LUMINARY PERSPECTIVE
Talent Development Changes in a Changing Time!
I am deeply honored that ATD asked me to do the kickoff for the section on enhancing and supporting talent development. As a veteran of 50 years in the learning, training, EdTech, and innovation space, I should find it easier to predict the trends that are changing our field. I am excited, challenged, and confused about the future of work, the workplace, and talent development. I’ve distilled my thoughts into nine focus points that pique my curiosity about the future of talent development, as a field and a practice.
I challenge you, as a colleague, to use these topics for self-reflection and discussion with colleagues and neighbors:
• E-learning expands, explodes, and evolves
• Technology empowered: AI, machine learning, robotics, and ecosystems
• Where do our workers work?
• The learner is changing—self-engineering, curator, and nudges!
• Career shifts and chapters!
• Can coaching scale?
• Empathy is vital!
• New horizons: health, cyber, and cognitive
• Data, data, and more data!
Let’s expand each topic and explore how your talent development might evolve significantly as business and the workforce changes.
E-Learning Expands, Explodes, and Evolves
When we started to use the term e-learning in the early 1990s, there was joy if we could deliver a few modules on a couple topics to a modest number of employees using the emerging internet. During the COVID-19 pandemic, billions of school-age students and millions of workers were pushed rapidly into an e-learning-only format. We wired the world together impressively—with sessions on Zoom and Microsoft Teams throughout the week. And there were new approaches to onboarding, compliance learning, leadership development, and more. It didn’t work perfectly. But we passed through a change door. Talent development will need to create new designs that spike the levels of engagement, practice, assessment, and support for e-learning.
Technology Empowered: AI, Machine Learning, Robotics, and Ecosystem
Technology at work and in our lives is changing radically. AI and machine learning are driving more and more corporate work platforms. Robotics are changing manufacturing, distribution, and even retail settings. Our learning systems, talent systems, HR systems, performance systems, and customer-facing systems are integrating. Employees’ desktops or mobile devices increasingly will blend technology with worker talents. This will require shifts in how we select, develop, support, and deploy our staff—with a new openness to work hand in hand with smarter tech.
Where Our Workers Work
Coming through the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations are actively shifting and experimenting with the right balance of work from the office or work from home on a hybrid basis. The location of our workforce has serious implications for our talent approaches. Imagine recruiting, onboarding, and managing workers who have never met another colleague in person. That happened around the world, and with some significant impacts. What are the retention or promotion differentials of home-based versus on-site workers? Does the home-based worker get equal or less support and workflow assistance from colleagues?
The Learner Is Changing: Self-Engineering, Curator, and Nudges!
Our employees, including yourself, are changing as learners. We want to be more in charge of the timing, format, and focus of our learning experiences. We have significant differences in how we optimize our learning—some want detailed video examples, others want bullet point processes, and others want conversations with experts. The learner is more of a self-engineer of their own content—they want to focus on what they need now and curate access to more for later. And, learners don’t necessarily want to be branded learners or students. Many will resist going to a class or seminar, but want to gather with an expert to get assistance on a task. Finally, many of our learners need (or even ask for) nudges to remind and prompt them of newly acquired knowledge. The changing learner is pushing us to have more user experience approaches and have deeper experimentation with design formats.
Career Shifts and Chapters!
My chief learning officer colleagues have been reporting significant shifts in the career paths, expectations, and “chapters” for their employees. Days of recruit-to-retire may be gone for a large percentage of the workforce. In addition, length of stay in some industries is shifting downward, which creates more pressure to quickly get new talent to readiness. We need to build more transportability of the workforce credentials and incorporate a more accelerated role to develop leadership and collaborative skills from day one rather than at later points of promotion. Significant experimentation is needed here!
Can Coaching Scale?
When asked what would help their development, many employees request coaching. Working with my colleague Marshall Goldsmith during the pandemic showed me how enterprises have the opportunity to take the power of coaching and scale it from a few select executives to the wider employee population. Scaling coaching will require new systems, new development programs, and rethinking the length and format of coaching incidents. I have been coaching three colleagues with 10-minute phone conversations every week. Let’s push these boundaries and traditions.
Empathy Is Vital!
Empathy is the powerful connection and acceptance that we have and demonstrate to colleagues. Empathy is not sympathy. Empathy is acknowledging our unique characteristics and opening the door to sharing our stories and acceptance. Talent development can make empathy a vital part of every program and project they deliver. During the pandemic, the MASIE Center hosted more than 35 free online Empathy Concerts with Broadway musical stars and learning leaders, exploring the role and need for empathy. We had thousands of colleagues participate from around the world. Empathy is vital!
New Horizons: Health, Cyber, and Cognitive
Talent professionals will need to up their readiness to deal with new horizons of employee and workplace disruptions. We will want to weave these topics into our roles and programs in the future:
• Health. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed our organizations to adopt health, wellness, and screening systems to support our populations. There will be ongoing health issues that will become part of our talent development agenda. We don’t need to become experts on these issues, but programs focused on health at the workplace will expand in reach and scope in the years ahead.
• Cyber. The next pandemic may be a cyber-demic. The fully wired and online enterprise is also ripe for cyberattack and disruption. What if no one could get to any files? What if our customers could not reach us? What if payments could not be processed? Cyber threats and readiness to cope with a potential major cyber disruption are another talent development issue to consider.
• Cognitive. This is a tricky one to raise. A percentage of our workforce may have a cognitive challenge or uniqueness. In some instances, an employee may have early-onset dementia or another memory or processing disease.
Data, Data, and More Data!
This is one of the big trends that I consider almost every day, as the field of talent development evolves. How do we leverage the data in our systems to design, personalize, and accelerate talent development for our employees? How do we use evidence from our previous programs to continually adjust the mix, timing, and levels of engagement? How do we provide managers with actionable data about the skill levels (and gaps) of their team members? How do we create dashboards that reflect each employee’s current knowledge status, and make sure it stays updated as business and their roles change? Talent development colleagues must grow their comfort and agility to use, understand, and leverage data to focus our programs and initiatives.
This piece is the appetizer to the wonderful stories and case studies in this section about growing and evolving our talent development skills and readiness. Our workers are changing. Our workplace settings are changing. Our technology is changing. Our own careers may be changing.
Let’s stretch our own talent development skills to match these changes. Tomorrow’s workforce will need our energy, competencies, and agility more than ever!
About the Author
Elliott Masie is a provocative, engaging, and entertaining researcher, educator, analyst, and speaker focused on the changing world of the workplace, learning, and technology. He is acknowledged as the first analyst to use the term e-learning and has advocated for a sane deployment of learning and collaboration technology to support the effectiveness and profitability of enterprises. He heads MASIE Innovations, a global “B” company focused on learning, talent, technology, Broadway theater, social change, and innovation. It includes the Learning COLLABORATIVE, Masie Productions, and Empathy Concerts. Elliott is the author of 12 books, including Big Learning Data and recent e-books on learning pivots and empathy. Over the past 35 years, Elliott has presented programs, courses, and speeches to more than 3.1 million professionals around the world. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and is a Tony-nominated Broadway producer. You can reach him at [email protected].