Innovation Learning & Development: New Approaches to Employee Training

DeAnn Alcantar: Thank you. I just wanted to give a little bit of background about who we are and what we do. As she said, I'm DeAnn Alcantar and I'm the manager of learning and development at TriNet. And I'm pleased to have Caroline Solis Wright with me. She is the vice president of marketing at 360Learning and she comes to us with over 10 years of experience, not only in marketing, but also strategy and learning partnerships. In her role as marketing leader at 360Learning, she's worked firsthand with leading companies to develop their future leaders and upscale their people at scale through collaborative learning, and that's what this session is all about, collaborative learning.

I was thinking about my years of experience and learning and development and over the years, it has changed a lot from classroom in-person training to remote instructor-led training to online learning and micro learning and e-learning and everything in between. But this collaborative learning—that's new and exciting. So Caroline, we're excited to have you talk with us today about all wonderful things learning.

Caroline Solis Wright: Thanks DeAnn.

DeAnn: You're welcome. So I know we had an initial poll question that was asking, "Does your business have a learning program beyond onboarding?" Because we know that most of us have some kind of structure in place that helps our new employees get up to speed with our companies. Do we have that poll question? And if not, no worries. Yeah, the question is, "Does your business have a learning program beyond onboarding?" And if so, you can raise your hand. Yes, beyond onboarding. Excellent. All right, well, beyond the basics then, Caroline, should a small to medium-size business realistically have more of a formal type of learning program?

Caroline: I think absolutely. If we're not learning, our businesses can't keep up with what's happening out in the market. I'm gonna take us back many years to actually one of my first roles. I was working in a small digital studio, we were a team of 25, we had really focused around the web. So we were building games really web-based for Nickelodeon, Disney, Mattel. And the iPhone had come out a few years before, but there weren't really apps yet for kids. But if people remember, when the AppStore started really gaining momentum, kids apps became a huge part of the AppStore. And our team of 25 was not equipped to build mobile apps. So the way that we approached that was, one, we couldn't go out and just hire 25 new people who all, like, knew how to build mobile apps.

We really had to think about how to upskill ourselves, and how to think about sharing that learning amongst ourselves so that we could really approach the market and continue to serve our clients and continue to really meet our business goals. So, what we did was we took a small group of us and they really specialized in upskilling themselves on mobile.

Then they came back to the broader team. And like what you might hear around train-the-trainer was really the approach we took. So have that team really go out and learn those skills and then come back to the business and be building that skill set within our business and be able to deliver that new line of business for our team.

So I think about that a lot when I think about small companies. You probably already are experiencing that in some ways and you're not formalizing it into learning, but it's really important to look at that as learning and really try to put a program around it and try to give structure to those subject matter experts.

DeAnn: Thank you. Awesome. And I do see that the poll was initiated and it looks like 71% who voted do have a learning program beyond onboarding. So that's really wonderful. Well, you know, one of the main concerns that we have seen lately is this whole aspect of time. So regarding employee time, how much of a priority is learning and development, given the time constraints that we all experience?

Caroline: That's a great question. I come back to, if you aren't learning, you're not going to keep up with the market. And you're not going to stay. Really, your goal shouldn't just be about keeping up, it should be being ahead of the market. And without learning, you're not going to be able to do that. A big thing that we think about, I know DeAnn mentioned mobile, or, not mobile learning, microlearning.

So thinking about learning in the flow of work. And how do you not ask your teams to take full days or multi-days to go learn? But how do you really deliver learning in the flow of work? So that it is those small chunks and people aren't taking these huge breaks from their day-to-day. So I think that's one approach to think about with your team of how can you deliver learning in the flow of work, to make it those micro learnings that they can have and you're not pulling them away from the day-to-day in huge chunks of time.

DeAnn: I think that's wonderful and I was thinking about how I'm learning now too, is if I need to know something right now, I'm going to go watch something real quick. And I may have to watch it multiple times, so I like to be able to watch it, go try it, watch it again, try it, back and forth like that. So that is learning in the flow of work.

Caroline: That is learning in the flow of work. And I do think it's a lot more natural in our day-to-day work to be learning in that style and not be asking people to step away from their work for full days at a time. You're also gonna enable them to really practice it hands on, versus going again and stepping away and then trying to come back to the work and apply it.

