the ultimate guide to closing skills gaps—fast€¦ · the ultimate guide to closing skills gaps...

7 industry experts provide sensible solutions to identify and

close nagging skills gaps in your organisation.

The Ultimate Guide to Closing Skills Gaps—Fast

Kenny Munck

Nick Etlar Eriksen

Soren Raagard

Omeed Aminian

Hans van Bergen

David Perring

David Patterson

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennymunck/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-eriksen-79537b1/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragard/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/omeedaminian/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidperring/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-patterson-2227471/

Table of CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

Introduction: The Corporate Skills Gap Problem 3

6 Steps to Identifying the Skills Gaps in Your Organisation 7

How to Change Your Content Production Paradigm 11

Building a Lasting Learning Culture 15

Empowering Your People to Create Rapid Content 19

How HU Created 400 Digital Courses in Just a Few Months (And 1,700 in Three Years) 24

Making Learning Stick 30

Identifying the Best Kind of Learning System for Closing the Skills Gap 36

Next Steps 40

About Eurekos 41

About the Authors 44

Copyright © 2019 • Eurekos.com The Ultimate Guide to Closing Skills Gaps—Fast | 3

Introduction: The Corporate Skills Gap Problem

In a highly

competitive labour

market, the best

route to economic

growth is making

sure your learners

and workers are

prepared for

technological

disruption through

training and

education.

It’s hardly news to you that finding and hiring

the right employees has become a challenge

for every company and government agency

in Northern Europe. Studies and statistics

have been highlighting that trend for several

years. However, as one media report noted,

the “mismatch” has become so “acute,” these

countries face the prospect of losing out on the

upswing in business momentum that is driving

revenue growth in other parts of Europe.

The most recent Hays Global Skills Index, for

example, called out Sweden, Denmark and the

Netherlands, in particular, for continued hiring

challenges. This index uses 19 indicators to

quantify how easy or difficult it is for companies

in 33 global economies to attract and retain the

most talented workers. The higher the index

score, the more challenging the hiring process

is. A score above 5.0 suggests a labour market

under real pressure. All three countries come in

higher than that.

01By Kenny Munck

Country Overall Index Score Talent Mismatch Score

Sweden 6.7 9.9

Denmark 6.4 9.0

The Netherlands 5.6 5.9

The higher the index score, the greater the challenge in hiring. Source: the Hays Global Skills Index

https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/scandinavia-desperately-needs-more-skilled-workers

https://www.hays-index.com/

https://eurekos.com/


The Ultimate Guide to Closing Skills Gaps—Fast | 4


Copyright © 2019 • Eurekos.com

As the report stated, two factors have come

into play, “both of which need to be tackled

urgently.” First, there’s a “growing talent

mismatch” between the set of skills workers

have and what’s required by employers,

demonstrated by a rise in unfulfilled

vacancies.

Second, labour productivity levels have

“flatlined,” a phenomenon that settled in

with the global financial crisis of 2008 and

hasn’t shifted since. As the report suggested,

stagnation in productivity reflects several

macroeconomic forces: a population that is

aging, a reduced investment in education

and training, and a reduction in global trade.

The challenge is only growing on both fronts

as work becomes increasingly digitalised.

The use of ubiquitous high-speed, mobile

internet; robotics; artificial intelligence; and

sensor-driven operations—encapsulated

by the monikers, “Industry 4.0” or “4th

Industrial Revolution”—suggests a future

in which digital processes and computing

technology are changing how work is done

as well as the skills workers will need to keep

up with those changes.

The number one antidote recommended

by the Hays report for driving economic

growth in the right direction is to make sure

that workers are prepared for technological

disruption through training and education.

Labour productivity levels have “flat-

lined,” a phenomenon that settled in

with the global financial crisis of 2008

and hasn’t shifted since.






How Traditional Skills Training Approaches FailHow do you keep your employees prepared?

Here too changes are afoot. The traditional

forms of training and education can no

longer keep pace. Sending members of

your staff off for a new round of classroom

training, delivered by a highly-paid expert

who may or may not understand your

specific challenges, isn’t necessarily the

solution that will address the skills gap your

organisation faces.

Classroom training is outdated on many

levels:

• Timing is a challenge. The logistics of

classroom training require that it be

scheduled in advance, when the space

and the trainer are both available, which is

often out of synch with the world you’re

actually living in and the problems you

face.

• The training is a passive experience. You

have several days in the classroom where

you’re expected to learn everything in one

go. Most people aren’t really ready for

that—especially those of us who haven’t

been in school for a long time. It’s really

difficult to maintain concentration over

that amount of time.

• The training is costlier. Frequently,

employees trained in the conventional

way need to travel to a different location,

stay in lodging, eat in restaurants and miss

days of work to obtain their training. One

company told us that it spends $1,000

per employee each year for their training.

How much training do you actually get for

that? A lot of that was related to hotels,

flights and transportation—all things that

have nothing to do with training but were

part of the cost because you have to

gather people in the classroom wherever

the training is being delivered.

• Work isn’t getting done. As valuable

as training programs are, whenever an

employee leaves for training, others are

left to pick up the slack—that is, if others

are available who know how to do the

work. People can’t do their jobs while

they’re in a classroom. That’s several days’

worth of lost productivity that put a dent

in the bottom line.

• The training is focused on learning, not

doing. Bringing people together in a

classroom makes for a generic training

experience. You end up discussing

somebody else’s problem, not your own.

As a result, people learning in a classroom

run the risk of forgetting much of what

they’ve learned by the time they’ve

returned to work. Studies have indicated

that classroom-based courses result in

participants remembering about a fifth of

what they learn, which equals to only a 20

percent value to your training investment.





• Getting the timing of training right

can be tricky. The learning in classroom

training often comes way before it’s

needed just for the sake of passing a test.

Take the example of GDPR certification.

Plenty of companies had staff take

their training in advance of when they

really needed to put the directive’s rules

into practice. The certification box was

checked! But when the time came for

them to do something related to GDPR

regulations, much of what they’d learned

was already forgotten. And there was

no way to recreate the lessons they’d

received because the instructor had

moved on and the assignments were over.

A Better Solution to Filling Your Skills GapsThe rest of this report lays out alternatives to

conventional skills training—online learning,

blended learning, and what might be called

sustainable learning—that overcomes every

single one of these obstacles.

Chapter 2 describes an approach for helping

you identify and analyse your organisation’s

skills gaps.

Chapter 3 examines how to change your

training content paradigm—especially the

leadership component needed for it to

succeed.

Chapter 4 shares three learning trends that

can help you build a learning culture in your

organisation to keep the skills gaps at bay

forevermore.

Chapter 5 provides a step-by-step plan for

empowering your subject matter experts to

create training content rapidly.

Chapter 6 offers a rapid production case

study and shares lessons learned from an

organisation that created literally hundreds

of courses for its students in an expedited

amount of time.

Chapter 7 explores how to supercharge your

learning and training with social elements

and collabouration.

Chapter 8 includes a checklist on the

features and functions your organisation

should shop for in selecting a next-

generation learning platform that will help

you close the skills gaps your organisation

faces.

Right now, the best remedy you have for

leading through the technological disruption

is by making sure your workforce can

pivot as new needs—products, services,

discoveries, opportunities—arise. And that

will require you to tackle head on any

skills gaps separating your operation from

success.

Kenny Munck is the CEO and Co-

Founder of Eurekos. Previous to

Eurekos, Kenny founded Mentorix,

a content development and

training company. During Kenny’s

23 years in both the public and

private sectors, he has spent

much of his time on corporate

learning, IT, program management

and business development. His

last ten years have been focused

on building innovative learning

technology and strong corporate

learning organisations.





6 Steps to Identifying Skills Gaps in Your Organisation

To develop a robust

training program,

you need to start

by understanding

what skills your

employees possess

now and which ones

they will require for

the future.

While researchers and executives often refer to

the skills “shortage,” “mismatch” or “gap,” people

may mean different things when they talk about

the basic concept. Sometimes it refers to the

inability of companies to hire people with the

appropriate skills needed to fill job vacancies.

Other times, the phrase is used to describe the

“competence gap” that exists within individuals;

they lack the “hard” skills or “soft” skills needed

to stay current with their jobs in administration,

production or service as the work evolves.

No matter how you define it, the result is

the same: needless pressure on business

productivity. An organisation with insufficient

staffing will be unable to stay current with

market demands, driving sales (and revenues)

to better-outfitted competitors across town or

across borders. And individuals lacking the skills

they need to do the job right impose a major

drag on corporate productivity.

