Continual learning in the workplace is crucial for a growing business. Knowledge is power, and education creates experts. 

Today, learning has gone digital. It's never been easier for L&D pros to develop personalized courses that are fast, effective, and meet their employees right where they are.

But what's the future of digital learning?

This is an important question to answer. Because continual learning is so vital to an organization, being ahead of the digital learning curve can give you the ever-more-difficult edge against the competition.

Let's look at how the most innovative global companies train their employees to stay atop their industry to answer this question. And more importantly, we'll go over how you can take what they're doing and implement it into your own company today.

The Whispering Googler

In 2017, Google realized that the majority of information managers learned was lost within days. 

The courses sent via email were long, bland, and unengaging. Open rates were low. Engagement rates were even lower. And managers weren't garnishing any meaningful outcomes from the courses. So Google decided to course-correct.

Google started sending their managers a series of weekly nudges they called "Whispers." Whispers were microlearning courses that lasted roughly 10-weeks that were delivered in the form of short, bite-sized emails.

An example of one of the 10-week courses was about optimizing feedback. In the Whisper, a short paragraph would explain the philosophy behind the importance of positive framing and showing appreciation, followed by three actionable next steps.

These microlearning courses gave managers instant takeaways they could use the same day to help be better leaders. They were short, concise, and only covered one specific topic at a time. 

Short, text-based courses offer a major advantage to traditional learning programs. You can personalize your approach for each employee and deliver training anywhere there's an internet connection.

Apple-baked Learning

Apple's training sessions take place in-house and all year-round.

Apple employees can sign up for courses tailored to their position and interests. Their managers also assign them courses related to product updates or the latest information about their area of the business.

The Apple learning ethos is that "designing world-class technology is only part of our job. Teaching you how to master it is the other."

Learning is baked into their culture. Apple makes learning and development a normal part of the job. 

Developing a culture of learning starts at the top, meaning your leadership needs to adopt a continual learning mentality before middle managers or new hires.

Consider leaving a few minutes during team or company-wide meetings to talk about the latest information that's relevant to your industry. Talk about trends, competitor updates, or technology innovations. 

Encourage everyone to synthesize the information and think about what the implications can mean for your company. This framework will build your employees' curiosity, making them more eager to learn more.

The Data That Drives Amazon

In 2018, Amazon analyzed data on their workforce against the overall US workforce to determine their fastest-growing highly-skilled jobs over the previous five years.

Business analysts grew by 160%, security engineers by 229%, data scientists by 505%, and data mapping specialists enjoyed a whopping 832% growth -- just to name a few.

They took this information and announced in late 2019 that they would spend $700MM to upskill 100,000 Amazon employees by 2025. And they are on pace to upskill even more.

The truth is, if you can't measure something in your business, it doesn't exist. Today's fastest-growing companies are data-driven, and learning is no different.

At Arist, we develop text-based courses that are easily accessible, highly engaging, and driven by data.

On average, our courses have 95% open rates, see a 10x engagement rate, launch 7x faster, and have greater than 90% satisfaction rates.

If you're looking for innovative ways that will accelerate learning and development into the future, look no further. ‍

Get a demo so you can see a course in action. You can then build courses in ours, or we can make them for you.

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