Another thing we think about with that learning and the flow of work is making sure that you're tying it back to your individual business. That's where subject matter experts really come in. Those are the experts within your business who can help tie that learning back to how it matters or what the impact is in your specific business circumstance.

DeAnn: Wonderful. So, 360Learning is actually the learning management system that TriNet is going to be implementing for 2024, and Caroline, what kind of capabilities can we anticipate with regards to learning in the flow of work with this new learning management system?

Caroline: Sure. So we're really excited about the partnership with TriNet and the opportunity to work with so many of the great customers that TriNet has and serves. What you can expect with TriNet Learn, powered by 360Learning, is one, of course, covering your basic compliance requirements that you need to have in operating your business. But then, of course, being able to go further and build some of that internal training that's specific to your business.

When we talk about collaborative learning, we really view it in two ways. One is working with those subject matter experts to develop the courses that are meaningful to your business and then through that experience of those courses, really being able to have people interact and engage with the course material. So it's not just a traditional top down, online e-learning experience, but they're really able to interact, ask questions throughout the course, and that internal expert can be answering those questions as they have time.

DeAnn: What do you think of that? Pretty awesome, right? That's real time expertise. People learning from each other, with each other. And from an earlier session today, I think they called it collective intelligence. Yeah? Pretty cool. Wonderful. Well, I have had some small to medium-size businesses ask me, their business is really very targeted, so are they going to be able to create their own learning? Can they actually create their own courses? And can they manage those? So, are there tools to help them manage it?

Caroline: A hundred percent. And they are the least scary tools. There is, like, if you have people in your business who they are your go to expert on X, Y or Z, but you're like, "Ooh, their PowerPoint design is terrible." That's okay. If they can write an email, they can help in that course creation. And you can, as an HR, an operations leader, really help them get that course over the finish line and with very easy, quick tools within the platform. I think that's what's really great, is the number one thing of why people choose to work with 360Learning is that we have those digital tools to make that knowledge sharing easy.

It's not about investing a bunch of time in the course design and the instructional design. As great as it would be to be able to really put that polish on a course, we know how quickly your business is changing and how much you need to keep that information up to date. So we really focus on making the tools and the course building really easy, so that is continuously up to date and you're putting out the latest information for your people.

DeAnn: Amazing. Amazing. Wonderful. Well, you know, a lot of times, clients will also come to my team and ask for learning paths. So they say, "I have a new leader. What kind of courses do they need to be taking? How do I upskill my new leaders for that role?" Some of them are moving from an individual contributor role to a leadership role. So they're asking about existing learning paths, especially when they're tied to skills and competencies. So, what if they don't have the bandwidth to do that kind of starting from scratch?

Caroline: So you don't need to start from scratch. There's a lot of great off-the-shelf content that you can go out and find. Whether you want to do one that here's a whole learning path that you found that you either want to bring into 360Learning, or you can actually buy through one of our off-the-shelf content partners, a whole library of content and learning paths and use that.

The thing that we always encourage for our customers to be thinking about, though, is how to make sure that you're connecting that back to your business. So, in the example of an IC moving into a manager role, I've been through that myself. It's important to have that global perspective and professional development, but make sure you understand what it means within your business to be a manager.

So within my business, what's the actual expectation of a manager within my particular business, not within the world at large. That's important to understand, but you really wanna make sure that your people are equipped to be managers within your given business. So you can use that off-the-shelf content, but then really pair it back with your own internal processes and best practices.

DeAnn: And I'm assuming you can do that with a wide range of topics, of skills, of competencies.

Caroline: Absolutely. Professional development, technical skills, you even see things around sustainability, really anything that's out there, you can bring it into the platform, if you want to talk tooling. But same as basically anything you can find out on the web, you're going to be able to bring it in.

DeAnn: I think that's really wonderful because so many different businesses, so many different areas of focus. Having that flexibility to really tailor your programs for your organization seems like a very fantastic option. And I do see we had another poll go up that says, "Do you offer learning paths for your employees?" 100% of you who voted said "yes." That is wonderful.

Caroline: Oh, I think it's actually the reverse.

