template from an external consultant that already includes every must-have learning tech feature available. This is a mistake. There are no “must-have learning tech features.” Taking a feature-focused approach to learning technology gives vendors control of the process. L&D ends up making decisions based on a vendor’s ability to check as many boxes as possible (and they’re all very good at box checking, no matter what their solutions actually do). Instead, look for tools that can bring your experience design to life in the simplest and most impactful ways possible.

Use the MLE Framework as a guide when identifying the capabilities you must provide within your digital learning experience. You may be thinking, “What’s the difference between a feature and a capability?” A digital capability is the connection point between technology and experience. It explains what people must be able to do within your digital learning ecosystem. However, it does not define exactly how they should do it.

Let’s take the shared knowledge layer of the MLE Framework as an example. While designing your persona-based experience for a corporate audience, you determine that you need to offer employees the opportunity to share proven practices with their peers. Therefore, you include “crowdsource proven practices” as a required capability. If you were taking a feature-focused approach to your technology selection process, you may instead create a list of features like:

•  Record video and upload from any device

•  Edit video and upload with description and tags

•  Approve, decline, and resubmit videos via approval workflow

•  Curate and create video playlists

•  Search for video using metadata and an audio transcript

This list predetermines how technology must function before you’ve explored your real-life options. It pushes providers to find ways to check every box instead of collaborating to find the best way to solve your problem using their tools. Sure, you may ultimately discover that many of these features are important in executing your “crowdsource proven practices” capability. However, by focusing on what people need to do—not how they should do it—you open the door to a wider range of potential right-fit digital solutions.

Start by listing the capabilities required to activate each layer within the MLE Framework for each persona within your audience. For example, the performance support layer may include “submit questions to SMEs” while reinforcement may include “simulate customer interactions.” In addition to the MLE Framework layers, include capability items for your user experience and data functions. For example, you may list accessibility standards or mobile access within user experience. Data may include compliance reporting requirements and single sign-on (SSO) integration.

Once you’ve outlined your full capability list, review it from the user’s perspective. Can you realistically expect employees to leverage these capabilities as part of their ongoing learning and support experience? Ask stakeholders, SMEs, and employees to share their thoughts as well. Once your capability list is firmly grounded in reality, it’s (finally) time to make technology decisions.

The Digital Component

Which tool(s) will provide employees with the capabilities needed to develop their skills and improve their performance? Notice my effective use of the (s) when I referred to the tool(s) you’ll select. If you support 40 people who all do the same kind of work within the same context, you may find a single technology that can execute your full capabilities list and enable a right-fit digital learning experience. However, if you support 40,000 people across multiple business units, geographies, and personas, you’re going to need that (s).

I’ve never heard of an L&D team with an unlimited budget. Even companies on the Fortune 100 are looking for ways to consolidate their learning tech stacks. The goal may not be to find the one tool that does everything, but you should still look to limit your technology spend. This includes everything from software licenses and hardware maintenance to administrative headcount and IT support needs. Therefore, the first place you should look for technology that can fulfill as many of your capability requirements as possible is inside your own four walls.

Share your experience designs and capability lists with internal technology partners. This includes operations, communications, marketing, and—of course—IT. Identify tools that may fit your needs that are already in use within the organization. Remember, it doesn’t have to be called learning technology to play a part within your learning ecosystem. Ask for permission to experiment with available tools to prove their value in application. If something catches on and proves to be of value, collaborate with your partners to expand its use. In the shared knowledge chapter, I told the story of how I discovered the wiki platform Confluence within my contact center operation. If I hadn’t collaborated with marketing and IT to close my shared knowledge capability gaps, I would have had to spend a lot more time and money looking for a solution.

Once you’ve exhausted your internal technology options, it’s time to go shopping. Start by clarifying your budget requirements, timelines, and resources. There’s no point in exploring tools that you can’t afford or don’t have the capacity to administer.

Collaborate with internal and external peers to identify potential solutions that meet your needs. Instead of asking people “Which LXP platforms should I look at,” stay focused on your experience design and be open to exploring new and unfamiliar options.

