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Many organizations overlook one of the most significant ways to improve competitiveness, ramp up performance and sustain growth: continuous, varied and dynamic learning programs for their employees and leadership teams. As mobile has become an important channel for many business activities, it is emerging as a preferred platform for just-in-time learning and knowledge sharing. Mobile platforms are disrupting all kinds of activities and processes, and putting a whole new twist on employee productivity, customer interactions and partner collaborations.
Ubiquitous mobile access in this interconnected world means instant collaboration for company employees anytime anywhere -- but only if companies reduce the obstacles for such collaboration to take place both on mobile and social platforms. Organizations have to make significant internal changes to take advantage of social technologies, collaboration and mobile learning. Policies, processes and “culture” must engender an open environment where employee contributions to knowledge sharing are encouraged and where employees have the tools to quickly find the knowledge they need.
Source: Cisco Consulting Services, 2013
M-Learning – The New Kind of E-Learning
Most articles that mention e-Learning as an aspect of knowledge management, social business or collaboration usually only show e-Learning as a "check list item," rather than exploring how e-Learning can enhance overall corporate collaborative strength and performance improvement for employees. Like other disruptive mobile apps, m-Learning has hurled corporate e-Learning onto a whole new trajectory.
The mobile ecosystem -- devices, carriers, app markets -- has become one of the fastest growing technology industries, whichmeans great opportunities for learning accessed through mobile devices. Wearable mobile devices will likely become more prevalent for m-Learning, particularly for on-the-spot interactions and collaboration, environmentally interactive sessions and knowledge searches.
Mobile learning isn’t just learning dumped into a mobile device. It has become a new world of possibilities for at-your-fingertips knowledge. M-Learning usually targets situational or contextual learning, which means the content has to be an exact fit for what is needed in the moment. Experiential m-learning leverages the environment in which the learner exists. M-Learning augments employee performance and productivity in very real ways. It is continuous learning that is patterned on the way people work.
Brandon Hall Group’s 2013 Mobile Learning Survey
The study found that those organizations that are higher performers -- defined as companies that increased revenues and improved a majority of their key performance indicators over the previous year -- are doing more with mobile learning than organizations in general.
Eighty nine percent of (all) respondents whose organizations have been delivering mobile learning for more than two years say mobile video is either very or extremely effective.
Mobile learning can complement more “mainstream” learning services, but also provides an opportunity to transform how learning is done on the job. M-Learning has been a major force for breaking learning into bite-sized but meaty pieces that can be consumed in 10 minutes or less. Information design for mobile access is the focus, instead of formal course design.
Continuous Learning: Transforming Employee Performance Management
Just as companies must become agile and dynamic in response to constant change -- they have to include employees in the preparations as well. To meet ever-present change, continuous learning is essential. The tenets of such continuous learning also must change frequently to stay relevant. Mobile becomes a transformative technology to keep learning relevant and to help employees apply learning and knowledge to daily work.
Traditional employee “performance management” has been broken for some time. This approach has been responsible for driving away employees, stalling contributions to company success, and frequent failures to identify true top performing and innovative employees. Performance appraisal processes have deteriorated into ridiculous busy work that mostly angers and bewilders everyone involved, from employees to managers.
The focus must turn to enabling pathways to improved employee performance through education, development, and mentoring or coaching. This is not a new approach, but an old one that harkens back to when many companies became directly involved in career development for all employees who were willing to do the work for advancement and improvement.
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In some ways, employee performance management is akin to customer experience management: companies can’t manage the experiences of their customers -- but they can manage how they interact with customers in a consistent way with up-to-date intelligence in order to help customers, not hinder them. There’s a similar conundrum for “employee performance management.” For employees to perform well, companies need to get out of the way and provide an environment that encourages career growth and the tools to help employees perform well. This calls for new ways to develop, grow and proliferate the capabilities of employees.
Source: m-Learning: Mobile Learning Is Finally Going Mainstream -- And It Is Bigger Than You Might Think
Empowering Employees with Interconnected Learning Tools
The always-on mobile world of interconnectedness can invigorate opportunities for social collaboration and informal learning. These forms of learning can build up smarter workforces to respond to changing business needs and unexpected circumstances. Mobile enables new modes for searching and collecting information related to job needs. People-to-people communication and sharing improves, which yield upticks in performance and attainment of goals.
Next-Generation Knowledge Workers - Accelerating the Disruption in Business Mobility
Workers are becoming more comfortable with the value of constant collaboration. Currently, 24 percent use mobile collaboration, and an additional 31 percent are interested in adopting it. Some forthcoming mobile enhancements could drive further interest in constant collaboration. These include touching mobile devices to share information (51 percent were interested); finding and connecting relevant subject-matter experts (48 percent); and wirelessly sharing a presentation via a virtual whiteboard (48 percent).
In addition, there is interest in location/recognition-based enhancements, such as GPS navigation and maps for indoor locations (53 percent); having a device provide relevant location-based information (49 percent); and having a device notify a user when an important person enters a location (48 percent).
Winning Companies are Learning Organizations
There are many articles and reports that make clear that the very real value of "Learning Organizations” results from companies improving employee knowledge and skill expansion to take on more challenges and proceed successfully through their careers. With m-Learning, employees can directly apply knowledge and training to their jobs every day, quickly and effectively.
Learning Organizations are those companies that repeatedly outperform other vendors because of investments made in deep skills and knowledge for employees and leadership. Continuous investment is made in developing staff abilities and knowledge, no matter the economic conditions. As a result, these companies have a more developed level of effective innovation, and are more agile when responding to new opportunities and challenges. Not surprisingly, employee loyalty is much higher because these companies make clear that they believe in their employees and want to help them make a difference for the company.
Customers are the eventual big winners when dealing with Learning Organizations. All companyemployees are well prepared to take customer interactions to higher levels, as well as provide high quality products and services. Better prepared, engaged and committed employees are invaluable catalysts for propagating exceptional customer experiences.
Title image by Adriano Castelli / Shutterstock.com