DeAnn: Oh, you said no? I'm reading that wrong? Okay, said "no." Okay. Okay, I can see that now. They switched it, or else I'm seeing things backwards. It's late in the day. Oh, so none of you are. But it's interesting because quite a number of clients have come to my team and said, "Can you help us build learning paths?"

Wave of the future. Yeah, and that's where you can get into that more of that blended learning approach too, where you have some aspects of online learning, some aspects of instructor led, and you do probably want to have that Q&A social collaboration where people asking questions and getting answers. So yeah.

Caroline: And I think one of the things that excites me most is when I see customers do things that we're like, we didn't even intend for you to do that with the platform, and now we're thinking of new things that we could offer. So one example of that was using a learning path and they had digital courses in the learning path. Then they would do a Q&A with a Zoom webinar. So getting people together, even in a remote environment. And then using that same feature to be able to pair people up for mentoring and direct one on one coaching, which is great.

And something that we're definitely really excited about and enthusiastic about is people doing those types of things. So again, coming back to the level of effort and resources that you have, I don't think it has to be a heavy lift. I mean, if you think about mentoring and coaching, sometimes that can feel like, “Oh, I need to go buy this big resource out there.”

But really, you have a lot of talent within your business. How can you leverage that in small ways? Whether it's organizing coffee meetups for people that are looking to upskill on a specific skill or somebody who's moving from an IC to a manager role and pairing them up with a leader and really coordinating that for them. Doesn't have to be a heavy lift, but it can go a long way in terms of learning and development.

DeAnn: Awesome. This kind of brings me to another thought about one of the earlier sessions today as well, where the speaker was talking about, in order to transform your organization, you must create a culture of self-directed learning and intrinsic motivation.

So one of our poll questions is, "Have you considered learning and development as a way to drive engagement or that intrinsic motivation with your employees, yes or no?" And it looks like, I'm going to try and read this correctly this time. 86% of you said "yes" and 14% said "no." So it looks like you are using this as a mechanism for intrinsic motivation, which is wonderful.

And this is truly one of the best ways we can keep our employees engaged in our workforce. I know some of the research that my team continues to conduct is, "Why do people leave organizations?" They used to say it was because of the manager or the boss. That's not the number one reason anymore. Number one reason is engagement.

They don't understand how what they do contributes to the larger meaning of the organization. So when you provide this collaborative learning experience, it really ties the meaning into what they do to the larger purpose of your organization. Yeah. Wonderful.

Caroline: One of the things I'm most excited about that we're thinking a lot about right now and talking to a lot of customers about and a lot of leaders in the learning space is around skills-based learning.

So when we think about intrinsic motivation and keeping employees engaged, we're thinking about—how do we give them visibility on the skills that they need to upskill within their current role and the opportunities or career advancement that they could have to move into that next role, even if it's not in their direct career progression?

And learning is obviously the first step of somebody moving either within their current career progression and moving up within their role or moving to another role. So really thinking about that and how do we give people that intrinsic motivation to upskill or reskill as they're thinking about how their career is going to progress. So that's an area I'm really excited about that in learning and development, there's a lot of talk around skills and how do we become skills-based organizations. So really excited about the possibilities with skills-based learning.

DeAnn: Wonderful. I remember listening to a podcast earlier this week that was talking about succession planning as well and how we need to prepare those younger generations coming into our workforce to move into leadership positions, how important that is. And I can see this is a great mechanism to help us do that. So I know that part of our collaborative learning is going to require subject matter experts, people who really have the knowledge and the expertise in certain areas. How do you encourage SMEs in your organization to participate in collaborative learning?

Caroline: It's a great question because, I think as most people know, subject matter experts within your business are some of the busiest and most in demand people within your business. So very hard to then say, "Hey, can you take this time to build this course, share this knowledge, run this training?" That can be a lot to ask.

So how do we lower the barrier of enabling them to participate and give back to the organization in that way? We really do it through a few mechanisms and coming back to creating courses, we really lower the barrier of what it takes to create a course. We have a lot of exciting AI capabilities that are coming out, that a subject matter expert would be able to plug in some of their material and it will automatically build that course based on learning and development guidelines around here's our brand voice and tone.

Here's the tone of the course that we want it to be. Do we want it to be fun or professional? Things like that. And be able to really speed up that process so that we're lowering the ask of subject matter experts, but really still capturing that internal expertise and skills so that those can be shared throughout the organization.

