Are you exploring the benefits adaptive learning could bring to your business training? When the only constant is change, your employees need the ability to train alongside the changes taking place in their organization, whether it be new software, new processes, or transitioning to a new role. Today, adaptive learning is one of the best ways to stay competitive and align the abilities of your employees with business goals.
But why is it prevalent today? Traditional methods of training are increasingly incompatible with the modern workplace and workforce. Furthermore, the concept of one-size-fits-all training is becoming increasingly wasteful and ineffective.
At Lemon Learning, we believe adaptive learning is a major key to improving training efficiency, employee development and becoming a workplace of the future in 2023. Let’s find out why.
What is adaptive learning?
Adaptive learning focuses on the delivery of more user-centric learning. It uses technology and a data-driven approach that considers individual user performance, engagement, strengths, and weaknesses, to create customized learning experiences. The results are an increase in user engagement and overall motivation.
From a business perspective, adaptive learning helps leverage user data and optimize inefficient training for company-wide benefits, including better handling of tools, increased productivity, and lower support requests.
Business challenges facing L&D
As L&D leaders and professionals, you want your business training to be as effective and impactful as possible while adhering to evolving challenges and business constraints, including:
- Cost and complexity of implementing training programs
- Workforce and employee skills becoming obsolete
- Improving ineffective learning solutions
- Adapting training, learning, and development to work from home
- Meeting the needs and behaviors of a multigenerational workforce
- Measuring the effectiveness and ROI of training
L&D professionals can often feel stuck between a rock and hard place, trying to meet the preferences of different learners while sticking to business goals. Adaptive learning is just one style of training allowing L&D to increase the effectiveness of training programs by overcoming the challenges of one-size-fits-all training and its costly outcomes (user churn, data entry errors, retraining, etc.). Their main business challenge is improving the ROI and impact of effective training, and with adaptive learning…it’s possible!
Why is adaptive learning necessary in 2023?
1. Traditional training methods are inefficient
One-size-fits-all training implies your entire workforce has the same level of skill and learns in the same way. Classrooms, PDFs, archaic LMSs, and 100-page certifications are no longer compatible with the modern post-pandemic work structures we’ve acquired today. In-person training is harmful to engagement, information retention and inaccessible due to time constraints. It also denies employees the right to work at their own pace and with methods that best suit their learning preferences. During onboarding these factors have a direct negative impact on their onboarding experience.
E-learning boosts retention rates by 25 to 60 percent, compared to retention rates of 8 to 10 percent with traditional training.
(Source: The Research Institute of America)
Replacing traditional methods with software and application training means employees of all levels can receive personalized training to meet the same results. A data-driven approach to tailor-made content reduces learning errors, learning time, and the overall delivery time of information. Adaptive learning can reduce the skills gap and prevent skills from becoming obsolete thanks to adaptable workflows in response to company evolutions (e.g., new software, internal practices, etc.).
2. Lack of time to train
The reality is that most employees have little time to devote to learning while carrying out their daily tasks. In addition, traditional corporate training is almost entirely exclusive to employee onboarding and inefficient in delivery. Post onboarding, training is considered secondary to working missions and is commonly performed during personal hours.
L&D professionals have the complex mission of designing training, training managers, and helping implement department training, all while organizations and their applications continue to grow.
What can adaptive learning change? Personalized digital learning content speeds up the delivery of training, employee training time, and potentially employee development. L&D are able to measurable learning insights, adapt training workflows and provide managers with the knowledge they need to help manage their team but increasingly prefer self-service to resolve problems on their own, boost digital competence and reduce waiting time.
94% of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their learning and development.
(Source: Linkedin, 2019 Workplace Learning Report)
3. Exponential growth of SaaS and business applications
SaaS industry growth is currently projected at 18% each year as companies continue their yearly investment into Saas business solutions. According to Productiv, the average percentage of engaged users across all applications is only 45%. This growing number of applications directly impacts employee productivity when they lack the knowledge to use them correctly. Today, companies consist of a multigenerational workforce with varying levels of digital competence. It directly impacts the time to value of software, and its ROI when used incorrectly, inefficiently, or abandoned.
With adaptive learning, training can evolve alongside your software and application portfolios. New CRM features, implementing a new HRIS, or replacing your Procurement system? Adaptive corporate training means L&D or HR professionals and their employees can keep up with organizational growth and transformation with measurable and adaptable insights.
- Relevant content: One-size-fits-all mass training is not only ineffective, but often delivers irrelevant information to the wrong people. Adaptive learning means the right content is always delivered through personalized workflows and training paths.
- Customizable content: The VARK learning model is one example of our different learning preferences. User data can almost immediately provide insights into what works and what doesn’t, allowing training workflows to be adapted and remediated to individual training needs. As mentioned, content can also be customized alongside the evolution of tools (new features, new software, etc.).
- Learning by doing: According to the forgetting curve theory, without reinforcement, roughly 75% of information is forgotten in 6 days. In the case of business tools or features that aren’t utilized day-to-day, including purchasing software or a HRIS. A lack of reinforcement can result in the incorrect use of tools, data entry errors and costly error mitigation. Learning by doing means users onboard, train, and work all at once.
A workplace of the future is a part of workplace transformation in the digital age. According to Gartner, core principles include human-centric design, flexibility, and connectivity. Adaptive learning promotes all 3 using user-centric training, accessible software training anywhere, and now in some applications, connectivity across several devices (laptop, smartphone, tablet).
What are the benefits of adaptive learning?
Investing in effective training will improve costs and increase ROI long term.
| Traditional learning | Adaptive learning |
| Outdated, ineffective, hard to measure | Measurable adaptive learning |
| Obsolete training materials | Adaptable training materials |
| One-size-fits-all training | Personalized training workflows |
| Facilitates skills gap between employees | Reduces skills gap between employees |
| Impersonal, indirect classroom training | Learning by doing approach |
| Low engagement, loss of confidence in tools | Increased engagement and user satisfaction |
| Incorrect use of tools | Increased time to value of software |
| Inefficient use of tools, software abandonment | User accountability through software training |
| Difficult to measure | Measurable analytics to prove ROI |
| Time-consuming, training implementation | Time saved for the L&D department |
How can I prepare to become a workplace of the future?
🍋 Lemon Learning tip: with a digital adoption platform, it’s possible to personalize and customize corporate training whenever you need to
With a digital adoption platform, you can place adaptive learning at the heart of your corporate training and instill the core principles of a workplace of the future.
- Accessible training workflows available 24/7
- Personalized training workflows to deliver relevant content to the right people
- Customizable training content to keep up with the evolution of your tools
- Interactive content guides to increase employee engagement
- Easy to learn training content transformed into bite-size micro objectives
- Learning analytics to optimize your training with data
Want to know more about the power of in-app interactive training? Get in touch!