Ditch the standard RFP spreadsheet when you start meeting with providers. Instead, share your experience design (Figure 11-2). Challenge providers to demonstrate how their technology can help execute your design while staying within your budget, timeline, and resource limits. Involve your IT, HR, and operational partners to make sure all potential tools meet organizational requirements, including data security, privacy, bandwidth, integrations, and devices.

Stacking the Layers of Your Digital Learning Ecosystem

Here’s how you design a persona-based digital learning ecosystem:

1. Always start with outcomes—the learning and performance problems people will be expected to solve using your digital ecosystem.

2. Design right-fit learning experiences for each persona within your audience, including considerations for how digital learning will be accessed, the types of activities in which people will need to engage, and the variety of content to be used within the experience.

3. Identify your data requirements, including data that must be pulled into the ecosystem, captured within it, and shared outside it.

4. List the necessary digital capabilities (not features) to bring your learning experience designs to life for each persona.

5. Select technology with the proven ability to execute your required capabilities in the simplest, most impactful ways possible.

Each digital learning ecosystem is unique. Some use a small selection of tools—perhaps just a light LMS and a rapid authoring tool—due to their limited capability requirements and simple experience designs. Others apply a lengthy list of solutions—such as LMS, LXP, authoring tools, virtual reality simulations, microlearning platforms, online classrooms—to meet diverse employee needs within complex organizations. In every case, L&D must make smart decisions that reduce the white space within their technology stacks, maximize return on investment, and provide right-fit support for every employee.

That’s a quick summary of how modern L&D teams select technology. Implementing technology is an entirely different story—one that I don’t have enough words left to explore in this book. Instead, check out Donald Taylor’s Learning Technologies in the Workplace: How to Successfully Implement Learning Technologies in Organizations. After all, Jane Hart said “So much of modern workplace learning relies on technologies and yet nobody has written a definitive guide to their implementation—until now. It’s readable, insightful and useful and I recommend it.” Sounds awesome, right? Tell Don that JD sent you!

Before we move on, let’s explore a few additional considerations you should keep in mind when making informed technology decisions: build versus buy, integration, and measurement.

Should You Build or Buy Learning Tech?

You’re not going to find a tool that does things exactly the way you want, even in a crowded technology marketplace. So that raises the question, should you just build your own tool? This debate has been raging for as long as learning tech has existed. It’s just taken on different forms over time.

Technology went into the cloud in the mid-2000s, prompting an ongoing conversation within enterprise IT about whether it was better to host software using your own hardware infrastructure or by renting someone else’s. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure made it cheaper and more efficient to go off-premises without fear of downtimes or security breaches. As a result, 87 percent of LMS users were in the cloud by 2015 (Pappas 2021).

Software then evolved from being just stored in the cloud to being operated up there too. Software as a service (SaaS) took advantage of increased broadband access, growing use of web-based interfaces, and standardized web technology to create the licensing and delivery models we know today. In 2010, SaaS accounted for just 6 percent of enterprise software revenue (Roche, Schneider, and Shah 2021). By 2018, that number had grown to 29 percent, or $150 billion globally. Of course, this varies by industry due to considerations such as data security and functionality requirements. For example, in 2018 only 21 percent of government applications were SaaS as compared to 38 percent in professional services.

SaaS dominates the learning technology space today. From LXPs to authoring software, most of the tools used to support digital learning in the workplace exist in the cloud. This has shifted the debate from “cloud vs. on-premises” to “buy vs. build.” Hundreds of vendors around the world offer SaaS subscription models and platform customizations so L&D can have immediate access to technology. At the same time, open-source platforms, no-code tools, and third-party developers give L&D the option to build the exact technology they need.

So, should you buy or build the systems needed to bring your right-fit digital learning experience to life?

The answer is yet another unsatisfying “it depends.” A build strategy that works for a global enterprise with 400,000 employees may not work for a medium-sized business with 2,000 people. Rather than rely on hard and fast rules, L&D must weigh the pros and cons when deciding whether to buy or build technology (Table 11-1).

