Learning to Drive Impact

I’m a visual thinker and learner. I like to take notes at meetings. I also like to draw and doodle in my notes, creating mind maps and priorities. Learning apps that I can access anywhere, anytime, and that give me the touch-and-feel experience that I enjoy, are right up my alley. As it turns out, I’m not the only one. These days, learners across all levels of literacy expect a learning experience that is equivalent to a social media or video streaming app where they have a choice of content and when and where they want to consume it.

Fortuitously, the growing importance of skills development and job readiness is beginning to drive the need to put learning and productivity in the hands of the learner. When employees are in control of how they acquire expertise, there is a win-win situation: the learners learn more deeply and effectively, while there is a corresponding positive impact on the bottomline for the enterprises that are investing in their employees’ training.

This potential for learning to drive impact at a global scale paired with the huge gaps that exist in the readiness of the workforce are what attracted me to join BigSpring. My first two months have been an exciting sprint that has combined absorbing and contributing in very quick cycles. The ability to make a difference to learners early and meaningfully is fulfilling and empowering at the same time. BigSpring's value around continuous learning and measuring ROI from training makes me believe that my work will help shift how workers acquire knowledge, while providing employers the impetus to change how they invest in learning initiatives.

One thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has made clearer than ever before is that the traditional model of training - classroom-based, one-way-content-driven, and test-focused - is not serving enterprise. I know of many people who are facing tough situations at work and are concerned about remaining professionally relevant in a post-pandemic world. They are looking for ways to re-train and re-tool themselves. This is where technology can play a part in allowing them to acquire new skills in a format that is easily consumable and accessible, for every field of expertise.

It’s difficult to predict what the ‘new normal’ will look like, but I believe that business leaders are already beginning to realize that learning holds the key and will increasingly address it as a strategic objective and lever to protect our collective futures.

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