future of the profession

N TIMES OF CHANGE, learners inherit the Earth,” wrote author andphilosopher Eric Hoffer, but headded, “while the learned findthem-selves beautifully equipped to deal

with a world that no longer exists.”A world that no longer exists is cer-

tainly one way to describe the workplacelearning and performance field of yester-day compared to where it will be a fewyears from now. The WPL professional,whether designing or delivering trainingor managing a complex learning functionin an organization, will be a differentcreature than she is today, according tomore than a few experts.

“The field will further mature andevolve, at a faster pace now, focusing onthe learner as the center of the universe,”says Jonathon Levy, senior learningstrategist with the Monitor Group. “Soft-ware solutions that capture, redistribute,and blend granules of inherent—hu-man—knowledge with the smallest pos-sible digital learning objects will bemarried to LMS- and ERP-type technolo-gies through middleware and web ser-vices, all via a common taxonomy.

“All of this will be driven by a recogni-tion that the academic model is DOA inthe enterprise, and that learning-while-doing creates enormous competitiveleverage for the corporation that empow-ers its workforce to have the knowl-edge—both human and digital—thatthey need, when they need it, the waythey best understand it, in the amountthey require. It’s about time. It’s aboutperformance support. It’s about a seam-less blending of learning and doing.”

It’s also about leadership and prepar-ing for the realities of a fast-advancingfuture. In the face of shrinking work-forces in large enterprises, many learn-ing organizations are finding they haveto do more with less. “T+D’s recent articleon what C-level executives think wasfascinating,” notes Jay Cross, CEO of In-ternet Time Group and founder of theWorkflow Institute. “What we need areCLOs with the wherewithal to addressorganizational needs. They have beenworking on too low a level. Learning anddevelopment will prosper when they be-come strategic.

“This year, training departments willdiscover wonderful open-source applica-

TDJanuary 2006 41

For workplace learning and performance professionals,

the pace picks up and the stakes get raised.

The commitment of larger orga-nizations to workplace learning,at least in terms of allocation ofresources, seems to be holdingfirm or growing, as these six in-dicators from the ASTD 2005State of the Industry Reportwould suggest.

The annual training expenditureper employee increased to $955per employee, up from an aver-age of $820 per employee in 2003and 2002. (This increase reflectsin part better accounting of train-ing expenditures, however, notnecessarily an increase in actualfunding.)

Employees are receiving morehours of formal learning—32hours of learning per employee in2004, up from 26 hours in 2003.

Average expenditure as a per-centage of payroll did not changein 2004 from the previous year,remaining steady at 2.34.

Training delivery via learningtechnologies increased to 28percent in 2004, up from 24 per-cent in 2003.

The percentage of expenditurefor external services has risensteadily since 2003, with the av-erage now at 27 percent. The ser-vices most frequently purchasedexternally were technology infra-structure and content design, de-velopment, and delivery.

In all categories of organizationsthat provided data for the report,profession- or industry-specificcontent was allocated the mostlearning content in 2004. Man-agerial or supervisory trainingand business processes were thesecond and third largest contentareas.

By the numbers

By Rex Davenport

I

Future of theProfession

Copyright ASTD, January 2006

C A R E E R P L A N N I N G

tions available for nothing on the Internet.Many work equally well behind a firewall.Shame on any large organization that isn’t using or at least investigating the useof blogs, wikis, folksonomies, social net-work systems, RSS aggregators, and pod-casts.A blog post is a learning object.”

Cross adds: “In five years, our economywill be almost entirely service. Industrialjobs will be as rare as farm jobs today.Computers will have automated moreand more of the scut work, leaving us hu-mans to deal with value-driven, discre-tionary activities and creative endeavors.”

According to Martyn Sloman,adviser oflearning, training, and development forthe United Kingdom-based Chartered In-stitute of Personnel and Development,“Research suggests that a shift is takingplace from training to learning. Learning isa self-directed, work-based process, lead-ing to increased adaptive capacity. Learn-ing lies in the domain of the individual.

“In part because of the nature of to-day’s organization and in part because ofindividual preferences, informal learninghas become more important. As a conse-quence, the range of interventions under-taken by the trainer now extends farbeyond the design and delivery of thetraining course.There has been a huge in-crease in coaching and in ways of pro-moting group learning.”

On-demand? Maybe notWhether it is just-in-time, just-enough, oron-demand, more than a few visionariessuggest that the learner of the future willnot be saddled with any more trainingthan is absolutely necessary. Some sug-gest that the worker’s own environmentand tools—whether a workstation, a ma-chine control panel, or a mobile device—will recognize the need and enable or atleast communicate the need for the up-date in the employee’s skill set.