In this chapter you will learn the six-step process

for identifying your organisation’s skills gaps.

Without that understanding, you will have little

success in filling the shortages and closing the

gap. More importantly, your organisation will

misdirect its training efforts, thereby wasting

time and money.

Preparing Your Company for a Digital FutureFour in 10 businesses in the European Union

(EU) report difficulties finding staff with the

right skills, according to the European Centre

for the Development of Vocational Training

(CEDEFOP). This challenge is only growing as

companies face increased competition for skilled

workers in specific areas (software developers,

cybersecurity experts and computer engineers,

to name three of the most extreme examples).

They also follow hiring and employment

practices that exacerbate recruitment difficulties

(such as companies expecting those they hire

to come 100-percent job-ready or relying on

02By Kenny Munck

http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/






6 Steps to Identifying Skills Gaps in Your Organisation 02


the same over-used social channels, such as

LinkedIn or Indeed, for identifying potential

candidates). The situation is not helped by

a business sector maintaining its outdated

expectation that training is to be provided

by the government.

The result is a downward spiral for workers,

who stay trapped in under-skilled jobs, and

for companies, which decline to invest in

new technologies for lack of right-skilled

employees.

Skills drive innovation, the key to enterprise

survival. By investing in development of skills

for your workers, your company supports

the workplace changes needed to sustain

market, product, and process innovation.

The recently released Future of Jobs Report,

from the World Economic Forum, found

that by 2022, based on the job profiles

of their current employees, almost half of

companies expect automation to lead to

“some reduction” in their full-time workforce.

However, 38 percent of businesses surveyed

anticipate extending their workforces to

new “productivity-enhancing roles.” And a

quarter expect automation to lead to the

creation of new roles in their organisations

that may not even exist today.

What are these roles and where will these

trained people come from? Among the jobs

referenced in the report are those that are

recognizable: data analysts and scientists,

software and applications developers, and

ecommerce and social media specialists.

While these roles obviously fit an increased

use of technology, there are others that rely

on more “human” skills: customer service

workers, sales and marketing professionals,

training and development experts,

innovation managers, and others.

However, among jobs that relate to emerging

technologies are specialist jobs that do not

exist in large numbers yet. Companies will

be seeking experts in artificial intelligence

and machine learning, big data analytics,

process automation, information security,

human-machine interaction, robotics, and

blockchain.

There are several fundamental ways

companies can prepare for their future

strategies:

• They can join the hiring fray and pay the

requisite;

• They can hope to automate work,

eliminating a trained workforce altogether;

or

• They can train existing employees.

Those organisations that master the work

of identifying and addressing skills gaps

now will be better positioned to reskill and

upskill their workforce in time to fully exploit

innovation initiatives that will help them

attain their business goals.

How to Conduct a Skills Gap AnalysisTo make your workforce as competitive as

possible for what’s coming, you need to

analyse your company’s skills needs and

the skills currently held by your workforce.

Here’s a step-by-step process:

https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2018

https://www.weforum.org/events/sustainable-development-impact-summit#





1. Start with your company strategy;

Identify company goals to understand

what roles will be needed in the near-term

and far-term. For example, you may find

that customer service operations currently

handled by phone will be conducted online

as part of a broader project to modernise

customer relationship management overall.

So, individuals working the phones and email

will need to develop skills for handling chat,

videoconferencing and other social channels.

2. Identify the roles required for reaching

those goals.

You can develop this list of roles with your

internal brain trust or turn to an openly

available resource, such as “The Future of

Jobs Report,” from the World Economic

Forum. An “industry profiles” section

segments the evolution of workforce

needs—both those that are “emerging” and

those “declining”—by industry and roles

through 2022 (see page 10).

3. Create an inventory of skills for each role.

You can turn to multiple sources to help

develop a list of the key skills needed for

specific roles. Some recruitment firms

specialise in performing comparative

studies across organisations to develop

skill inventories. Individual countries publish

official classifications of occupations,

describing the skills needed for each. And,

if you want to undertake the work internally,

you can use job listings from LinkedIn and

Indeed, for example, to compile the skills list.

Once you have the list of skills required for

specific jobs, you need to prioritise them in

two ways: first, by type of skill, and, second,

by level of mastery. Doing this will result in a

better, more manageable understanding of

each role.

4. Inventory the skills your employees have

already.

Now it’s time to find out where your

company currently stands. You can take

numerous approaches to assess your

employees:

• Cull through the employee reviews already

on file;

• Perform 360-degree reviews that identify

skills through co-worker and manager

feedback;

• Collect data directly from the employees

about their certificates and proven

competencies;

• Do observations of workers as they

perform their jobs;

• Assess them through testing or role play

for specific skills;

• Benchmark employees against top

performers in their roles; and

• Evaluate staff using specialised software.

5. Perform your skills-gap analysis.

In this step you compare the skills you need

from staff against the skills they possess. The

difference between those two elements is

the skills gap you’ll be bridging.

An important aspect of this stage is to

identify those employees that have shown

exceptional skills. (They’ll be especially useful

later as content experts. More on that in in

the next chapter.)

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Future_of_Jobs_2018.pdf





6. Now it is time to close the skills gap.

Armed with the information your

organisation has developed about the roles

needed, the skills in place and those that

require further development, it is time to

get to work in closing the skills gaps. In this

phase, you develop and implement a training

program that uses a combination of learning

and social or peer support.

Now it’s time to change the paradigm

for your content production, which can

also help you embed learning into your

company’s culture. That’s covered in the next

chapter.

EMERGING DECLINING

8% in 2018 21% in 2022 41% in 2018 26% in 2022

Roles such as:

• Data Analysts and Scientists

• AI and Machine Learning Specialists

• Process Automation Specialists

• Software and Applications Developers and

Analysts

• Innovation Professionals

• Sales and Marketing Professionals

• Service and Solutions Designers

• Product Managers

• Industrial and Production Engineers

• Supply Chain and Logistics Specialists

Roles such as:

• Assembly and Factory Workers

• Data Entry Clerks

• Client Information and Customer Service Workers

• Accountants and Auditors

• Accounting, Bookkeeping and Payroll Clerks

• Administrative and Executive Secretaries

• Transportation Attendants and Conductors

• Material-Recording and Stock-Keeping Clerks

• General and Operations Managers

• Business Services and Administration Managers

This figure designates the roles expected to emerge and decline between now and 2022 in the automotive, aerospace,

supply chain and transport segments. Source: “The Future of Jobs Report 2018,” from the World Economic Forum.

Kenny Munck is the CEO and Co-

Founder of Eurekos. Previous to

Eurekos, Kenny founded Mentorix,

a content development and

training company. During Kenny’s

23 years in both the public and

private sectors, he has spent

much of his time on corporate

learning, IT, program management

and business development. His

last ten years have been focused

on building innovative learning

technology and strong corporate

learning organisations.





How to Change Your Content Production Paradigm

The use of internal

experts, the right

kind of learning

management

system and

management

commitment to

building a learning

culture will help

you keep up with

learning needs

through rapid,

timely content

creation.

Armed with your organisation’s skills gap

analysis, it is time to put a training program in

place. While traditional instructor-led training

has been the norm, that doesn’t work anymore.

People want to get training on the job, in

context, which means you need an alternative.

The goal is to limit the amount of time between

the knowing and doing. You also want to make

learning a part of the company’s culture so

the skills gap doesn’t continually occur. This is

done by developing a common language and

behaviour for learning within your operation.

It requires you to adopt a new paradigm for

content creation.

A Recipe for the Best Learning TodayThe best learning today uses a combination of

instructional formats:

• Short videos of recorded instruction (a la

YouTube);

• Digital materials and interactive activities, such

as text, animations, and quizzes, to keep the

learning active and engaging; and

• Social hubs with groups, chat, hashtagging,

and other aspects of social media in the

environment that enable learners to share

their ideas, questions and solutions with peers.

This approach offers numerous advantages over

classroom training. First, it can happen anywhere,

anytime. As long as the learner has access to

a device—a laptop, tablet or smartphone—and

an internet connection, he or she can watch a

video or review text. Scheduling ceases to be a

challenge.

Also, learning isn’t measured by full days. A

quick, 10-minute video lesson may be all the

student needs to move onto the next stage of

the job. Time commitment is minimal.

Next, this type of learning allows for

personalization. Rather than the instructor

deciding what needs to be taught next, the

student is in the position of choosing what to

learn next, making it a more active experience.

