The Evolving Learner Experience: Adapting the Bersin Model for a Modern World

Introduction

The corporate training industry is a massive, ever-evolving landscape, currently estimated at over $360 billion annually. In this dynamic environment, understanding the modern learner and tailoring learning experiences to meet their needs is paramount. Josh Bersin's "The Modern Learner" framework has been a valuable tool for understanding how learning has changed in recent years. However, unprecedented global events have occurred, including a global pandemic of over 2 years, a war in Europe, and a looming recession, all of which had massive impacts on employment demographics and employee expectations. This article explores how to adapt the Bersin model to address the evolving needs of learners in a post-pandemic world.

The Modern Learner Framework: A Foundation

Bersin’s "The Modern Learner" framework is an outstandingly succinct summary of how learning had changed in recent years. It identifies key factors shaping the modern learner's experience, focusing on two primary dimensions:

Feeling: Learners are often distracted, impatient, and overwhelmed.
Expecting: Learners are untethered, seeking on-demand learning, collaborative, and empowered.

These characteristics provide a valuable foundation for designing effective learning programs.

The Impact of Global Events: A Seismic Shift

Two years after the introduction of this learner framework some unprecedented global events occurred. The world entered a pandemic that completely altered how business was being conducted and how people work. This pandemic was seismic in that it lasted for over 2 years and affected nearly every country on the planet. It had massive impacts on employment demographics and employee expectations. Then the war in Europe occurred producing huge impacts on global economies and the supply and demand of basic goods. As if that wasn’t enough, the economies of the world began a slow slide toward recession. The effect on employees was significant, whether in terms of their job retention or personal budgets. It remains an incredibly accurate framework on many levels even after these huge socio-economic world shifts. While the core principles of the Modern Learner framework remain relevant, these global events have amplified certain aspects and introduced new challenges.

Increased Distraction and Overwhelm

The shift to remote and hybrid work models has blurred the lines between work and personal life, further exacerbating distraction and overwhelm. Instructor-led in-classroom learning programs shifted to online formats - rapidly. A course once delivered in a class may have needed to move into an online VILT format. Suddenly instructors were Zooming or Webexing their classroom content. This changed how learners interacted in these modes. The distracted, impatient, and overwhelmed Modern Learner was now dealing with having to focus on one more open tab on their screen rather than having a more structured classroom environment. Opportunities for interactive discussion in these live online formats changed as well (“oh sorry, you go ahead”). A learner could turn off their camera to handle personal distractions or have a bad hair day. Earlier classes of 30 or 40 in-classroom participants became unwieldy in an online live video format. Paying attention to a screen became incredibly difficult for hours of time, in contrast to the classroom. This new dynamic hyper-emphasized The Modern Learner’s distractibility and impatience.

The Rise of the Untethered Learner

The Modern Learner framework addresses “untethered learners” who learn from multiple locations in untraditional ways. These new post-pandemic changes emphasize the “untethered” component even further. Some learners may have become 100% remote while others are hybrid, spending some days in the office. This has created new complexities for learning professionals. How does the learning professional now design an instructor-led experience for these learners? Do they separate the remote from the on-site learners? Do they combine them? If so, where - online or in the classroom? What are the considerations for employees who have physically moved across the country for attending an in-classroom course? Where is the classroom now, anyway - in the office or in some new halfway location? Some learning experiences can simply not be duplicated through completely e-learning formats. How willing are untethered learners to attend in-classroom sessions anywhere? Although this sounds like a call that should just be made about how in-classroom sessions will be conducted, in this new post-pandemic environment that “call” has a new impact.

The Empowered Learner in a Competitive Job Market

A huge worker shortage emerged post-pandemic. Seismic shifts in employment occurred as workers resigned, moved, and sought new opportunities. This, in turn, created the need for organizations to attract new talent, onboard them successfully and offer the best learning programs to their new hires. One aspect of The Modern Learner is that learners feel “empowered” to learn and seek their own learning options. How should we design new learning programs to attract this shifting demographic of learners? If the employee has multiple employment offers, how will an organization’s learning opportunities attract this talent? We can look at corporate learning paths as trajectories for talent. Where does this new hire want to go in their career and why does an organization have an edge in providing them with such a trajectory?

Adapting Learning Strategies for the Modern Learner Plus

We, as a learning community, are experiencing tremendous changes within our learning audiences. We now have The Modern Learner Plus, so to speak. Our learners, who were once accurately described by Bersin, are further changing, and evolving in ways we never envisioned. Some dimensions of his framework are now more prominent, such as distraction and being overwhelmed. Learning professionals need to begin from this understanding, they need to immerse themselves into the mindset and approach of these current learners in new ways. Rather than beginning from course objectives or program outcomes, the learning professional needs to start with learner needs and environment, and subsequently weave in objectives and outcomes. Start with a learner who has no time, is persistently distracted, and is feeling somewhat isolated. How would you design a course for this learner?

Talk to Learners

First, and foremost - talk to learners. Learning professionals often talk predominantly to subject matter experts prior to formulating their course or program. While this is necessary for content, talking to learners provides a better picture of precisely the aspects Bersin originally outlined - how they are feeling and what they are expecting. These discussions need to focus on why a learner does things, and how they prefer to do them; what they are looking for; where do they want the learning to take them. Most importantly, learning professionals need to let learners do the talking without leading their answers. For this aspect of learners, spending some time with an organization’s most recent hires may be helpful. Their feedback is fresh and most closely reflects the current environment. They should be asked what they wish had been offered (the responses may be enlightening). Ask them what was most exciting to them as they started, and what was most unnerving. New hire programs should be designed that incorporate these answers. Organizations should have their recent new hires collaborate with their newest new hires. The Modern Learner prefers people to share what they know. The company needs to provide more opportunities for their newest talent members to do this.

