The Learning Technologies Digital Series has been running since last summer, featuring a wide range of speakers and topics. The LSG Webinars provide an hour of analysis and discussion of the hottest L&D topics, delivered by expert leaders in the industry.

Thursday, 26 January 2023 saw the UK’s national weather service working sharing its community-based use of Totara Engage, and a key message from Cornerstone on the role of data in L&D. Let’s explore how these sessions got people learning, talking – and debating!

 

Malcolm Taylor: The Met Office’s future-proof learning community

As Senior People Development Manager, Malcolm Taylor shapes the L&D philosophy contained within the Corporate Learning & Development strategy at the UK Met Office. The nation’s leading weather service prides itself on building communities of practice, working towards a people framework to be involved in excellent people and culture.

The discussion of learning culture was really active in this webinar. One attendant said that in their organisation it’s ‘…the 'same old faces' that are leading/contributing and want ideas to engage others to come forward and become more active rather than passive community members. Welcome ideas to address this challenge…’ Someone responded with a possible reason for this from their own experience, expressing that ‘If I'm not the expert in a community I may feel my question is 'stupid’…’

The ‘people framework’ Malcolm alluded to is comprised of 3 types of effectiveness: personal, corporate, and professional. Malcolm delved a bit deeper into the framework to help people in the audience envision their own organisation taking it on. He explained that every L&D team needs to evaluate the ‘CADENCE’ they need; which is essentially ‘the drumbeat you need to pace your community with’. Malcolm then broke this down into a diagram with 7 keywords all starting with C: Cause was in the middle, with Culture, Conditions, Cadence, Content, Contributions and Credit surrounding.

Learn more about this topic by watching the webinar on-demand.

 

Mark Debono & Mark Lamswood: Analysing the data challenges in L&D for 2023

At Cornerstone, Mark Debono is Vice President for the UK, Ireland and MEA with Mark Lamswood as the Regional Director of Content. They both have a huge role to play in their organisation, and so data is of high importance, whether it’s being used successfully or needs some improvement.

To kick off the session, the speakers asked the audience to brainstorm, ‘What are your L&D data challenges in 2023?’ Replies from the audience varied massively. One person felt concerned about ‘Knowing what what we really need to be collecting / measuring / using data on and for…’, another mentioned ‘Understanding what different stakeholders in the company consider to be proof of ROI’ and a few people alluded to accessibility.

Mark Debono first picked up on the issue of ROI. He shared that ‘…only 22% of organisations are actively trying to improve how they gather and analyse data around workplace learning.’ He shared that people outside of learning are finding it difficult because the management of data demands is becoming increasingly a challenge due to the different silos. Mark also mentioned that while many organisations are using the learner in-the-moment ‘how was the training?’ survey, the market has rapidly moved away from this, and the L&D community have to keep up.

Mark Lamswood discussed the issue of how ‘Rapidly evolving business conditions have changed the learning landscape’, sharing what Cornerstone does to tackle this. He stated that the key is finding a way to ‘…use content in the world of L&D, to be able to show people that we care, that we want to develop them, that we want things like health and wellness content.’ Mark said that they ensure their talent brands are widely visible to all; so everyone can see what’s going on in their organisation. The speakers shared some useful platforms that create transparency, in order to have a culture of inclusion and belonging that all employees want.

Discover more by watching the webinar on-demand.