“There is a danger of expecting toomuch here,” explains Sloman. “Whatmatters is how we support, direct, and ac-celerate learning that is relevant to theorganization.This will, for the foreseeablefuture, require a sympathetic, aware, andtrained human intermediary. The role ofthe line manager is crucial, and coach-ing—so far the only truly personalized

form of interven-tion—will increase.”

Rob Lauber, exec-utive director oflearning services forCingular Wireless,agrees that toomuch focus mayhave been placed onthe concept ofachieving on-de-mand, personalizedlearning on a broadscale. “I don’t thinkthat’s an attainableobjective,” he notes.“It would take a mir-acle,” he adds.

Lauber does,however, believe inthe power and po-tential of technology to change the wayworkplace learning is delivered. High-speed wireless data access will empower the possibilities.“The ‘workplace’ will be completely rede-fined as anywhere, anytime, for anyone,”he explains.

“We must be careful here,” explainsSloman. “Technology is a valuable enabler but its progress to date has dis-appointed and will continue to disap-point. Never forget that we must startwith the learner.”

Cross, the technology visionary, how-ever, suggests that 10 years from now,computers will have surpassed the col-lective intelligence of the human race.“Virtual reality will feel real,” he adds.

But even the smallest devices pale when compared to the power that can betapped in the individual. “Meditation—the technology of human consciousness,”offers unlimited potential, explains Levy.“When electronic technology has gone asfar as it can go, the only remaining lever-age exists within the minds of knowledgeworkers. As most of us only use a smallpercentage of our full potential, the nextmajor wave will be to increase the poten-tial of those individuals already drivingour organizations by enlivening dormantcapacities of the mind.

“Many corporations are using meth-ods of human development, such asmeditation, to gain greater value fromtheir leadership at a relatively modest in-vestment. The next huge wave will beabout mental technologies, supported byelectronic technologies.”

Cross suggests that the one trend thatwill have the biggest impact on the profession—and our lives—will be timedeflation. “Both technology and humanevolution are growing at exponentialrates,” he explains. “They always havebeen, but when we were on the flat side of the hockey stick graph, we didn’tnotice. You can almost feel the accel-eration. Look at any variable and you see there’s a giant up-tick going on.

“There’s nothing to slow it down. (Au-thor and futurist) Ray Kurzweil projectsthat the 21st century won’t have 100 ofour current years; it will have the equiv-alent of 20,000 of our years. In five years,we probably won’t have workplaces or alearning function.”

What will be discarded?As surely as new philosophies and theo-ries become part of the practice in the

42 TDJanuary 2006

0

200

400

600

800

1000

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Average Expenditure per Employee in USD by Year

$645 $649$734

$826 $818$955

200420032002200120001999Year

Average Percentage of Learning Hours Provided by Technology-Based Delivery Methods

200420032002200120001999Year

Source: ASTD State of the Industry Report 2005

8 911

15

2528

Dollars and Hours


WPL field, some concepts and ideas mustbe left behind.

“The academic model of learning—classes, courses, grades—as practicedwithin the enterprise,” will have to go,says the Monitor Group’s Levy. “We willlearn to think differently. Corporate ‘uni-versities’ will be renamed. It doesn’t mat-ter what they call them as long as theword ‘university’ is not in the title. Theyare most certainly not ‘universities’—never have been, and don’t want to be.The focus of corporate knowledge iscompetitive strategy. End of story.”

According to Cingular’s Lauber, “anypractice that doesn’t demonstrate clearvalue” will be discarded. “Avoiding the fads in workplace learning while at the same time taking risks on newpractices and ideas will be a challenge,”he adds.

“The sooner the (instructional sys-tems design) model is put out to grassthe better,” explains the CIPD’s Sloman.“It was a valuable construct for an agewhen the majority of the workforce werein routine production jobs. In this knowl-edge-service economy, we must becomelearner-, not trainer-centered and see our

activities in terms of ongoing processesnot one-off interventions. The role of thetrainer has increasingly become one ofsupporting, accelerating, and directinglearning interventions that meet organi-zational needs and are appropriate to thelearner and the context.”

Adds the Workflow Institute’s Cross:“The idea that we are in control of ourdestiny is dying out. The concept of cer-tainty is already gone.The butterfly effectwill discredit logic. Evolution will trumpdesign.”TD

Rex Davenport is editor of T+D magazine;

[email protected].