03By Nick Etlar Eriksen






03The ability for the student to communicate

with others through social channels enables

him or her to combine knowledge gain with

context to deepen the learning, allowing

work to be accomplished even as the

training goes on.

Finally, the cost is greatly reduced because

there’s no travel involved, no time out of

the office, and learning time becomes more

productive. You can easily cut down your

training costs by 50 to 60 percent while

actually improving quality. The investment in

this type of learning quickly pays for itself.

There are just three components you need

for success:

• A user-friendly learning management

system;

• Robust digital content; and

• Management support.

The learning management system or LMS is

a dedicated application that allows you to

maintain course content—videos and other

e-learning materials—and manage the user

Why It’s Time to Throw Away Your (First -Generation) LMS)

In first-generation use of LMSs, companies frequently did not realise that the LMS

came without content. When it came time to deliver training, as a result, many

scrambled to purchase digital lessons sold by third-party service agencies that

specialised in creating training videos. This training often used actors to portray staff

and may have had high production quality. But too often, the content was generic—

made for any business, for example, that was using a particular version of a software

program. Or, if budget was no object, the company might contract to have custom

training videos produced (with the obligatory high price). However, when the work

process changed or a new version of the software was deployed, the training was

no longer relevant. The company had to choose between forcing their employees to

watch outdated materials or to wait for a new version of the training to be released.

Neither approach was optimal.





03experience. This is where the learner logs

in to gain access to the learning materials.

He or she works through a lesson—reading,

viewing a video, taking a quick assessment

to measure understanding—and can then

return to the job at hand or continue

with additional lessons. The LMS tracks

advancement to keep the employee on

target and to report progress to the team or

manager.

In an environment where you have multiple

groups that require different forms of

training, a well-designed LMS gives you a

simple way to organise those divisions and

give them access to the right training. In the

case of compliance training, the LMS keeps

track of who has gone through the training

and completed it successfully and will even

follow up with laggards automatically to

remind them to get it done by your chosen

deadline.

Digital content is a separate entity from the

LMS. Whereas the LMS provides the “home”

in which your online learning resides, the

digital content makes up the “furnishings”—

what will be used by your workers to gain

the job skills needed to fill your skills gaps.

Fortunately, a new generation of LMS has

emerged that allows companies to create

their own training videos and other digital

materials rapidly. This type of LMS provides

simple and effective authoring tools that

allow training programs, including videos,

to be set up by anybody in the company

and to modify them as the need arises.

Materials can be updated, videos replaced

and learners notified as work needs change.

A new generation of LMS has emerged

that allows companies to create their

own training videos and other digital

materials rapidly.





03(You’ll learn more about the optimal features

and functions for the LMS in Chapter 8.)

I liken the use of online learning with an

LMS and digital content to Lego bricks.

Every brick is independent, but it can be

put together with a number of other bricks

in a thousand different ways. Your training

catalogue can be a huge mountain of Lego

bricks that you update and put together

very easily and effortlessly. Then people

more or less design the models they’re

using. You should think of learning as the

bricks and the skills you need as the model

you build.

By applying online learning, you can develop

a really huge skills directory. Then you can

tap into those skills and build the models

that you need.

Also Crucial: Leadership CommitmentThe third requirement for online learning is

leadership buy-in. Without that, there won’t

be the requisite investment needed to put

an effective LMS in place. But even more

importantly, if staff does not perceive that

executives value the skills development

being offered, they will not put time or effort

into the training program.

How do executives communicate that

bridging the skills gap is important to

the organisation? By participating in it

themselves. If you have a manager or leader

telling other people to do training, but they

don’t do it themselves or they make fun

of people learning new things, then you

have a problem. Slowly, you degrade the

value of training. In my opinion, if you build

up a culture like that as a company, you’ll

eventually go out of business.

Nick Eriksen is the Chief

Technology Officer and Co-founder

of Eurekos. Since the mid 90’s

he has developed and improved

online experiences and solutions

in a wide range of industries and

business areas for both the public

and private sectors.

Outfitted with a well-designed learning

management system and the management

commitment to invest in and adopt online

learning, your organisation will be ready to

tackle the next part of the transformation:

developing the digital content that will help

your people gain the skills they need to

move your company forward.





Building a Lasting Learning Culture

Organisations that

can build a learning

culture today and

tap into learning

trends will prepare

their current and

future workforce for

whatever is coming

next and keep skills

gaps at bay.

The future workforce is now sitting in a

classroom somewhere. And soon enough

organisations will be hunting down those

students to fill jobs we don’t know that we’ll

need because they don’t exist yet. How do you

fill that kind of skills gap and get them trained

quickly so they’re useful as soon as possible?

Similarly challenging, as huge numbers of our

employees head into retirement, how do we

retain the knowledge they’re walking out with as

they leave our companies?

Maybe instead of putting the focus on

onboarding, we should turn our attention

immediately to offboarding — making sure that

from the day people start inside the company,

we begin capturing their learning so that when

they leave in four (or 40) years, we have a way

of continually passing on those experiences to

others inside the organisation who need the

lessons too.

This calls for creation of a learning culture.

Inspiring a learning culture starts by

understanding how knowledge travels in your

organisation, which may differ from unit to unit

or team to team. Knowing who people turn to

in times of need will help you identify those

trusted individuals within the various divisions

who can serve as “ambassadors” (also referred

to as “change agents,” “learning culture agents”

or even “lighthouses”) to pave the way. Their job

is to show others how to share what they know.

They’re the ones you want creating quick videos

to record the steps for using that new software

program or tuning the new equipment; they’re

the ones who think to pull out their smartphones

and interview participants after an important

project meeting to briefly answer the three key

questions that others will find useful when they

get involved in the same project.

Those “learnings” can then be posted onto

a platform where they’re easily tagged for

searchability and made accessible.

04By Soren Raagard






04Then it’s time for testing a hundred different

approaches and seeing what works. Iteration

is important. Besides documenting how

anybody does a given job in the company,

it’s important to add something to it—to

make it better for the next person doing the

job.

Those who can share their expertise aren’t

just giving something; they’re getting

something back. Because they know they’ll

be showing others how the work is done,

they’ll approach it with greater pride, and

they’ll feel sharper and more alive. Too often

people get protective about what they know,

as if that’ll protect them during the next

round of layoffs. If you can persuade them

that they alone understand things worth

passing onto others now, in the present,

you’ll have gone far in achieving the learning

culture.

New Forms of LearningIt’s a given that learning should happen just

in time—when people need the information

and not months before, when a trainer was

available. Making that learning accessible

through a mobile device means it sits in the

pocket or purse of every employee, ready

to access when they need the knowledge.

Likewise, learning needs to be personalized,

made available in multiple formats. Some

people want to watch; others are hands-on;

some still prefer reading.

But there are other trends in learning worth

considering. All three of these are being

tested out in companies that Eurekos is

working with. And they all will influence how

the learning culture operates in the future.

Learning needs to be personalized and

made available in multiple formats.

Some people want to watch; others

are hands-on; some still prefer reading.





04Bringing Augmented Reality to Life

Although virtual reality—the replacement

of the physical world with a virtual one

that’s viewed through a headset—gets most

of the attention right now, the future of

learning belongs to augmented reality — the

imposition of virtual aspects on top of the

real world.

Imagine a windmill operator that has to send

its employees to the top of giant turbines

for various repair and maintenance activities.

Why not have the most experienced

workers wear augmented glasses to record

a video of what they’re seeing and doing

to enable others to learn how to do the

work too? Maybe a specific technician has

even perfected some aspect of the job that

others would benefit from. By identifying

and tagging that person’s learning and

calling special attention to it, the educational

experience is enhanced for the next person

who needs to head up a windmill.

Useful Artificial Intelligence

The typical approach for staffing a new

project is for the manager to hunt around

and find those people who are sitting on the

bench, not doing much and assigning them

for some part of their schedule to the new

work. Or a manager may know that specific

people work well together, so they’ll push to

bring them together for the next project or

the one after that. But what happens when

that manager leaves or those people have

gone in different directions? Using personal

experience isn’t always the best way of

creating an excellent project team.

Forward-looking organisations are flipping

around the normal equation. How does

this work? For a company experimenting

with the use of artificial intelligence. They

maintain data on what education their

people have, what projects they’ve worked

on, what skills (hard and soft) they have and

who’s available. The AI platform suggests

what would be an optimal mix of individuals

for any given project.

AI will also eventually provide “smart”

assistance. Instead of the user having to pull

out a mobile device to hunt down whatever

training is needed, a virtual assistant will

make itself available, off to the side of the

email, the conversation, the ERP system—

all the platforms being used—to deliver

The future of learning

belongs to augmented

reality—the imposition of

virtual aspects on top of

the real world.





