Globalization, the introduction of new ways of working and the usage of social technologies will force us to rethink how we collaborate, connect and communicate with each other.
by Site Staff
February 28, 2010
<p>Globalization, the introduction of new ways of working and the usage of social technologies will force us to rethink how we collaborate, connect and communicate with each other. </p><p>Take IBM, for example. On any given day, more than 40 percent of the company’s 350,000 employees are working remotely. According to a report by the American Electronics Association, not only does this save the company an estimated $56 million annually in office space costs, but the retention rate for these teleworkers is higher, and they are 10 to 20 percent more productive than their office-bound peers.</p> <p>IBM’s On Demand Workplace is one example of how companies are creating learning in the context of working. The program meshes the two worlds in three ways: via work-embedded learning, work-enabled learning and work-apart learning. Work-embedded learning is built into the natural workflow of a job, such as the help agent that pops up to assist in software programs. Work-enabled learning is context-based and relies on structured activities and guidance to develop role-specific expertise. Work-apart learning is time away from the job spent in formal learning programs to build new skills for a current role or prepare for a future position.</p> <p>One manager in IBM’s learning systems function told Bersin & Associates: “The system provides access to many different resources besides traditional e-learning. Content is contributed to and maintained by training organizations, as well as business-unit experts and thought leaders who are in closer proximity to the urgent business needs. In this way, employees have one place to go to search for or receive guidance on their personal development.”</p> <p>Since employees store data about themselves in the system, the search engine intelligently matches the context of the employee’s role to relevant search results. For example, if a manufacturing-industry sales representative in Germany searches for content on lean manufacturing, the results will be served up with content specific to that representative’s role, including collaborative results such as social bookmarks or the blogs of experts in the area. The results might direct the representative to embedded tools available for use on the job, formal classes, e-learning from internal and external course providers, or the names of experts from the IBM Blue Pages.</p> <p>In this On Demand Workplace, not every learning asset is stored in the learning management system (LMS). Instead, IBM creates a mashup of resources from a variety of systems, while the LMS stores the records for the more formal, work-apart learning. </p> <p>IBM recognizes that for employees to thrive in the networked world, they must be able to easily collaborate with peers to create new knowledge, rather than just manage their current body of knowledge. Each day we see just how short the shelf life of knowledge is becoming. In this fast-moving world, what we know today depreciates faster than it used to. In the medical field, for example, knowledge from clinical studies doubles every 18 months. So what’s the answer? More companies have to create innovative ways to blend working and learning regardless of the time zone, physical setting or business unit employees find themselves in.</p>