TDJanuary 2006 43

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Source: ASTD State of the Industry Report 2005

Learning vs. Non-Learning Activities


Learning/Training ActivitiesOrganizational Development

Process Analysis and ImprovementTalent Management

Knowledge ManagementJob-Specific Tools and Resources

Performance FeedbackPerformance Expectations

Non-Incentive Motivational StrategiesIncentives

Average Percentage of Performance Improvement Solutions Devoted to Learningand Non-learning Activities

57%9%

7%6%

5%5%

4%4%

2%

1%

Learning Activities

57%

Non-Learning Performance

Solutions43%

C A R E E R P L A N N I N G

44 TDJanuary 2006

ELLEN BALAGUER, managing director ofAccenture Learning, talks to T+D aboutthe future of the profession.

T+D: What factors will promote new in-vestment or greater organizational com-mitment for training and workforcedevelopment in the near future?

EB: There are several key factors that aredriving, and will continue to drive, invest-ment and commitment. We view the keyfactors as: the development of high per-formance workforces, employees withthe skills necessary to support globaliza-tion, and preparation for the aging work-force.

As companies across the globe striveto achieve high levels of employee per-formance, the role of learning is criticalto the creation of a high performanceculture. The signs of superior perfor-mance are clear. High-performance busi-nesses consistently deliver strongreturns to shareholders, achieve consis-tent and solid revenue growth, maintaina high return over the cost of capital, andare rewarded with valuations that indi-cate strong growth expectations. Thehigh-performance organization has aleadership culture that unleashes thebusiness’s energies and capabilities, isskilled in not just developing strategiesbut executing them, and that skillfullymanages the balance between the tasksof today and the challenges of tomorrow.In turn, employees are aligned with thegoals of the organization, and they arehighly competent with the right skills, atthe right time.

Globalization continues to make amajor impact on global enterprises. Astrading partners across the globe con-tinue to cross borders, it is critical for employees to be skilled in global supplychain management, international trade

regulations, cross-cultural commun-ications, and global best practices. Theseskills are no longer the exclusive domainof large multi-national corporations.The Internet has enabled even the small-est of companies to leverage cross bordercompetencies.

Hardly a week passes without refer-ence to the number of persons that willbe eligible to retire over the next five to10years.This is an issue that impacts multi-ple industry segments and governmentsacross the globe. The loss of legacyknowledge is further compounded by thecontinued rate of change within compa-nies, and the expectation of productivitygrowth. Today’s employee has a widerange of responsibilities that draw upon avariety of competencies. Competenciesmust be continually refreshed as newproducts and services are brought to themarket. In addition, today’s employeesare highly reliant on the mentoring andleadership of more seasoned employees.Having the ability to have access to lega-cy knowledge is an important step.

T+D: What new metrics will be employedto demonstrate the impact of learning onindividual or organizational performance?

EB: The metrics for learning will take on agreater alignment with the metrics of thebusiness. For some time now, the learningcommunity has concerned itself withmetrics, such as the number of hours de-livered, cost per hour delivered, numberof student days, and the student satisfac-tion rating of a course. These metrics arevaluable from a production tracking per-spective, but they may have little to dowith the actual business impact of atraining intervention. For example, ifyou’re conducting a sales training course,in addition to knowing who went to thecourse, how much time they spent at the

course, and what they thought of thecourse, wouldn’t you want to completethe course evaluation cycle by under-standing what the course did to improvesales and customer satisfaction?

T+D: What will be the leading hot-buttontopic for the profession this year? In fiveyears?

EB: The hot buttons today are aligninglearning with the business, achieving ameasurable return and business results,and leveraging technology to drive a sig-nificantly improved learning experience.All working in concert to increase skilllevels much faster than we do it today.

These hot buttons have actually beenthe focus of learning departments for sev-eral years.However, the post dot com bustyears and world events have had a signifi-cant impact on the strategic focus oflearning departments. Stressed corporateprofits and slow growth rates forcedlearning into a cost-containment, or insome companies a cost-reduction, mode.Learning departments embraced e-learn-ing as a cost-management play. We’re allvery familiar with the concern that e-learning failed to live up to the expecta-tion that it would quickly become thepreferred method of learning delivery.