So that's a lot of what we think about and then how can you create ways to, when we think about in-person training, really make sure that you're optimizing what you're doing. So, if you're gonna have several in-person training sessions, whether they're on Zoom or in person, how do you make sure that you're maximizing the fill rate or the number of people that are gonna attend so that you're not asking a subject matter expert to come lead a session and then the session is half full. That's not what you want to do on the learning and development side if that person is super in demand. You really want to maximize how you're leveraging your internal resources so being able to really work on that side as well.

DeAnn: And that was actually a question I was going to ask too in terms of, you know, my philosophy is let's do a well-rounded blended learning program or learning experiences. So do you see instructor-led or SME-led or, you know, that human connection going away anytime soon?

Caroline: Absolutely not. I think it will continue to be a huge part and it's a good reinforcement. And we really look at it like, blended learning is giving you the best of both worlds. How can you take some of the content that is actually best delivered in self-paced e-learning and put that into self-paced e-learning? And then the material that's really, best done as an interactive session and making sure that's how you're in-person or Zoom-based sessions are really focused around that interaction and workshop, versus the more content top down heavy material.

DeAnn: Wonderful. And I do see another poll that came up. “Are you offering upskilling and reskilling learning for your employees?” And the majority of you are. Great job. Wonderful. Let's see, metrics. Can we talk about metrics for a bit?

Caroline: We can talk about metrics.

DeAnn: So, what are good metrics to understand the usefulness of learning programs?

Caroline: So, metrics are really important and I think, traditionally, learning and development has gotten really hung up around metrics around completion or attendance. That doesn't really tell… It's a great indication of—are people going all the way through the course and are people showing up? But it's not really telling you whether they're engaging and learning and really grasping the material and then going and applying it in their day-to-day work.

So we really think about metrics more on the standpoint of relevancy. And how do you make sure that the learning that you're delivering is really relevant to your employees or your learners? There are a couple ways to do that. I mean, in the 360Learning platform, which you will have access to through TriNet Learn, we have a very simple one question survey at the end of every e-learning course called the Relevance Score.

That's really to both make it easy on the employee to give immediate feedback. And also make it easy for L&D, HR, operations, to be able to quickly spot what courses or what learning paths are effective and which ones might need some looking into, if you have a low relevance score. And then we're also excited about rolling out additional surveys to get additional feedback, whether that's through onboarding paths and you really want to understand—how did week one go, how did week two, week three and the first month go?

So that can all be done through the learning platform as well. So we really encourage our customers to look towards those types of metrics as the most effective measure of the learning. What's exciting about skills is that there's a greater ability to then measure and assess employees on developing that skill. So you go out, you take a learning, you take a course, you attend a workshop, and you can come back and reassess yourself, and your manager could go and potentially validate that assessment or not on a particular skill.

DeAnn: That's great. It seems like it is going to be a huge advantage for companies to know exactly. And it's real time feedback. I've seen the tool in action, so you know exactly which courses are working. You know which conversations are happening. You know what people are saying. So it's like that real-time feedback that was mentioned in the previous breakout session in terms of collecting what needs to be collected so you can make any refinements. Do you use metrics to measure learning effectiveness? 100% said 'no.' Ooh.

Caroline: I wish I could ask a follow up, which if everyone's doing onboarding, like what are you doing at the end of onboarding? Like, are you asking, "How did onboarding go? And do I feel ready to do my job and really perform in that role?" I think asking for that type of feedback is what you really need to be able to continue to iterate on your programs and making sure that you're equipping people with the skills and the knowledge that they need to be effective in their roles. So I think even those lightweight surveys, even if it's a Google form, it doesn't have to be like a fancy tech platform. It can absolutely be a lower weight thing. It's going to go a long way in terms of letting you know whether the thing that you're putting out, the learning that you're putting out to your people is really helping them be more effective in their jobs.

DeAnn: It really ties back to the meaning, creating that meaning for your people. Yeah, awesome. Well, I know that the QR code is also to be used for any questions that you have, but I think that we have time for a few questions if we'd like to either go that way or have the hands raised. I see questions. Do we have a microphone? Yeah. Awesome.

Audience member #1: How do you think about measuring learning, not just right after the training, but longitudinally?