04whatever information is required to finish a

given task.

Advanced Gamification

Among the activities supported: Teams

work together against the clock to

solve challenges. The intention is to

show participants the importance of

collabouration and to demonstrate that

every member of a team—from the highest

role in the hierarchy to the humblest—has

something to contribute.

The room idea is part of a movement to

add “gamification” or elements of gaming

to learning. The best game makers have

learned how to create narrative that push

players to try and try again without making

them so frustrated, they give up. The best

learning does the same: It gives workers

enough of an edge to keep them moving

forward without throwing up their arms and

walking away. A big part of gaming involves

recognition—through leaderboards or digital

badging. The idea is to publicly recognize

those who have contributed the most. In

this context, there could be a leaderboard

broadcasting those who have uploaded

the most learning modules, thereby helping

others who need to do the same kind of

tasks.

When Everybody Becomes a TeacherThe ultimate goal is for everybody in the

organisation to consider it part of their job

to share what they’re learning and to teach

others. I’m not talking about creating a

procedure, slideshow or spreadsheet where

people document what they’re doing and

then store it on a site where nobody can

find it. In a learning culture, the output is

intended to serve as educational content

and materials.

If everybody in the company becomes a

"teacher", that makes for a lot of

knowledge generation. It also sparks a lot

of job satisfaction. People realize their

unique qualities and feel pride in what they

know.

Instead of keeping knowledge apart from

those who need it, a learning culture builds

trust inside of the organisation, among its

members.

Soren Raagard is the Vice

President in charge of business

development and partners at

Eurekos, which produces a highly

popular learning management

system and helps its clients create

learning with impact by speeding

up the creation and delivery of

learning content. Previously, he

served as the Director of digital

strategy at LEGO Digital and

LEGO Education. Soren leads from

London.





Empower Your People to Create Rapid Content

You already have

much of the

expertise you need

to develop online

learning content.

Here is how the

process works on

the ground (or, as it

were, in the air).

Filling the skills gaps within your organisation

requires you to identify the learning outcomes

needed by your workforce and developing the

lessons they need—along with the work activities

that will give those lessons meaning and help the

training stick.

Let’s take an example. Imagine that your

organisation has adopted a new tablet-

based alert system to notify workers when

the production process has reached specific

thresholds. The system’s goal is to minimise

maintenance downtime by applying digital

technologies—sensors and software—to capture

and relay problems for quick attention before

they cause a production delay. No longer will

employees rely strictly on “gut instinct” to know

when to act.

You could haul those staff members into a

classroom for a day or two of training on the

new system and hope they remember everything

they are taught. You could allow them to

learn through trial and error (and write off its

necessary costly mistakes). Or you could provide

them with a set of digital lessons directly on

those tablets.

After a brief introduction to show employees

how the tablets work, they could return to work.

Then, each time an alert cropped up, they could

be directed with a link to a specific video in

which a co-worker shows them how to interpret

the alert and respond accordingly. An advantage

of this approach is that you can grow your

inventory of learning content to keep one step

ahead of the experience level of your workforce.

And when individual staff members have

expanded their knowledge beyond the lessons

you’ve made available, you can turn them into

the content experts and have them produce the

next generation of learning materials.

This chapter lays out a new approach for

building the lessons your workforce needs—by

tapping into their own expertise and allowing

them swiftly to create the training modules for

your online learning system.

05By Omeed Aminian




Empowering Your People to Create Rapid Content


05Building the Vision for LearningWhere do you start? We recommend the

use of a “learning blueprint” to document

the learning needs of the organisation. The

blueprint examines the following areas:

• What learning problems need to be

solved;

• What the benefits will be for solving those

problems;

• What the future will look like after those

problems are solved;

• How those benefits can be quantified

through key performance indicators or

some other measure; and

• What resources—people and technology—

are available to provide learning content.

This document is intended to serve as

a roadmap to help you mark progress,

whether that is for the purpose of regulatory

compliance or to fill the broader skills

gaps your organisation needs as it makes

its digital transformation. The details will

also help you understand what lessons

need to be learned on an individual basis

and what learning should be tackled as a

group activity through social channels. This

The Need for Nimble Learning

E-learning consultant David Patterson, who runs Learning Light, a centre of

excellence in the use of learning technologies, recalled a global ferry operator that

had a learning & development unit focused on health and safety training and an

external agency to which it outsourced all other learning content.

Frustrated with the slow response to a request for a specific module of training, one

compliance manager took matters into his own hands and created a lesson for all

staff, warning them to “shut the storage warehouse when you leave to keep the rats

out.” The learning “was pretty rough,” Patterson added, “but he was able to build

it quickly and checked out that everybody had taken the course.” The result: The

compliance manager “solved his rat infestation problem.”

“progress report” will also serve to keep your

online learning efforts moving forward and

your executives motivated to continue their

own participation and ongoing support of

the program.

Identifying Your ExpertsOnce you have this vision of learning in

place, it’s time to begin developing your

catalogue of online lessons—either from

external or internal sources. Embedding a

learning culture calls for the organisation to

expand its definition of who the expert is.

https://www.learninglight.com/





05You may decide that the experts should be

external sources. If your company has just

adopted the use of a new application that’s

widely available and all the staff needs is

some basic lessons, or you want them to

develop “soft skills” in standardised areas

such as communication or writing, you

could easily find expertise freely available on

sources such as YouTube or Khan Academy

and embed links for those videos into the

learning management system (LMS). The

disadvantage here is that the lessons would

be highly generic and may not apply as

closely to your corporate situation as you

would prefer.

Depending on the subject matter, you

could also license training content through

international services such as the Eurekos

Content Marketplace, OpenSesame,

LinkedIn’s Lynda.com, Coursera, Udemy,

360training, Pluralsight or HubSpot

Academy. The Eurekos LMS, specifically,

can host any of the lessons from these

content providers to make it look like it is

being delivered right from your company,

simplifying access for the learner.

A third route—the one we recommend—is

to develop your internal subject matter

experts (SMEs), especially for content

that is specific to your organisation. These

SMEs are individuals who have excelled in

their jobs and proven themselves willing

to share what they know. Outfitted with

a smartphone camera, for instance, these

experts can quickly put together short

videos explaining a specific task. Once those

are placed into your LMS catalogue, others

can access them on an as-needed basis to

solve their problems. The result is employee-

We recommend you develop your

own internal subject matter experts

(SMEs), especially for content that is

specific to your organisation.

https://www.youtube.com/

https://www.khanacademy.org/

https://eurekos.com/introducing-a-new-content-marketplace/

https://eurekos.com/introducing-a-new-content-marketplace/

https://www.opensesame.com/

https://www.lynda.com/

https://www.coursera.org/

https://www.udemy.com/

https://www.360training.com/TopCategoriesDisplay?storeId=21701&urlLangId=-1&urlRequestType=Base&langId=-1&catalogId=

https://www.pluralsight.com/

https://academy.hubspot.com/

https://academy.hubspot.com/





05to-employee learning, the existence of

which accelerates development of a learning

culture.

Your company may have dedicated subject

matter experts; but relying solely on them

to provide learning materials can create a

bottleneck. On the other hand, you have a

lot of people in the field. If you allow them

to build courses and contribute to the

content side of things, you exponentially

grow the number of people contributing

to a company’s structures and knowledge.

Then your formal subject matter experts or

the learning department can dedicate their

time to validating that, where required by

regulations, the learning meets compliance

levels, quality measures, or standard

procedures before it’s added to the LMS for

distribution.

Capturing and Converting Knowledge Into LessonsA massive amount of knowledge already

exists within your organisation. Often, it’s

just not very well documented. The key to

succeeding with online learning is to capture

what these “homegrown” experts know and

to convert it into lessons.

Take the example of a crane operator. Who’s

the best person to do training about how

to handle a rope change on a crane? That’s

the guy who’s doing it as part of his job and

is the most skilled at it. So why not let him

create the e-learning and allow the subject

matter expert to validate that the way he

does it is exactly according to the quality

manual and the standard procedures?

The funny thing is that people who really

love their job, those are the people who love

to tell other people how to do it. They don’t

feel like it’s a burden. Sometimes if you ask

an overburdened subject matter expert to

produce more e-learning, he or she will really

feel the stress—whereas the person who

does this activity every day sees it as an

opportunity to be known as the best at their

job. Often, the only thing holding them back

is software licensing or software that’s too

complicated for them to use.