The measurement of learning impactseems to continue to elude learning pro-fessionals. The deployment of the Kirk-patrick model has evolved into a modelthat focuses on measuring ROI. Yet, westill see most organizations operating atan assessment level 2 or 3. What’s miss-ing? We still have work to do on assess-ment process engineering and theimplementation of enabling technologiesthat create solid linkage between learn-ing systems and enterprise systems.

Five years from now we will be firmlyin the midst of dealing with the chang-ing workforce. The learning professionwill continue to play an instrumentalrole in the development and retention ofemployees. In the future, there will beshortfall of qualified labor to fill open po-sitions. There has been research pub-lished to suggest that companies will

Facing the Future: 5 Questions


TDJanuary 2006 45

have to leverage workers that todaymight be classified as unskilled labor tofill this forecasted labor gap. This willplace a greater responsibility to educatenew hires in basic job skills.

Because this skilling must occur atthe very time companies are experienc-ing labor shortages, the learning depart-ment will be expected to significantlyreduce time to competency. Rapid learn-ing development methods will becomecritical to the process of learning, andthe ability to integrate, or embed, learn-ing in the employee’s workflow will nolonger be something that is nice to have;it will have to become the gold standardfor the delivery of learning.

T+D: What one skill should learning pro-fessionals add to their repertoires in thenear future to assure their relevance totheir organizations?

EB: The learning professional of todayneeds to understand how technology canleverage learning and how to apply learn-ing technology to drive business impact.In other words, a solid blend of technolo-gy and business skills to complementtheir foundation as learning profession-als is required.

Given we continue to see significantinfluence of technology as a learningenabler, learning professionals shouldensure they work to develop their work-ing knowledge of information technolo-gy. In concert with their development oftechnology skills, learning professionalsshould ensure they develop strong rela-tionships with IT departments.

The development of business skillswill provide the learning professionalthe ability to better understand how toapply the right learning technology atthe right time. The emphasis on linkinglearning with business results requirestoday’s learning professionals to speakthe business language of their company.Developing financial and business skills,such as capital investment analysis andbusiness case development, will enablelearning professionals to do a better job

of quantifying the positive business im-pacts of learning.

T+D: What will it take to achieve true on-demand, personalized learning on abroad scale?

EB: The architecture of learning manage-ment systems and knowledge manage-ment systems will continue to evolve,and move closer to merging.The applica-tions will mature to help me get to thelearning I need, when I need it.The appli-cation integration of learning and knowl-edge systems will allow the learner tooperate in a learning environment thatguides them to the appropriate course-work—it’s conceivable that a kind of soft-ware agent will assist with the analysis ofthe learners needs and then map on-de-mand, personalized learning to the em-ployee.

On-demand learning will be also en-abled through the continued reductionin bandwidth cost. This will be true forboth hard wired and wireless networks.Lower bandwidth costs will allow forgreater connectivity between the learnerand the source of the learning content.More bandwidth for lower cost will facil-itate the distribution of richer content,including high quality video. The abilityto deliver learning with integrated videowill vastly enhance e-learning as weknow it today.

T+D: What emerging trend will explode asa key element of workplace learning anddevelopment in the next five years?

EB: Two trends will likely explode: embedded workflow learning and mobile learning. The two are actuallyclosely related.

As the access to learning for employ-ees in a ubiquitous fashion continues toevolve, the reality of embedded work-flow learning becomes more likely. Suc-cessful embedded learning is dependantnot just on learning pull, but also learn-ing push. Learning chunked up intosmaller components of learning—that is

smaller than a traditional course—calledlearning nuggets will be delivered to thelearner in concert with a just-in-timelearning approach. Learning will be em-bedded in the employee’s work processand will look less like a discreet learningevent.

M-learning, delivered through a vari-ety of channels—laptops, MP3 players,mobile phones—will become a key ele-ment for the success of embedded work-flow learning. Mobile learning willprovide learner access to content any-time, anywhere. Learning nuggets will bepushed via m-learning distributionchannels just-in-time to the learner, trig-gered by an event, or a transaction, in thelearner’s business process

T+D: In what new areas might employeesbe trained during the next five years?

EB: Training will focus on those compe-tencies that have the most significantimpact on driving business results. Ashas traditionally been the case, employ-ees will be trained in the skills that ad-dress specific functional competencyrequirements. Moving beyond functionalskills, we’ve heard from various leadersthere is an increasing interest in equip-ping employees with skills sets that bet-ter support the broader set ofresponsibilities required of workers in aknowledge-based economy. Criticalthinking skills, creative problem solvingskills, and the skills required to establishand grow social networks will be moreand more important to an employee’ssuccess. TD


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