How often do we think about our learners’ experiences?

Olga Svoboda, International Solutions Director

When it comes to learning interventions we create with our clients, having a clarity on what business problems we are trying to solve is our starting point.  Main stakeholders, such as Learning and Development professionals, HR Managers or direct supervisors, are quick to provide us with business and organisational context.  They share their insights on the business impact required, key behaviours to be shifted and relevant learning objectives.

Very often though, they forget to address a critical factor; their learners’ wants and needs. If they do, these tend to stay very general, and often focus more on why this development will benefit the organisation, rather than how the employee will benefit from it.

Not involving the learner in creating the learning intervention, makes the development of the skill or change in the learner mindset less likely to happen. The real question we should be asking ourselves is:

“How often do we think about our learners’ experience and their motivation and how do we create learning journeys that solve problem for learner AND for the organisation?”

Our first step in this learner-centric approach includes creating learner empathy maps to ensure we have a complete understanding of our typical learners.  This is critical to helps us build learners’ commitment to changing existing behaviours and build motivation to sustain these efforts. Commitment and motivation are key determinants of learning journeys that deliver lasting results.

Building a learning and development intervention with learners in mind, requires that we not only know our learner demographics, their professional and personal profile, their technology reality, but also that we understand what they really need by asking ourselves:

1. What challenges do they have on their path?
2. What does a good/bad workday look like?
3. What aspirations do they have?
4. What are their fears, challenges, and obstacles?
5. What they want to achieve?
6. How does the success look like for them?

If we want a learning experience that provokes our learners to be curious, intrigued, motivated and committed at each touch point of a learning journey, we need to start with THEM. We can only do this by building a complete persona and really getting to know our learners; their needs, wants and feelings before starting any learning journey.

It is something that at Tack TMI, we are incredible passionate about – much like our company motto – We believe in the Individual.