The modern workforce is now more connected than ever. This blog post explores ways to maximize the potential of today’s hyper-connected learners.

The sense of being constantly connected, or ‘plugged-in’, is more and more familiar to us. From email and messaging apps to social media and Alexa, it’s rare to feel completely disconnected from people or technology, without taking drastic measures.

The rise of hyperconnectivity is sometimes perceived as one of the more negative aspects of modern culture. Our depleted attention spans are an often-cited casualty of the rise in smartphone and internet use (although this is contentious).

But when it comes to the workplace, increased access to high-speed internet and smart, social technologies opens up new avenues for delivering eLearning and creating engaged learners across the organization.

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Reach Hyper-Connected Learners With ‘Learning in the Flow of Work’

In a recent article for Chief Learning Officer, Josh Bersin issued a call to arms to L&D. His message was simple: we should be harnessing hyperconnectivity to deliver ‘learning in the flow of work’.

For Bersin, the rise in smarter learning platforms and technologies, along with the need for many organizations to deliver learning faster and more efficiently, makes hyperconnectivity an asset to today’s L&D teams.

Rather than delivering learning that employees take time out from their roles to complete, Bersin advocates learning becoming seamlessly integrated into an employee’s day-to-day tasks.

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Delivering Anytime, Anywhere Learning to Hyper-Connected Learners

Microlearning is one effective learning strategy that can provide learners with easily digestible chunks of learning that they can consume around the demands of their role. It can also provide ‘on-demand’ performance support by delivering targeted, concise learning content designed to close performance or knowledge gaps.

Bersin uses the example of a series of safety tips videos delivered to the learner at the start of their day. This is a good example of how reinforcing key behaviors at the right time could drive performance and reinforce behavior change.

With hyper-connected learners now more likely to be using smartphones at work, mobile learning apps and platforms are a key tool to deliver short bursts of learning that learners can access anytime, anywhere. An LMS with a native mobile learning app can make accessing mobile learning hosted on your LMS a seamless experience for learners.

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Increase Social Learning to Harness Hyper-Connected Learners

The rise of the hyper-connected learner gives L&D teams more ways to maximize engagement with learning content.

Learners who have easy access to learning platforms and collaboration tools are far more likely to find the time to engage with their colleagues. This helps to build communities of practice that enhance collective knowledge and learning throughout the business.

A learning management system like PeopleFluent LMS offers powerful social and collaboration features such as chat rooms and discussion forums. It also offers seamless integration with collaboration programs, such as Confluence, making it easy for L&D teams to build a strong community of engaged learners.

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Use Hyper-Connected Learners to Drive Your Learning Strategy

Measuring the business impact of learning requires the ability to make connections between the delivery of learning, the resulting performance or behavior change that occurs and the impact this change has on wider business goals or KPIs in the business.

Hyper-connected learners are plugged-in to all of your organization’s systems and tools, as well as learning delivery platforms, such as your LMS.

This gives L&D teams the opportunity to track the performance and impact that learning is having by harvesting data from all the systems that learners are interacting with. This data can then be mapped to wider business performance. When L&D teams understand the potential that hyperconnectivity can have to provide increased visibility on learning activity, it can help them to create a learning strategy that will deliver real evidence on the impact of learning.

It will also enable data-driven insights that can inform the way learning is designed and delivered going forward

NetDimensions LMS can integrate with a learning record store (LRS) like Watershed’s, giving L&D teams the ability to capture and analyze learning impact data in one place.

Maximize the Potential of Hyperconnectivity in Today’s Workforce

To benefit from the rise of hyperconnectivity in today’s organizations, L&D teams need to deliver microlearning that enables learners to learn on-the-go and at the point of need.

They also need to capitalize on the opportunities for social learning that plugged-in learners now provide.

Both of these strategies can be enhanced by an LMS which has the features to support anytime, anywhere learning and collaboration across the business.