Another benefit: You do not need to figure

out how to get a crew 30 meters into the air

(or whatever the specialised environment

is) to produce the video. You can train the

crane operator how to use the camera and

make a small film. Once that person is down

from the crane, you have your movie.

The same is true for numerous other

settings. If you want to do a demonstration

of a new device, a new piece of medical

People who really love their

work—those are the people

who love to tell other

people how to do it. They

see it as an opportunity to

be known as the best at

their job.





05equipment, get the people who actually

know how to operate this machine to show

it instead of a sales person or actor. We are

finding that people don’t really like these

polished movies or interactions because it

feels too much like a commercial. They want

the real stuff. They want people who know

stuff because it’s a lot more credible. It’s

really about making learning objects that are

authentic.

In a setting where the training involves

software, the expert can be taught to turn

on a screen capture function that records his

or her voice as well as the on-screen steps

taken in the program to handle a specific

operation.

No matter what the type of activity that

needs to be explained in the lesson, by

turning to these skilled workers, you can

quickly populate your learning management

system with content that’s relevant and

specific.

Another benefit is that by relying on internal

experts, whenever the training needs to

be updated, you can call on that same

individual to redo the recording and replace

that part of the lesson that is out of date. It’s

no longer a big deal involving production

companies, scripting or makeup artists.

Developing Other Forms of Online LearningYour organisation can also use text and

diagrams from reports, whitepapers, web

content and other company sources to

create interactive content to accompany

the videos. A well-designed learning

management system provides the tools and

features needed to convert those materials

into digital content that can be used to

amplify and support your video learning.

The same is true for social media. People

are already interacting with each other

outside of a classroom. By building similar

capabilities into your learning program,

you can allow them to maintain their

conversations that extend beyond the

immediate lessons at hand and continue the

emphasis on growing a learning culture.

Omeed Aminian is a Senior

Consultant with Eurekos, helping

customers to develop and

transform their learning cultures.

Eurekos is a European-based

company that produces a highly

popular learning management

system and helps its clients create

learning with impact by speeding

up the creation and delivery of

learning content.





How HU Created 400 Digital Courses in Just a Few Months (and 1700 in Three Years)

As the experience

of this organisation

shows, anybody

can become expert

in creating training

content fast.

Hogeschool Utrecht faced a big problem The

Netherlands-based university of applied sciences

needed to train a lot of teachers for their

certifications—and fast. The challenge: These

particular Dutch educators were situated 7,800

kilometres away on three Caribbean islands that

had just become special municipalities of the

country.

Fortunately, the institution was already working

on a solution. With the use of the Eurekos

learning management system (LMS) subject

matter experts set to work building online

courses. Armed with the right processes and

technology, the university accomplished the

production of 400 digital courses in a few

months and 1,700 courses in just three years.

This article lays out the journey my university

followed to develop those processes, describes

the technology needed to achieve the project

and provides advice on how to emulate the

success. What’s important about Utrecht’s

example is that it’s easily translatable to the

rapid creation of learning content in any type of

organisation.

Getting StartedUtrecht’s School of Education had already been

testing the use of online learning to reach two

groups of students.

The first was made up of those who lived

elsewhere in the Netherlands and couldn’t move

to Utrecht for their master education, being

actual teachers. The students didn’t want to

come to Utrecht each week, so we had to find a

different solution for teaching them. There was

demand from the market.

06

By Hans van Bergen

https://www.hu.nl/

https://eurekos.com/eurekos-lms/





06The second group of students were those

enrolled in specialized degree programs

that had too few students to sustain on

their own. For example, there weren’t

many people pursuing careers as German-

language teachers. But by collabourating

with other universities, those small programs

could be brought together to make a group

of learners sufficiently large to sustain and

support.

In both scenarios, digital learning provided

an alternative to the expensive and time-

consuming travel burdens of in-person

instruction. Most important was that the

learning process of the students was

supported, not disrupted, by the digital

component.

If Utrecht had been a company instead of

a university, that first group of students

might represent employees in remote

offices; and the second group could be

employees from outside the organisation

that need the same training as employees

inside—such as individual franchisees,

customers, sales representatives and support

and maintenance service providers. It’s

logistically and financially difficult to bring

those individuals to a single location for

instruction on new products, procedures

and regulations. With the right technology

in place, you can deliver online training to

them and bring them up to speed anytime,

anywhere.

While a few people had been dabbling with

digital course creation, the university had

been struggling with a Microsoft SharePoint

deployment to make those training modules

available to students. But the pedagogical

concept of the teacher training department

was not at all supported by this SharePoint

solution. To promote “lifelong learning,”

we developed an educational concept at

Hogeschool Utrecht that used blended

learning and strong social interaction

between teachers and students.

At that time, I served as consultant for

educational innovation. The university asked

me to design a digital learning platform

based on our pedagogical needs that used

video content and other learning materials

and could support learning teams. Nick

Erikson, the chief technology officer and

co-founder of Eurekos who worked with me

in that first phase of the project, understood

very well what we needed and was able to

translate my instructional design into real

working digital solutions.

Sure, teachers were used to standing in front

of students and delivering the content in

person. As they told Nick and me, “You can’t

do my material digitally.” Working together,

however, we created 15 weeks of classes in a

matter of days.

Those of us who were early “test pilot”

faculty members developing digital content

for the digital learning courses served as

ambassadors among the other instructors at

the School of Education. Suddenly, faculty

were very willing to make courses. We told

many teachers, “You can do this next year.”

But they lined up in front of my office saying,

“I want to do it now.”

About that time, those three Caribbean

islands, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and

Saba, became special municipalities of

the Netherlands. The Dutch Ministry of

Education, Culture and Science dedicated





06funding to recruit and train educators

for island schools, which were facing a

considerable teacher shortage. Suddenly,

Utrecht, which is one of the major

universities for training teachers, was called

on to expand its pedagogical concept and

make it available immediately.

The university administrators understood

what we were doing and supported the

implementation with time and resources.

That enabled us to develop what now is

known as Eurekos, a real Next Generation

Digital Learning Environment. Because the

courses have been developed in an inductive

way, support from teachers and students

is very high. Both roles are involved in the

development of the platform. After all, both

the teachers and the students wanted those

courses. And the technology was supporting

it. In short order, students were taking

courses online and meeting with university

instructors once every six weeks to complete

their training.

While the university set up on-campus

production studios where faculty could

go to create the videos and other kinds of

content for their courses, many instructors

chose to do it from their office or home in

spare minutes.

Within a few months, the original 20 or 30

courses grew to become 400. Within three

years, that count had more than quadrupled.

Each course consists of instructor videos

lasting between 5 and 10 minutes, videos

produced externally and made available to

students, as well as animations, gamification,

quizzes and textual content, among other

components.

Within a few months, the original 20

or 30 courses grew to become 400.

Within three years, that count had

more than quadrupled.





06Now the students who took those courses

from the university are using the same

technology and processes to create lessons

to use in their classrooms too, as they work

as interns. Their students can watch videos

on their own and come to class ready to

join in on discussions, projects and other

learning activities, all within our scope of

personalized, blended learning.

In business and government, new programs

are continually being introduced. While the

largest corporations may be able to turn to

an in-house learning and development unit

to develop training on those new programs

or contract that work out to a training

production firm, most companies don’t have

access to those high-priced luxuries and

sometimes it takes much longer. However,

every organisation has internal experts,

people who would be willing to help their

fellow staffers learn how to follow the new

procedures or use the new equipment if they

just had a little bit of training on how to do it,

along with the right technology.

The Secret to the Fast Production of Training ContentThe secret to quick content creation is

using the right platform for content creation

and distribution. For Hogeschool Utrecht’s

School of Education that was Eurekos, an

LMS that specializes in helping people do

rapid course and content creation. It takes

just a few minutes to set up the course

structure in Eurekos and then add the

content—those videos and other elements—

that learners will interact with.

Among the features of Eurekos that have

proven most useful to us:

Collabourative content creation. Sometimes

content needs to be created by people

working together from multiple locations.

Eurekos enables them to co-create and

maintain learning content with page locking

and version tracking.

The ability to clone courses and modify

them with localized information. One of

the advantages of the way Eurekos works

is that you can easily make copies of an

existing course and work with that copy. If

you have one course that fits, you can make

a copy of it and continue working on that for

subsequent courses.

The capacity to keep courses fresh.

Maintenance is an issue with content.

It can go out of date quickly and for all

kinds of reasons—regulatory changes, new

processes, new management preferences.