Table 11-1. Pros and Cons of Buying Tech

Pros

Cons

•  Proven capability and scale: L&D can see and touch the tech before implementation through pilots and demos. They can also leverage case studies and referrals to attest to the capability of the tech at scale. •  Limited maintenance: The tech provider is responsible for handling ongoing bug fixes, upgrades, and support tickets. •  Experienced guidance: The provider has implemented the tech before, likely for similar organizations. They can bring this experience to bear during your implementation. •  Persistent innovation: Providers must continuously innovate their products to remain competitive. L&D reaps the benefits of this through new features and services.

•  Limited customization: The provider may offer basic tech customizations, such as company branding and opting in or out of select features. However, the base product is the base product, regardless of how you use it. •  Ongoing subscription fees: SaaS solutions charge monthly or annual fees for seat licenses or activity. In many cases, you must pay for the tech whether it gets used or not. This puts pressure on L&D to maximize engagement to improve ROI. •  Vendor reliance: The more a platform is used, the more reliant L&D may become on the provider to execute their strategy. This may become problematic if the provider is unreliable.

Of course, many of the pros and cons for building technology are the inverse of buying it (Table 11-2).

Admittedly, there are a lot more cons to building your own learning tech than pros. However, if you really need technical capability that does not already exist and you have the development resources to make it work, it can be a viable option. Otherwise, there are so many powerful and unique tools available in the marketplace, it almost always makes sense to start by exploring what providers have to offer.

Table 11-2. Pros and Cons of Building Tech

Pros

Cons

•  Custom functionality: L&D can build whatever solution it wants. The sky’s the limit—as long as they have the development resources to make it happen. •  Up-front costs: The cost to build custom tech is heavily front loaded due to software and infrastructure development. Once the system is in place, ongoing costs are limited to maintenance, enhancement, and service fees. •  Freedom to adapt: L&D can update their custom solution whenever they want to meet changing business demands. They don’t have to wait for a provider to include a new feature on a future road map.

•  Product vision: L&D must be able to outline a clear vision for the product and how it will be developed. If you don’t have product development experience in a technology setting, this may be a complicated and lengthy process. •  Unproven capability and scale: No one has ever seen or used your custom solution before. You don’t know if it will work as intended until you make the investment to build and test it. •  Ongoing maintenance: L&D is responsible for all ongoing maintenance work, including bug fixes, browser compatibility, and upgrades. This may be completed in-house or outsourced depending on your available resources. •  Lack of guidance: L&D is on their own when building a custom solution. You may hire a consultant to provide high-level guidance, but it’s ultimately up to you to make product design decisions. •  Limited innovation: sThe solution will remain at version 1 until you make the decision to invest and upgrade. L&D has limited resources already without the need to maintain an innovation road map for their homegrown technology.

Rethinking Integration

Integration is one of the buzziest words in workplace technology for a good reason. If you must deploy a growing number of tools to help people do their jobs, it makes sense that you’d want those tools to function together as seamlessly as possible. On paper, this should simplify the technology experience for both users and administrators. The challenge is that the word integration can mean a lot of different things, especially when it comes to learning technology. For example, integration may refer to the desire to:

•  Share credentialing information between systems as part of single sign-on

•  Provision users into a system via an automated spreadsheet upload

•  Push course completion and test score data to a system of record via an application programming interface (API)

•  Add learning functionality to another application via a software development kit (SDK)

•  Apply out-of-the-box connectors to aggregate content from multiple subscription services

•  Use deep links to access content hosted in a content management system (CMS) from the LMS

This is another reason why beginning your technology journey with a persona-based ecosystem design is so crucial. The purposeful blend of experience, data, capabilities, and digital tools will clarify your integration needs. While some systems are built to function together seamlessly, the fact of the matter is that we don’t live or work in a perfectly integrated technological world. Every organization administers systems and handles data in different ways. Technology providers try to apply consistent standards to make integrations as simple as possible, but they’re unable to account for the needs and preferences of every company. Add to that a pile of regulatory requirements that vary by region, and integrations become a lot harder than just checking a box on an RFP.

The MLE Framework helps L&D apply a range of tools to foster a right-fit, continuous learning and support experience. To fit learning within the everyday workflow, the experience must be frictionless, embedded, and purposeful. At the same time, L&D often has limited technology resources to build and maintain technical integrations. IT may be able to help, but their customer-facing projects will always take priority. Therefore, L&D must approach the concept of integration from two perspectives: strategic and technical (Figure 11-3).

