I was checking my inbox in between two meetings on a busy Friday morning at work when I spotted it. Another one of those shouty automated emails.

REMINDER: MANDATORY ‘SAFETY’ MODULE DUE BY MONDAY

Damn. 

I'd forgotten I needed to do that training module. 

I spotted a chaser email from my boss' assistant. In it she reminded me in a caring-yet-firm manner that I needed to complete that module in time otherwise they’d get a red flag and a stern look from the CEO at the next Executive Team meeting on Wednesday. 

Right.

I mentally moved the ‘safety module’ item from my ‘should do at some point’ list to the ‘well now it’s urgent’ list. 

I clicked on buttons, entered passwords and managed to wiggle my way on the part of the company learning platform that would give me a bit more detail on what I had to do exactly. I realised I’d gone through that module before. A year ago exactly. The teachings were very similar to the ones in safety modules that I’d had to complete for past employers too. The kind that teaches you how to avoid ‘slips, trips and falls’ in the office. Sure, it was useful stuff yet it was taught in an outrageously boring way.

Unfortunately that’s what most of my experience of classroom learning has felt like in business.

Most of the courses I’ve taken through the companies I’ve worked for have been mandatory courses like that safety module, or they’ve been training courses that I’d been invited to take as I stepped into new roles e.g. as new leader. Some of those courses were good. Most were not. None were life-changing, either because they weren’t taught well or because I wasn’t given the tools or the time to truly embed the teachings into the ‘real’ world once the training was over.

The thing is, only 10% of learning in business is really meant to happen formally i.e. through courses or certifications. The rest typically comes from mentoring and coaching (20%) and from on-the-job learning (70%). As a result, many businesses tend to not put formal learning at the top of their list of priorities.

Budgets dedicated to formal learning vary hugely depending on the size and learning culture of an organisation. Some companies have no budget for learning. Others spend $3,000 per head or more.

The quality of learning options and the freedom that employees are granted to pick what they want to learn varies hugely depending on the company and industry’s typical budget and learning culture. Big Tech proposes excellent learning options and seem to give their employees a lot of flexibility to shape their own learning journey. In Finance, learning tends to be more transactional: most of the budget tends to be spent on sponsoring CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) or equivalent certifications for more junior employees. For smaller companies of 50 employees or less, the situation is much more varied. Options for transformational learning tend to be costly and therefore limited. Often absent. 

And of course—business always comes first.

Formal learning gets put on the back-burner immediately whenever there’s urgent business to attend. Particularly since it’s not that transformational to start with. 

As an employee in business, I rarely felt encouraged to take time out of my day job to learn new skills, even if they were relevant to my work. Only once in a decade-long career did I attend a 2-day training course that changed the way I think in an enduring way. I still think about it now, years after the event.

As a leader, I got frustrated that Human Resources (HR) wasn’t helping me find better learning options for my team. I didn’t have the time to go look for them myself, and even if I did I wouldn’t have known where to start.

And as an HR practitioner, I got immensely frustrated by the huge volumes of cold emails I was receiving from learning and development providers who were selling things with no proof of concept, and/or that had nothing to do with the business I was representing. 

Interestingly, it’s only when I stepped away from employment and corporate learning platforms a few months ago that I truly unlocked my appetite for learning. 

I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands and could choose to spend it on whatever I found most exciting. I ended up stumbling upon a corner of the internet where some incredibly talented creators were offering some of the most engaging online courses I have ever seen in my life, shaped in whatever format made the most sense to ensure that students could embed teachings fully in real life and work.

'Write of Passage' by David Perell has given me the tools to step up my writing game and publish my thinking online more consistently. 'Approachable Design' by Nate Kadlac has turned me into a design wiz on Figma, which has made my presentations so much more engaging than the ones I used to produce on PowerPoint. I’ve also taught myself to build a professional-looking website thanks to free tutorials from Webflow University.

Not only are those creators teaching skills that are valuable to businesses, they are teaching them in a way that helps students embed their learnings into their work and their lives. Employees, leaders and HR practitioners are missing out.

Let’s work together to bring the content and the teaching expertise of those creators into business.

Of course, they’ll have to articulate their offer in ‘business speak’. They’ll have to shape the format of their courses to fit business reality, both in terms of time and cost constraints. They’ll have to target industries, companies, teams depending on product-market fit. They’ll also have to demonstrate that the short-term return on investment they are offering to businesses is exceptional.

The road ahead is bumpy. Nothing that’s insurmountable though. Nothing that a passion to transform people's experience of work and life through learning can't handle.

Raising awareness around this opportunity is the first step. By the end of 2022 I’ll have written a series of posts in which I will share thoughts on how creators and businesses can best work together. I’d love to connect with you if this is a topic you have expertise or questions about.

I’m excited to help build that bridge between those two worlds.

‍

Sources:

(1) According to the 70-20-10 framework for learning that many Human Resources teams operate by in big businesses

(2) 'The State of L&D in 2022' by Talent LMS—https://www.talentlms.com/employee-learning-and-development-stats

The thumbnail is an extract from a picture of a live cohort screenshot taken by the teaching team at Write of Passage