Businesses are increasingly choosing to upskill and reskill employees online, a trend that has been accelerating since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. Delivering effective online learning in a corporate setting requires targeted investment in learning technology that enables digital learning from anywhere, at any time, and on any device. At the forefront of digital learning, enablement is the solution known as the Learner Experience Platform or LXP for short.
An LXP is Software as a Service (SaaS) hosted in the public cloud. LPs unify organizations’ internal and external learning and knowledge platforms into a single, consumer-grade experience that puts all learning under one roof in an easy-to-navigate interface powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML).
Remote, home-based, and hybrid working has demonstrated the utility and effectiveness of online training. Virtual learning events, social and collaborative learning, and self-paced digital learning have allowed learners to connect, share, engage and collaborate without the need to enter a physical classroom.
How do Learner Experience Platforms work?
LXPs integrate with existing internal and external ‘Trusted Sources’ of knowledge and learning, corporate HR systems, and Single Sign-On (SSO) to present the learner with a wholly unified and tightly integrated experience. Gone are the days of disparate, disconnected content catalogs, multiple user profiles, multiple logins, multiple systems of record, and clunky user experiences that create barriers to learning.
The LXP puts the learner at the center of the experience by focusing on their needs by personalizing the experience using AI to make recommendations based on their self-identified learning goals. LXPs hide the underlying complexity of integrating with multiple Trusted Sources of learning content and present a consistent and coherent view of all learning from all sources to which the LXP is connected.
LXPs support browsers, dedicated mobile apps, and widgets embedded in popular business apps to learn workflow.
What can you use an LXP for?
Upskill and Reskill Employees
Across industries, there is a constant need to upskill and reskill employees to keep ahead of changes in their working environment, the market, and the technological landscape. An LXP provides a single unified portal for all upskilling and reskilling initiatives and helps employees find precisely what they need, when they need it, on the device they are using without the need to break the flow of their work.
Onboard New Hires
An LXP can automate and streamline the onboarding of new hires by integrating with an HR Information System to simplify the assignment and management of further hire training without the need for manual intervention. New hires can be added to a Group within the LXP, enabling them to collaborate with fellow new hires and follow a structured learning program as a cohort, sharing experiences, likes, motivations, and lessons learned with their colleagues and coaches.
An LXP allows new hires to access onboarding content whenever and wherever they want, complete it at their own pace, repeat it, bookmark it for later, share it, comment on it, and engage with other new members hires going through the same experience. An LXP can augment and support different occasions during the onboarding process, such as in-person training, live-virtual training, coaching sessions, periodic progress reviews, and work-based learning.
Retain and Share Knowledge
When employees retire or move on to a new employer, they inevitably take their knowledge, skills, and experience with them. The business loses that corporate memory as a result. An LXP is ideally suited to retaining and sharing knowledge and skills by enabling learners to become contributors to the pool of content; this is achieved by allowing user-generated content curation and creation – functions that an LXP provides to every user at their fingertips.
Train Partners and Customers
An LXP doesn’t necessarily have to be for internal use alone. Businesses can grant segmented access to external partners and customers.
For instance, an LXP can inform customers about a business’s products or services. It can also upskill and certify Partners and maintain their certification currency.
Enable sales teams
Employees in marketing, sales, and customer relations need to frequently and quickly update their knowledge of products, competitors, market trends, selling techniques, customer buying patterns, and other fast-moving aspects of the business. An LXP provides a very effective way to get learning to the right people, at the right time, in the right way, without them needing to search for it, book time away from the office, travel to a training venue, or chase for the latest information.
Support Hybrid Working
Geographical limitations are a well-known impediment to conventional training. Businesses with multiple office locations struggle to bring cohorts of learners together for training. The shift to hybrid working has exacerbated finding the right time and place for scheduled learning. The LXP supports hybrid working by enabling learners to participate from anywhere, at any time, on any device, and without the need to travel. This saves both time and money while empowering learners to be self-directed, progressing at their own pace.
Benefits of an LXP for employees and the business
LXP puts the learner at the center of the experience and brings distinct benefits when compared with other technology-enabled learning solutions, including:
Focus on Skill development
LXPs link learning to skills, job roles, and job families within a business. By connecting the learning to the skills, the business needs and showing the relationship to current and future job roles, LXP enables learners to align their self-directed learning with the skills required for success.
Meanwhile, the business can ensure that all learning is aligned with the skills it needs, now and in the future, and highlight the relationship between those skills and the business’s goals.
Learning anywhere, any time
New working patterns mean that office-based, home-based, mobile, and hybrid working arrangements are likely to continue post-pandemic. An LXP supports learners wherever they are, whenever they need to learn, on any device, and even in the flow of the applications they use daily.
This means higher productivity, lower spending on travel, less time away from the office, and no more ‘mug and jug’ knowledge transfer in asynchronous classroom settings with the learner’s need for learning.
Targeted investment in learning & unlimited access
In an LXP, learning content is always available from anywhere and at any time. There is no incremental cost for accessing learning multiple times, no limit to consumption, and no learner access barriers.
The business also gains deep insights into consumption patterns through rich analytics that highlight which content the learners are engaging with and not. These insights can be applied to optimize learning investment. Organizations can invest more in content that is being consumed and get rid of underutilized content, thereby ensuring better ROI on L&D spending.
A personalized experience for every learner and a single source of truth for reporting
LXPs use AI and ML to personalize the learner’s experience, presenting learning recommendations that are aligned with their goals, refreshing those recommendations to ensure the newest and best content is always visible, allowing learners to collaborate in groups, allowing learners to identify and follow subject matter experts, allowing learners to share their knowledge, skills, and experience, and make them visible to others.
All the interactions of every learner are recorded by an LXP, enabling reporting from a single focal point that spans across all the Trusted Sources of learning to which the LXP is connected, no matter what content a learner consumes, from any device at any time.