Caroline: That's a great question. I would say, I mean, there's efficacy studies which are going to be like a longer process to run those at full scale. And there are certainly businesses that are doing that, but they tend to be quite large companies that are investing in that way. I think coming back to the skills piece is what interests me most of where the industry is really going. Because if we're thinking about skills-based learning, and first assessing people before any learning happens on a skill, and where they sit on a proficiency level, then they go and invest in that learning path, they do workshops, they go out and practice that work in their day-to-day and then they can come back and reassess and have a conversation with their manager on that assessment. That is what excites me most around being able to give that type of visibility on growth over time. Because you're right, that you take a course and that's not necessarily the same as going and applying that knowledge, so I'm really excited about what that skill level assessment can really bring us on understanding that long term impact of learning.

Audience member #2: Great question. I'm building on what you said, which answers most of what my question was. But what about the pre- and post-assessment by a leader of whether the employee thinks they're getting better at something or not? Transparency around that as well. I mean, ideally it would be part of the development plan and you agree on it, but what about like, measuring effectiveness and having those conversations?

Caroline: Can you elaborate on…

Audience member: From your perspective, involving the leader in the pre- and post-skill assessment?

Caroline: So in terms of like, our particular platform, the way that we're thinking about it is that you would have multiple steps to happen where an employee would assess themselves. A manager can validate or say "No, that's not where you stand on this proficiency level." And then of course up to HR, operations, learning and development to really set the process and how that conversation should be handled and go, of you know, are you looking at individual roles and saying, "Here are the skills in this role and here's the competency levels within the skill," and then you're really equipping managers to have those tough conversations when somebody isn't necessarily meeting a competency level that they are assessing themselves at. So I do think there's a tech element that can really facilitate that conversation, but then how are you wrapping that around with guidelines and best practices on how to really have those conversations?

DeAnn: It is capable, that's the good thing. We see everything online.

Caroline: Yep.

DeAnn: A question over here.

Audience member #3: I can speak loud if you want.

DeAnn: They're recording it. Yeah.

Audience member #3: I'm not an actor right now. Alright, so my question is, can you give me, twofold. Can you give me a couple of concrete examples of the kinds of courses that you're offering? I'm not going to mention what I'm offered at my organization. I'm wondering, because it might be, you know, competitive, whatever, competition. And the second part of that question is, to speak to some of the other stuff that we heard about in our conference here, especially with respect to mental health, does it slide into any of those kinds of competencies for people sort of, self-development, number one. And then on the other hand, I work with special populations and I have to sort of seek out, you know, depending on the level of disclosure that one wants to, because the people that I work with would fit under a DEI sort of situation. And then, therefore, what kind of extra stuff might there be for them that doesn't quite fit into, as you were describing the goals of the company other than, you know, DEI and somebody giving, really giving somebody a chance who's eager to work?

Caroline: So on the first part, there is for TriNet Learn, what you'll have access to as a TriNet customer, there's a set of courses that will be preloaded into your platform that are primarily geared around your HR and compliance required courses. So that is what will come preloaded into TriNet Learn. Then of course it's up to you of what else you might like to bring into your platform. We have a lot of partners, OpenSesame, Udemy, LinkedIn Learning, and you can actually bring all of those courses into 360Learning. That requires an extra subscription, so you do have to keep that in mind from a budget perspective.

Audience member #3: Are those courses all a cart when you start to see people, you know, using them. They don't know they're paying extra for them, but the company is starting to see, like, an uptake, or how does that, you know.

Caroline: So like, let's take the example of LinkedIn Learning. If you have a LinkedIn Learning subscription outside of TriNet Learn, you can bring that into 360Learning. And what that means is that all the courses of LinkedIn Learning would be available through your TriNet Learn platform if you bring that connection.

Where it gets like really, really great, and you can get like L&D nerdy, is you can incorporate those LinkedIn Learning courses into a learning path. So let's say you have that subscription and you have TriNet Learn and you're able to alter courses on the platform, I'm trying to think of a good example, but let's say you really wanted to enable people around presentation skills, there's a really great course on LinkedIn Learning, you bring that in and then you want to tie it back to your business if your business is fully remote. So they're going to do a lot of presentation skills that are also in person. And you really want to emphasize what that means in a remote environment.

