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We live in a fast changing world, driven by digital ‘kit’. Around 2.5 billion people are online today. Whilst it might see a lot, there are another 5 billion people yet to be connected.
Technology has become an integral part of our lives:
- We used to go online – now we live our lives online
- Britons spend one in every four waking minutes online - that’s over 4 hours a day (study by Ofcom)
- By 2020, 5bn people will be online - double the number now
In business this means we need to find smarter ways to communicate and collaborate, and this is especially true when it comes to learning and sharing what we learn with others.
We have a huge opportunity to use social tools to help our teams develop together by using different mediums like presentations, blogs, SPOCs (small private online community) – all these will help us to rapidly advance bonding in our teams, in addition to learning and cognitive growth.
Most organisations invest in training but not many provide a way to social collaborate over what has been learnt. A training room isn’t always the best place to learn ironically – it’s a great place to get the information and get to grips with understanding it – but the discovery of the practical knowledge and everyday ‘tricks’ that top performers use to be effective, are learnt away from the training room. New technology is making it easier to share this knowledge with new, current and future employees.
When you consider how much time and money can be spent on training, it’s crucial that we find effective ways to share what we learn with others.
According to Bloomfire (a social learning company), there are many benefits to sharing and collaborating together on learning, by using various social learning methods:
- 39% of people said there isn’t enough collaboration on learning in their workplace, AND
- 31% said they’d be willing to pay for social tools themselves to help foster more collaboration
This clearly evidences that people want to find new ways of learning!
- 82% of businesses that use social technologies want to use more of them in the future!
On average, companies with a collaboration strategy for sharing learning had a:
- 131% annual increase in operational efficiency
- 122% increase in delivering projects on time
- 55% increase in revenue
So what’s stopping you? Grab that smartphone and start learning!
#Learnsharesucceed
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Jennie Marshall
Jennie Marshall is a double award winning Learning Professional who joined QA in 2011 as a Learning Specialist in our Management, Leadership and Personal Effectiveness team. In her career she has enjoyed a variety of roles within different industries including Estate Agency, Imports and Exports, Financial Services, Call Centres, Utilities and Staff Unions.
In January 2014 she moved to a new role within the same department, as Head of Courseware Development where she was responsible for the overall quality, design, development, administration and coordination of our market leading courseware.
In January 2016 she then moved to a new role of Learning Consultant in the same team, where she now leads the design and delivery of innovative learning programmes linked to business / individual performance improvement for our customers.
She is a respect and trusted advisor within the team, and known for her experienced and dedicated approach to learning and development, with expertise including management, leadership and talent and training and facilitation developed within a variety of environments. Jennie has also supported our customers as a Product Owner on a secondment basis, using Agile methodologies to manage and deliver new learning products to their business. Her experienced was recognised in December 2018 when Jennie was awarded Chartered Manager (CMgr) status.
In her role she acts as lead consultant for a number of large clients and remains frequently involved with the development of various initiatives and programmes from graduate programmes to modular skills development journeys.
Alongside developing great learning products for clients, Jennie also works on refreshing the Management, Leadership and Personal Effectiveness curriculum and is a regular blog contributor on QA.com.
When not absorbed in course development, Jennie can usually be found in her garden, or involved in various pursuits through the Women’s Institute, where she is a Communications Secretary. She also features frequently on her local BBC radio station as a newspaper reviewer.
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