Strategic Integration

Just because two systems aren’t connected doesn’t mean they can’t work together (wow . . . a triple negative!). Every tool within the learning technology ecosystem must be strategically integrated. This means each system has a clearly defined purpose that is understood by everyone within the audience. Employees know why they should use the tool within the workflow. Subject matter experts and stakeholders know how they should leverage the tool to support their projects. L&D maintains this purpose to simplify the user experience.

Consider a learning tech stack that includes an LMS and a SharePoint site. Both systems can store documents and host online discussions. However, if these capabilities are applied differently by project, users will struggle to understand where to go for different parts of their learning and support experience. Therefore, L&D must clarify the purpose for each system. In this case, formal online training may be completed in the LMS while shared knowledge and performance support activities take place on SharePoint because it’s closer to the workflow. If a stakeholder asks L&D to upload documents to the LMS, L&D must push back and suggest the information be added to SharePoint to maintain each tool’s purpose. L&D may also add links within each system to help users navigate between tools to find related materials.

Technical Integration

Systems should only be integrated via API or other technical means when it adds clear value. SSO and user provisioning are two clear-cut examples, as they simplify the user experience and reduce administrative burden. L&D must be ready to set up and maintain these technical integrations in collaboration with providers and IT partners. Think twice about integrations that may create unnecessary disruption. For example, if a vendor does not provide significant notice and documentation for major system updates, you may not want to risk breaking the entire ecosystem due to a sudden lack of compatibility with one tool. This is especially important when learning technologies integrate with other business-critical systems, such as security, sales, or workforce management platforms.

Consider a learning tech stack that includes an LMS and an adaptive learning platform. The LMS is the validated system of record, meaning all employee learning data must be housed there for regulatory purposes. The LMS also hosts all proprietary learning materials. The adaptive learning platform delivers microlearning and reinforcement training to frontline workers. The organization implements this tool in addition to the LMS used by corporate team members because its personalized, mobile-first experience better meets the needs of their deskless employees. L&D doesn’t have the capacity to manage the same content across both systems, so they work with the two providers to integrate their platforms. Digital content is stored in the LMS and appears within employees’ adaptive learning sessions via API. Data from these online sessions is pushed to the LMS to maintain a single system of record. Furthermore, both platforms integrate with the company’s HR system for provisioning and authentication.

Measuring the Value of Tech

There’s an entire chapter on data coming up next, but we can’t finish our technology discussion without exploring how you can assess the value of your digital tools.

Workplace technology has traditionally been viewed as a capital expenditure (CAPEX). Buying software was an expense a business incurred for future benefit. Therefore, management accounted for technology in the same way as buying a new building. However, the proliferation of SaaS technology has shifted this perspective. Today, companies don’t own learning tech. They rent it by the month or year. When their contract is up, they must either renew or move to a new provider to maintain the same kind of capability. While implementation projects are budgeted as CAPEX due to their considerable upfront costs, learning technology is now an operational expense (OPEX). This puts added pressure on L&D to justify its digital value, especially as businesses continuously look to reduce costs.

L&D measurement tends to focus on content, not systems. Some tools, such as sales enablement platforms, are implemented to solve specific problems and therefore have value that is easier to quantify. However, most learning platforms have become part of the standard workflow. They exist to solve a variety of problems, from compliance and sales to company culture and product knowledge. This makes learning tech more vulnerable to cost cutting measures, because its value is not directly connected to revenue-generating activities. This also makes it more difficult for L&D to gain buy-in for additional technology investment.

I don’t have an exact formula for measuring the value of learning technology. But I do have a short list of factors you should consider as you refine your digital road map:

•  Engagement. Are people using the tool with the intended frequency? Employees don’t have to log into a system every day to gain value. However, if most people are not using it with any regularity, what’s the point of paying for it?

•  Impact. Does the tool play a critical role in enabling performance improvement? The platform itself may not be as directly responsible for knowledge and skill development as the activities and content it delivers, but could you provide the same type of employee support without the technology?

•  Sentiment. Do people like to use the tool as part of their workflow? Features and functions don’t matter if people get frustrated when trying to use a technology because it’s too complicated or unreliable.