With Eurekos, users can make universal

The secret to quick content

creation is using the right

platform for content

creation and distribution.





06

Five Ways to Speed Up Course Creation

1. Find enthusiasts to help spread the

word.

Identify those people in your

organisation who are willing to create

training modules for their purposes

and then serve as beacons to let

others—who might be sceptical—know

that it’s doable. Once you realize that

subject matter experts are all around

and you don’t have to wait for training

professionals (or actors) to tackle

the work, your content creation will

accelerate dramatically. People will

teach each other and start to utilize

each other’s content. They don’t all

have to start from scratch. Then it will

spread like rings in the water.

2. Consider auditions.

You may need it. People don’t have to be

instructional designers to know how to teach

others. Some people have a knack for it and

they have an excellent view of what content

is meaty or meaningful, based on their

subject matter expertise. Or they might have

a knack of presenting things in a specific

way. Your goal: to unleash the potential of

your organisation by finding those people

who want to make that effort.

3. Monitor the data to avoid wasting time.

The best learning management systems

provide reporting on what’s being used and

for how long. Focus on creation of those

items that gain traction among your learners.

If nobody is watching the introductory

video that explains what every other lesson

contains or few people are participating in

the discussion forums, dump those from

your courses and move on.

4. Use integrations.

For example, H5P is a set of standards

that simplifies the sharing of interactive

lesson modules that can be easily

integrated into eLearning to make

training much more engaging. If you

have a source for learning content that

you can bring into your own courses,

using an application that supports

integrations will save you the effort of

having to create it yourself.

5. Choose a partner wisely.

There are large companies that promise

their learning management system will

work in any situation—as long as you

change your processes to fit with their

technology. It’s better to identify a

learning management system provider

that is responsive to user needs and will

jump on good ideas and make them a

reality as quickly as possible.

https://h5p.org/





06changes throughout the content as required.

Here’s a simple example. At Hogeschool

Utrecht, many instructors share YouTube

videos with their students as part of their

course materials. When YouTube changes

how it presents links to videos, it would be

a tedious job to have to update every link

manually that was posted in the course.

Eurekos allows changes to be applied

universally.

A user-friendly interface. Users just point

and click to set up their lessons. That is, of

course, a great advantage of this platform.

Instructors could do it easily, and it was fun

to do, and they had good results. That’s why

it was easy to get big numbers of courses

created.

Support for social learning. It’s very hard

to sit at your kitchen table and do learning

all by yourself. It’s better if you can meet

people and learn together. Eurekos facilitates

social interaction through standard LMS

features, like discussion forums, and takes it

a step further by offering seamless access to

Twitter and Facebook within courses.

Mobile-readiness. Content that’s created

in Eurekos works with any display size

immediately. There’s no need for users to

worry about technical details. And learners

can use whatever mobile device they have

available—laptop, tablet or smartphone—to

do their training on the go.

Solid administration. On the back side,

the learning management system includes

administrative tools, such as the ability to

lay out the path of learning for a particular

student based on level of expertise, role, or

interest. A learning analytics component

enables the student to track his or her

progress and address specific skills gap.

For instructors or managers, the system

also reports data about progress and

performance.

The advantage of Eurekos is that if you have

an idea, you can realize it quickly. People are

enthusiastic about creating their own online

courses because technology is not hindering

them.

Hans van Bergen specialised in

the use of IT in education for more

than 25 years. First, he created

e-learning courses in music for

primary school teachers. Then he

was involved in developing and

implementing a digital portfolio in

teacher training for many years.

And finally, he was a consultant

for innovation in education at

Hogeschool Utrecht. Hans has

presented his ideas on blended

learning at Dutch universities and

other educational institutes all over

the world. Recently, Hans retired

from Hogeschool Utrecht and

is now senior partner at Creblz

International.

http://www.creblz.nl/



https://www.hu.nl/


Making Learning Stick

Supercharge your

organisation’s

training with social

and collabouration

to make the

learning memorable.

Arguably, supporting people through behavioural

change is one of the most important drivers

for Learning & Development teams today. But

it doesn’t just happen because someone has

attended a course or clicked through some

digital learning. The only way to truly understand

if people are changing is through feedback

from others, which is why a continuous, social

approach to learning has become business-

critical for L&D.

What Do You Need to Make Learning Stick?Change is the watchword now. People need to

learn at ever increasing speeds in ever changing

environments. According to Fosway research,

over 70 percent of organisations are already

underway with their digital transformation of

learning, but more broadly, the world of work is

changing and along with it, working habits and

worker expectations.

The millennial cliché is overplayed, but the

demographic of the workforce is undeniably

changing. Gen Z is on its way, but actually the

aging workforce is a bigger trend that needs

L&D’s attention. (See Figure 1)

The different profile of workers (and therefore)

learners coupled with today’s technology means

that people are demanding to work and learn in

different ways. And that desire to learn should

not be underestimated. It really matters. In fact,

having the opportunity to always learn new

skills is the #1 reason why people want to join

organisations today, according to our latest HR

Realities Research. This represents an exciting

opportunity for L&D. Coupled with the fact that

nearly 90 percent of learning professionals see

skills gaps becoming more significant, demand

for L&D to show what it can do should be at an

all-time high.

07By David Perring

http://www.fosway.com/research/next-gen-learning/digital-learning-realities-2018/

http://www.fosway.com/research/next-generation-hr/hr-realities-research/

http://www.fosway.com/research/next-generation-hr/hr-realities-research/

http://www.fosway.com/transforming-talent-in-the-modern-workforce/






07

50% 50% On Their Way...

BABY BOOMERSPost WWII baby

boom, bornroughly

1946-1964

GEN X GEN YBorn early mid

1960s toearly 1980s

Often calledMillennials. Born

1980 to late 1990s

GEN ZBorn early 2000s

and on

A

B C

The war for talent is as real today as it was

when McKinsey first coined the phrase in

the 1990s. And if the L&D team can grasp

this opportunity to show its impact, then it

a should be positioned as a key component

of an organisation’s employee value

proposition.

But the reality is that L&D currently does

too little to create truly great, continuous,

collabourative experiences that change

behaviour, drive performance and make

learning stick. From this year’s “Digital

Learning Realities” research we found that

organisations aren’t necessarily maximizing

their training efforts. (See Figure 2)

The focus on content and one-off

interventions (whether digital or face-to-

face) continues to be pervasive in L&D.

Coaching, mentoring, social, ongoing

collabouration and connecting to experts

are not features that are built into learning

experiences from the outset often enough.

Ironically, after the learning intervention is

when learners need help the most, such as

when they’re trying to apply new skills on

the job—but it is at this point they are all

too often abandoned to get on with it by

themselves. Not helpful or likely to make

learning stick.

How to Make Learning Stick1. Know that all the best learning is really

“social learning,” and design it around

collabouration.

The concept of social learning has been

debated by education experts in more detail

than we can do justice to here. Interestingly,

Figure 1. The changing workforce demographic.





07

since some have begun to apply it in an

organisational/corporate context, it is

increasingly interpreted as “social media for

learning,” which is a growing trend but not

quite the same thing.

Ultimately, social learning can occur in lots

of different ways, both online and offline.

Sharing tacit knowledge of what works, how

to get things done, enabling continuous

improvement and providing feedback has

been around for millennia.

It’s important to step back from the hype

and the tools in order to think about how

Two-thirds fail to systematically support learners’ application of learning in the workplace

Less than one-third look to sustain learning in the workplace

More than 55% fail to consistently measure learning progress

60% are failing to systematically drive the development of mastery and expertise

Only 1 in 4 routinely adopt multi-channel learning delivery.

WORKPLACE

TEAM

L&DEXPERT

PERSONAL

LEARNER

Aquire

Practice

Do

Figure 2. Where organisations are failing in their learning strategies.

Figure 3. Learning experiences need to be designed

around an Agile learning mix that puts learners at the

centre.





07to facilitate this approach. It’s what people

often naturally do anyway; L&D just needs

to help them along a bit by engaging

learners not in L&D but in what they can do

actively with their teams and experts in the

workplace. (See Figure 3)

2. Think “learning cycles” and how they can

power continuous learning.

Thinking about learning as an ongoing cycle

instead of a series of one-off events is a

useful way to appreciate the opportunities

that exist to reinforce learning and really

make it stick. The Fosway PLASMA Learning

Cycle is a very simple way of looking at this,

with the learning process starting in any one

of the segments shown in Figure 4.

The PLASMA learning cycle encompasses

these phases:

• Plan: What do I need to know/

understand/be able to do?

