Have you watched YouTube lately? And have you watched it because you were looking for a short “How-to” video? I´m the same: actually, when I became a single father, I learned washing and ironing through YouTube videos. Our employees do the same: they are no longer following the resources which L&D created for them. They are self-learning and self-serving their training needs and they find their own online resources and courses whenever they need to solve a problem.
This content is increasingly likely to be self-created or self-curated – user generated. And this is a completely new approach to learning which is about to disrupt the conventional, top-down learning approaches. Fundamentally, this approach means giving subject matter experts the power to create and maintain learning content on topics in which they are experts. It harnesses their expertise and enables them to share it with colleagues. This approach is called employee-generated learning (EGL).
The traditional process of creating courses with SME input and reviews is inefficient, considering how quickly content changes. Despite input from SMEs, it can become impossible for content maintenance to keep up with the speed of business. Even when working with third-party vendors, L&D still faces the long, expensive process of teaching them about products and internal procedures. A way out could be EGL. It’s faster, easier and, in many cases, far more cost-effective. With EGL, individual departments create their own learning content and play an active role in sharing knowledge. As a result, many regional requests can be fulfilled within the teams, unburdening the central L&D team. Empowering employees to create their own training content significantly speeds up the process. To be successful with this approach, the process must be easy to use, while supporting SMEs with in creating effective content.