Embrace Learning in the Flow of Work

Workforce training was traditionally an in-person affair, taking workers away from their desks or offices and installing them in a highly structured and proscriptive setting. But now, with the rise of hybrid and remote work models, and the growing expectation for access-anywhere solutions, it’s not as easy to schedule this type of training. What’s more, it’s not always practical to do so, given growing business demands to upskill and reskill at speed. So how do people refresh their knowledge and upgrade their skills? Enter learning in the flow of work. “Learning in the flow of work” is a term coined by Josh Bersin in 2018. It reflects the concept that employees should have access to the right knowledge at the right time-to support their learning goals and needs without significantly disrupting their daily workflow. In today’s busy work environment, employees have less than half an hour per week for training, which is not even 1% of their workweek-so training must be impactful, engaging, and easy to access. So how do organizations bring this style of training to employees? Learning in the flow of work is best managed through a learning management system or LMS. These learning systems offer tutorials, in-app guidance, gamification, microlearning opportunities, and more-with turn-key integration between systems.

Read also: Temporary Learner Insurance

There is a need for changing the design of earlier instructor-led classroom material into the new interactive space. It did not become a matter of merely chopping the material into bite-sized chunks. Learning programs need to be re-evaluated because “blended” learning took on new meanings. Earlier combinations of self-study and instructor-led study now became self-study, group online study, and possibly reduced instructor-led components of study. Program flow and timing needed to be reviewed.

Leverage Technology for Personalized Learning

A company’s learning programs are now also competing with a plethora of learning bites available elsewhere online. Learners turned to a variety of technologies to enhance their skills while the pandemic was sorting itself out. Employees continued to need answers and they researched a wealth of sources. The “on demand” aspect of The Modern Learner searched smartphones and search engines in much greater numbers during this time. How will an organization’s learning programs attract the type of talent that has become accustomed to this level of learning availability and digestibility? And, once they are in a company’s door - how will new hire programs change to provide them with the immersive learning experience they need for retention?

The world of information technology (IT) may be seen as analogous to the speed of changes we are now seeing with learners. IT moved from slow sequential system development life cycles (Waterfall SDLC) to rapid, iterative development cycles (Agile). The learning and development world paralleled these same development frameworks with the ADDIE (sequential) and SAM (iterative) development methodologies. What did the IT world learn in the process of technology and user changes at hyperspeed? It learned to “de-couple” segments of code and create code objects which could be executed as needed, on demand. Perhaps the next step for our learning and development world is to similarly break apart learning components into discrete learning objects which may be taken on demand with less sequence and structure, while not losing sight of the overall learning trajectory itself. Learning objects which would permit distracted and overwhelmed learners to truly seek on-demand learning in their own ways.

Consider both what your company needs to teach your employees and what skills and topics they need to learn-now and in the future. Ideally, training should be customized and personalized-there’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to learning styles.

Cultivate a Learning Culture

Continuous, engaging learning experiences at work create a culture of learning. That culture instills a growth mindset in your employees and your organization, preparing your company to pivot and successfully adapt to disruptions and opportunities. An engaging learner experience also provides accurate skills assessment. For example, simulations and gamification can show what choices learners make during their training, determining which skills they have mastered, and which need more work.

Focus on Growth and Impact

Don’t just lose people like this. Corporate training teams are flooded with new technologies and designs, hundreds of vendors, and thousands of courses and programs. In other words, as our new research points out, among the 100+ practices we studied, the things that matter the most are the relevance of your learning offerings, and the way they impact growth. And this makes perfect sense: people are busy, they’re stressed in their jobs (81% are burned out), and they want their employer to help them grow. After a year of research and discussions with hundreds of training leaders, we discovered that growth is what really matters.

Career Management

Career Management (developing career pathways, creating career coaches, giving people self-service career tools) is by far the #1. Right behind this are a bunch of practices in management and leadership: developing leaders at all levels, teaching leaders to develop others, and giving leaders better Power Skills). The third category has to do with L&D excellence: corporate training groups have to experiment with new technology, build a “learning in the flow” strategy, and learn to publish, organize, and manage content.

The Bersin Academy: A Model for Capability Building

Josh Bersin presents several potential solutions. The difficult part is that despite the proliferation of content, I think companies need to think about learning in the form of what I call a Capability Academy. And sales is a perfect example of this. The Capability Academy, a facet of the Josh Bersin Academy, is a new model of self-directed learning that focuses on synthesized business capabilities-how to become the whole package. This approach is much more tailored to the “real world,” providing not just isolated skills and silos of information, but how to integrate each component of the entire complex operation. I think this is similar to the role of a director, rather than an actor, in a movie. As a workplace learning and development professional, your job is to identify the best player for each job-expert speakers on specialized topics who carry credibility and authority, leaders in the field who can make the most impact-and “pull out the performance from these different people.”

Learning as an Engagement Tool

Learning is an engagement tool. The good learning experience not only makes you better at your job, and makes you better educated, but gives you kind of an excitement, and thrill, and an engaged feeling about the company and the job and the role. Companies are finding unique success during this time because of the aspirational nature of learning-looking towards future possibilities, gaining forward momentum rather than stagnating.

tags: #learner #experience #bersin #model