Yeah, you can connect those courses all in one learning path, which is gold. And then you know, okay, how far did learners get through each of those courses and paths? Our platform is really about bringing in that world-renowned content that you choose. And it's up to, you know, we really try to be content agnostic in that way. And then making sure that you have the ability to create those courses that tie it back to your business.

DeAnn: Yes.

Audience member #4: So we've talked a lot about learning and it seems like it's more for non-managerial employees or colleagues. What's the sort of thought around also making sure that leadership teams are also continuing their learning and it's not just such a focus on those that are lower in the organization?

Caroline: That's a good question. So I'm actually just now reviewing the plan for rebooting some of our, or refreshening some of our own, well, we don't call our internal managers, managers, we call them coaches. So, that's really the philosophy we take, which really comes back to collaborative learning as a philosophy, is having people really coach people rather than manage them, kind of a separate tangent.

But we actually have a coaching program in 360Learning for ourselves. So we do look at leadership as also being something that is collaborative. The leaders of the company, the execs are in those programs as well. We take them, in addition to other coaches and managers in the company taking them. So I don't really view it as something that's solely for ICs.

I think when we talk about skills, sometimes it's a bit more tangible to understand like the skill level in an IC and then you start to get a bit more complex when you get into manager roles, but that is available through there as well.

DeAnn: Yeah, and I still like the idea that you can create learning paths for any level in the organization. So you have your new leaders, your mid-level leaders, your senior leaders. And that's all able to be tailored for them.

Caroline: I think something that is interesting that we have seen at a recent customer, a big reason why they came to 360Learning, was they had a sizable amount of leadership change at the top, so executive level leadership change. And they wanted to really infuse that leadership down one level, so at their VP level, and they've actually created a full academy for that VP level. And, you know, it's separate. People throughout the company can't see it. It's really just for that VP group where those executives are, you know, I don't know that they necessarily developed the courses themselves.

They had a lot of help from that L&D team, but the content really was driven through that executive team and really having those conversations in a dedicated area around what leadership means at the company, especially with a sizable executive change. So we do see that usage in the platform as well, of being able to create that space for a specific group of people.

DeAnn: Wonderful. So do we have any questions that came in on the QR code? Okay. We have a few minutes. Oh, let's see. My team is small. Does in-person learning fit into this?

Caroline: So I would say yes, but I'm also very pro-learning. So even if I was like, "No small team, no in-person learning." But to me, like, sometimes it sounds more intimidating than it is, that you're going to have to set up this big thing and you've got to have a room and you've got to have a presentation.

I don't think it has to start there. I think it can start with a lunch and learn. And that is a learning session for a small team. So I often think, even at a company of 360Learners, now 400 people, even at our company, I tend to say, like, push the team to say, "Think small." How do we think about sharing knowledge and skills on a small scale?

And then we look at how we scale it up if we find that it works really well. So lunch and learns are a great example. We do a lot of panels. If we come back to leadership skills, we have a panel that we're running with our chief revenue officer on women in leadership. That to me is what we're doing.

We're a full remote company, so we're doing it virtually, but it's the same to me of in-person training and that it may not feel like it's training, but that is learning. That's giving people practical information around how somebody grew in their career and what skills were most important for them to take those steps along their journey. So I don't think your size should be what dictates whether you think about doing these things or not. I think you can start small and think at a small scale. And then as you see things be really engaging and employees say, "Hey, like I want more of that," then start to think about how you can get bigger from there.

DeAnn: Well, thank you for the questions. Should we call it a day or should we see if there's any more questions? Okay, we're going to call it a day. Now I was given the heads up that if you rate us a five, then someone in the back there said free Starbucks coffee. So we're hoping you'll give us a high rating.

Caroline: And I can quickly answer this one. So we're starting with PDFs. So you would be able to put a PDF directly in the platform and it turns it into a course. There will be more. So we're really excited. We're putting a lot of R&D. Exactly. Putting a lot of R&D effort around AI. It's not about replacing HR, learning and development. It's really about giving you a copilot that can ease the burden on subject matter experts, ease the burden on you. So that's really the approach that we're taking when it comes to AI.

DeAnn: Thank you for being here with us this afternoon. Have a great rest of your day.