• Learn: How can I learn that knowledge/

develop that skill/build that proficiency?

• Apply: How am I using my learning?

• Sustain: What am I doing to consistently

achieve the right levels of skills and

performance?

• Measure: How well am I doing? Am I on or

off target?

• Analyse: Where should I be going next?

As simple as this model is, it is very flexible.

It can apply to situations that only last a

matter of minutes or cover a process that

lasts months. The challenge is to keep the

learning cycle moving for as long as it is

necessary—until people reach the desired

levels of confidence and competence. And

hard-baked in is an expectation of being a

social learner, showing that you know and

getting feedback from peers, experts and

anyone who touches your work.

3. Nudge learners at each step of their

learning cycle to build and develop

higher performance.

Thinking about learning as an ongoing

process or cycle in this way helps to

build more engaging experiences, based

on actions, nudges, jeopardy and social

pressure/support and personal motivation,

even gamification and recognition through

scoring boards or digital badges. Each stage

can be designed to incorporate nudges to

keep the learning process going. And these

aren’t just for learners! Managers, peers and

other colleagues could—and should—be part

of the process to generate the feedback

Analyse

Plan

Learn

Apply

Sustain

MeasurePLASMALearningCycle

Figure 4. The on-going cycle of learning.

http://www.fosway.com/research/plasma-learning-cycle-overview/

http://www.fosway.com/research/plasma-learning-cycle-overview/





07an amazing pace in recent years. So, there

are already useful reference models for what

is possible.

4. Think of learners like consumers and

touch them when they need help most—

when they are applying and sustaining

learning in the workflow.

What L&D should be doing is thinking like a

consumer brand; using insights into learners

as individuals to trigger engagement and

to build the habits that make learning a “go

to” destination like so many mobile apps

(such as Strava) have become. This means

managing a relationship with learners and

learning actions across the whole learning

cycle, not just managing learning events and

digital resources.

It isn’t enough to say you’re swapping to

an informal or social approach to learning

and declare that formal learning is dead.

It’s not enough to talk about simply moving

from courses to resources or adopt a

70:20:10 approach that merely trades one

content type for another. L&D needs to

support the whole learning journey. To truly

supercharge learning, we must act now to

create meaningful journeys between learning

independently and reflecting, acting and

socialising learning! Learning will only really

change people’s behaviours and deliver

transformative impact for organisations

when it supports continuous learning across

the full cycle, rather than glib titles and

marketing type—be that social learning,

mobile learning, learning experience,

and social elements that will help learners

progress.

Historically, too few learning platforms have

supported this vision. Basic communication

tools have served to broadcast rather than

foster an ongoing learning relationship or

dialogue. The result: Organisations have

found it challenging to create social learning

programmes, learning campaigns or a

continuous learning journey.

What is needed is an approach that treats

learners like consumers, and helps create

a relationship with their needs, desires

and habits so that learning becomes

compulsive—for example, nudging learners

like a sports tracking app might do. There is

an opportunity to create “learning coaches”

that use artificial intelligence and behavioural

frameworks to drive our engagement and

stimulate us to take our learning to the next

level. Strangely, it’s not something that there

aren’t good reference models for. Digital

marketing has been taking this revolution in

managing consumer experience forward at

It isn’t enough to say you’re

swapping to an informal or

social approach to learning

and declare that formal

learning is dead.





07informal learning, 70:20:10 or something

else—because each of these can become

barriers to the creation of effective, ongoing

learning and get in the way of making

learning stick.

Getting StartedThe challenge is to prove that social learning

can impact learning effectiveness and

ultimately drive behaviour change and

impact organisational performance. But L&D

doesn’t have to throw the baby out with the

bathwater.

• Focus on specific use case scenarios.

Find an opportunity to apply the

PLASMA model, incorporating social

learning elements that sit outside the

formal deliver “learning” label. Maybe

even slide under the radar and call the

project “performance management” or

“continuous improvement” to get things

off the ground.

• Focus on a proof of concept. Assess the

lessons learned from executing a new,

more social approach. Choose carefully as

pilots often turn into the blueprint for how

things become “done around here.”

• Remember senior stakeholder demands.

However much of a nice-to-have this

approach might be, there are business

objectives that must be met. Risk ignoring

these at your peril! The goal is to get

stakeholders to buy in to what you’re

doing, not tune out because the ball has

been dropped elsewhere or this new

approach puts too much of the status quo

in jeopardy. Take people on this journey

with L&D, regardless of their department

or business silos.

• Understand spaced learning—and how

to lay down deep long-term memories in

compressed timeframes when acquiring

knowledge.

David Perring is the Director

of Research for Fosway Group,

Europe’s #1 HR analyst. For over

20 years, Fosway has analysed the

realities of the workforce market,

providing insights on the future

of human resources, talent and

learning. Fosway analysts work

extensively with corporate clients

to understand the inside story of

the challenges they are facing and

their real experiences with next-

generation strategies, systems

and suppliers. The consultancy’s

independent vendor analysis also

provides a vital resource when

making decisions on innovation

and technology.

http://www.fosway.com/




Identifying the Best Kind of Learning Systems for Closing Your Skills Gap

The shopping list

for your next-

generation LMS

starts with a high-

quality content

creation experience

that makes it simple

to build content and

courses fast.

The final link in developing an online content

strategy that will help you close your skills gaps

and keep it closed is to choose software that

supports the building of content in a process

that’s easy and intuitive. That’s where the

selection of the learning management system

must be carefully considered. What you need is

a next-generation digital learning system that

includes easy course authoring and supports

interactive, collabourative engagement of

learners in an online setting. The following

summary provides a checklist of features that

stand out as the most important.

High-Quality Content CreationThe experience provided by the LMS can

either be an obstacle or a passage to creating

and accessing online content. If the process

for uploading new lessons into the software

is difficult, people may put it off long enough

that your experiment in online learning will fail.

Likewise, if the newest or most relevant content

is difficult to find or access, that too will delay

your efforts to fill your skills gaps

What makes for high quality? On the creation

side the most important thing is having a library

of templates that content authors can use as

the foundation for setting up new courses. Also,

built-in editing tools and the ability to “book-

end” generic video content with custom content

makes for multimedia friendliness in an LMS.

All of these are functions are built into Eurekos,

a leading LMS developed in Europe for the

international market.

On the learner side, LMS platforms that borrow

elements from social media interfaces such as

Facebook or Twitter have an advantage because

they seem familiar to users, encouraging them

to dig in and find what they need quickly to do

08

By David Patterson





Identifying the Best Kind of Learning System for Closing Your Skills Gap

08


be used, as well, to create and manage links

with one-click inserts.

Social LearningThe best learning is often a collabourative

activity. But that does not mean it has to

take place in a physical classroom. Just as

important is the ability to schedule a virtual

meeting on the fly as people need to come

together to sort out decisions and share

ideas and concerns before, during, and after

training. Eurekos, as an example, allows

for scheduling of GoToMeeting webinar

their jobs. Eurekos, as an example, provides

a “playlist” for learning; a worker or manager

can set up a Netflix-style delivery to guide

learners through a progression of lessons

targeted for a job role or given situation.

Eurekos also offers a dashboard with a

calendar to help learners stay on top of

their classwork commitments. The same

dashboard displays information about

announcements, enrolled courses, team

members, and related conversations.

Keeping Content FreshDigital content doesn’t stand still. Yet

nobody has the time to cull through every

reference or link in a system to make

sure they’re kept up to date. Eurekos

automatically manages those kinds of details

through a tagging system. Should a product

name change, for example, the LMS will

sweep through the contents, locate every

reference to the outdated information, such

as a link that has been modified, and allow it

to be updated as a bulk operation or singly,

to keep it current. A dynamic link feature can

The best learning is often a

collabourative activity, but that does

not mean it has to take place in a

physical classroom.




08


Integration also encompasses the capacity

to use content from other sources. As an

example, H5P is a standard for interactive

learning objects. Those learning components

that adhere to the standard can be

seamlessly imported and exported to and

from an LMS to set up a richer collection

of content. This is especially important in

a corporate setting where mergers and

acquisitions are common; training modules

can be shared from multiple sources to

quicken the pace of cross-training.

Responsive Web DesignPeople have personal training preferences.

Some want to grab a quick lesson on the

train during their commute while others

prefer to sit at their desk computers and

do it on the job as they face a specific work

challenge. The content you create needs to

be responsive from the outset so that no

matter what type of device is being used

to view the lesson, it comes across exactly

as it was intended. A leading LMS takes

responsive web design into consideration,

saving content creators from having to

check multiple screen sizes as part of their

development process.