•  Agility. Does the tool strengthen your overall ecosystem? Technology should not be solely assessed on its own. Rather, you must look at the entire technology stack to make sure you consider how tools support and enable one another.

•  Education. Does the tool improve your overall team capability? All technology comes with a learning curve. The best providers share insights gathered from working with an array of organizations to educate their customers and advance their practices. The value of this collaboration must be considered alongside the technology itself.

•  Innovation. Does the tool propel your strategy forward? Smart technology providers invest heavily in research and development (R&D) to remain competitive in a crowded marketplace. This effort provides an ongoing stream of new digital capabilities that may otherwise not be available to your organization.

You should assess the value of your digital ecosystem—including tools you apply but do not administer—on an annual basis. Compare the value these tools provide against the total cost of ownership, including license fees, administrative capacity, staff training, and IT support. This recurring assessment will help you determine if and when changes are necessary to maintain the ROI of your technology stack.

The Not-So-Distant Future of Learning Tech

I started this chapter by saying “technology is now the face of L&D.” But this evolution isn’t just about learning. Work has become a digital experience. Desked employees collaborate through Zoom sessions, Slack messages, and shared documents. Deskless workers use handheld devices to manage workflows, engage with customers, and access timely resources. The pandemic accelerated the digital transformation of work out of necessity, opening the door to new remote and hybrid work models. As a result, L&D followed suit and accelerated its own use of technology. However, the increased use of tech in learning and development does not necessarily equate to true digital transformation.

The internet transformed the way people accessed and shared information in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In grade school, I had to get my parents to drive me to the library so I could find the information I needed to write a report. In high school, I had to endure the hideous dial-up connection sound when I opened AOL to surf the web. In college, it was all Google all the time. By the time I entered the workforce, we all had Blackberrys, and the iPhone was on the horizon. Over the course of 10 years, technology changed the way I engaged with the world.

What happened in L&D over that same period? Instructor-led courses became e-learning modules. That’s about it. Sure, L&D benefitted from the additional scale, speed, and consistency that computer-based training enabled. But the same technology that transformed everyday life did not fundamentally shift the way organizations approached workplace learning. This trend continued through another decade of digital evolution as social and mobile technology became the standard. Burdened by operational demands and limited resources, L&D was unable to align the workplace learning experience with people’s everyday digital reality.

Today, L&D finds itself at another critical pivot point because of disruption. Technology is once again changing the way we live our lives, in everything from how we shop to how we date. Will L&D rethink the ways organizations can leverage technology to help people solve problems, develop skills, and improve performance? Or will we again graft a traditional mindset onto the next generation of digital tools? According to 2021 research by Brandon Hall Group, most organizations plan to increase their investment in digital learning moving forward. At the top of the list were:

•  Virtual synchronous classrooms (77 percent)

•  Microlearning (71 percent)

•  E-learning modules (71 percent)

Only 31 percent of organizations are making moderate to heavy investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Just 19 percent are ramping up applications of virtual and augmented reality. L&D may be using more technology more often, but our mindset regarding how technology can help people improve their performance has yet to evolve.

As we create the next future of work, L&D must rethink the way we use technology to achieve organizational goals. This will require considerable investment in our own R&D efforts. We must dedicate capacity to exploring and experimenting with new tools and frameworks. We must partner with technology providers to inform their ongoing road map development and understand how concepts like AI are fundamentally changing the way technology works. We must dig into buzzy topics like the metaverse and determine if and how these digital capabilities may be applied to solve familiar problems in new ways. L&D must foster a technology-enabled mindset so organizations can graduate beyond the basics of computer-based training and reap the full benefits of digital learning, including context, connection, personalization, and equity.

The MLE Framework helps L&D teams expand their digital perspective by applying right-fit technology to foster continuous learning. It makes solving problems at work feel more like solving problems in everyday life. It helps L&D translate everyday digital tools into workplace applications. Rather than assume employees will engage on Yammer because it looks and feels like Facebook, the MLE Framework shifts the focus from functionality to behavior and makes learning at work feel as simple and frictionless as using the apps on your smartphone.