Straightforward AdministrationI have great sympathy for those who need to

administer LMS platforms. For that reason, I

prefer those platforms that enable users to

create, update and manage digital lessons

quickly and easily. Content is becoming

increasingly volatile, and some of the

platforms I’ve reviewed lately make it very

difficult for people to update, manage and

curate content.

Administration also entails project

management functionality, such as the

ability to assign a team of people to create

course materials and then put it through an

automated review process as a workflow

before the lessons have been released to

the rest of the staff. The Eurekos LMS, for

example, includes a visualization feature that

lays out the course structure clearly and

succinctly. The person in charge of a given

learning project can view each module, unit,

chapter, session, and video in an outline form

for drag-and-drop management of all of a

course’s elements.

classrooms to facilitate these real-time

sessions and provides other mechanisms

such as discussion groups for asynchronous

communication.

The Eurekos LMS also provides news feeds,

gamification, Q&A, content ratings, sharing

and recommendations, to drive learners

to content that has particular relevance

and has gained popularity within the

organisation. Teams within Eurekos can be

self-organised to allow learners to gather in

smaller groups to focus on specific topics.

And assignments can be set up with a peer-

review requirement.

Effortless IntegrationThis takes several forms. First, there is

the integration that allows the learning

platform to be branded as part of the overall

architecture of the organisation rather

than as a separate program. For example,

if a customer relationship management

application is the mission-critical system for

staff, being able to integrate the LMS with

that is more inviting for users than having it

hung out as a separate program altogether.




08


the learner’s role, expertise level, interests,

and other factors. Learning analytics will also

help you track the most popular learning

modules, which can be a clue to identifying

effective content experts and revealing

subjects that warrant development of

additional learning materials.

International SupportThe optimal path is to build learning once

and allow the software to handle translation

duties for menu structures, interface

elements and administrative tools. Eurekos

currently supports 11 languages: English,

Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish,

German, Dutch, French, Russian, Greenlandic

and Arabic. Additional languages can be

added quickly to expand the footprint into

other geographies.

The Importance of Choosing WellThe right learning management system goes

beyond the basics of serving as a repository

for courses. It really becomes a platform

for managing learning experiences that

can take place in many systems, situations

and processes. As you’re considering your

choices, don’t make the selection a checklist

item; be more holistic and choose an LMS

that will help you generate the kind of

learning organisation you aspire to have.

Finally, administration also needs to take

into consideration the different roles that

users have—whether on the backside as

overseers of courses or on the front side

as consumers of the learning. Either way,

Eurekos enables creation of various roles

that can be assigned permissions to run

the LMS or preserve access to learning

content. For example, whereas Eurekos

allows learners to self-organise creation of

“teams,” administrators are given the right

to define communities as an additional layer

of organisation, which may span a single

division or unit within the company or the

entire workforce.

Informative AnalyticsAs part of running a responsive blended

learning program, it’s important to collect

data to assess and measure learner progress,

whether for the sake of keeping compliant

with regulations or for the purposes of

employee reviews. Having access to this kind

of information can help you identify areas

where your members of your workforce

excel and struggle so together you can

address their skills gaps. From there you can

create customised learning paths based on

David Patterson runs the

consultancy services at Learning

Light, a centre of excellence for

the use of learning technologies,

based in the UK. He has 18 years’

experience in e-learning and

learning technologies and has

been with Learning Light since

2005. He also provides business

development advice to e-learning

and learning technologies

businesses in the UK and overseas

and publishes reviews of products

on www.learninglight.com.






Next Steps for Mending the Skills Gap

To bridge the skills

gaps within your

organisation, it is

time to speed up

content creation

and the use of

online learning.

To maintain its competitive edge, your

organisation needs to understand where learning

can be injected into operations in a way that

will make a difference to business performance.

Development of digital skills and abilities in your

workforce is your best defence in helping your

company or organisation absorb technological

disruption and exploit the opportunities it

delivers.

By putting an online learning program in place

that delivers rapid content creation, you can

continually adapt the training your employees

need with minimal effort or expense as demand

evolves.

All that’s required is for you to contribute

two vital elements: a structured platform—

the learning management system—that helps

them develop their learning programs; and

management support and participation to

encourage creation of a learning culture.

From that starting point, your job is simply to

trust that your employees know—or have the

capacity for learning—what to do.

09


The Ultimate Guide to Closing Skills Gaps—Fast | 41Copyright © 2019 • Eurekos.com

About Eurekos

Can You Imagine...

• An LMS that delivers exceptional content, fast

• Transforms learning into positive change with

retention-building tools

• A support team with one goal: To make your

learning programs world-class.

Introducing the Eurekos LMS

The Eurekos LMS includes an advanced content

builder that makes it so easy to produce content

that subject matter experts build their own

courses, eliminating bottlenecks and minimizing

production time.

The learning analytics engine drive a more

productive business and accelerated decision-

making based on real-time insights. The Eurekos

LMS identifies critical data to support continuing

skills development (CPD), competency

management, and compliance training.

Transform Learning Into Positive Change with Retention-Building ToolsTraining without practice is limiting, so the

Eurekos social hub integrates collabouration

and practice throughout the learning process.

Teams and communities encourage learners

to ask, advise, and share ideas and concerns

before, during and after training,s o learning is

put into practice.

GAPKNOWING — DOING

INSTRUCTION DIALOG DOING

70%

Practice, Blended Learning

BUILDING COMPETENCIES

Online Course

20%

Social Collaboration

10%



About Eurekos

The LMS that Delivers Great Content, Just-in-TimeThe Eurekos LMS provides rapid content,

powerful administration, insightful analytics,

and social learning.

Rapid Course Builder. Produce effective

content just-in-time with a one-of-a-kind

course builder that anyone can use.

Fully Integrated Toolbox. Everything you

need to quickly design amazing interactive

courses. Includes videos, gamification,

interactive learning tools, testing, etc.

Content CoCreation. Create and maintain

content easier and faster in collabouration

with subject matter experts, instructional

designers, users, and even customers.

Social Hub. Take advantage of in-context,

relevant social learning with news feeds,

discussion groups, gamification, Q&A,

content ratings, sharing, user-generated

content, file sharing, and recommendations.

Collabouration Tools. Put learning into

practice with collabouration between

teams and communities where learners

are encouraged to ask, advise, and share

ideas and concerns before, during, and after

training.

Learning Analytics. Deliver insightful

analytics for real-time compliance and

productivity. Empower learners to track their

progress and identify and address their own

skills gaps.

Content Marketplace. The content hub

consolidates courses and resources from

various internal and external sources, making

it fast and easy for learners to find content,

just-in-time.

Course Administration. Easily identify

skills gaps, customize learning paths, and

prescribe training by interest, role, level of

expertise and other personalized learning

objectives.

eCommerce. A simplified approach to

enterprise eCommerce with auto sign-up,

group enrollment, multiple secure payment

methods, tax support, and a fully integrated

booking system.



The Eurekos ExperienceWe know that great technology is only

part of the solution. You need services

that ensure your success, like efficient

onboarding, implementation and perpetual

support that goes far beyond what’s

expected. That’s the Eurekos experience and

that’s theEurekos promise to you.

Support

• Immediate support via phone, email, and

live chat 8-5 CET,M-F

• Support from three locations

in seven languages:

English,Danish,Dutch,Greenlandic, Arabic,

Ukranian, and Russian

Planning and Implementation

• Completely customized project plan

• Focus on your business objectives and

requirements

• Extensive LMS configuration options

Onboarding

• One-on-one coaching and training for

super users

• Thorough online help system

• Regular webinars and on-demand video

training

Our Customers Fill Their Skills Gaps in Record TimeHere’s what our clients say about working

with Eurekos:

“When we made the decision to use the

platform across all 6 facilities, we produced

more than 600 courses in 12 months, most of

which are over 140 study hours. In 3 years we

produced more than 1700 courses—2 years

ahead of our original timeline!”

—Hans van Bergen, Hageschool Utrecht

“Eurekos is an intuitive pedagogically

smart learning environment for people

who really care about learning design. Its

multi-language capability and integration

with social tools, such as Twitter, make it

a powerful tool for communicating and

engaging people across critical knowledge-

sharing channels.”

—Dr. Diana D. Woolis, Carey Institute for

Global Good

About Eurekos

Our Satisfied Clients


The Ultimate Guide to Closing Skills Gaps—Fast | 44Copyright © 2019 • Eurekos.comCopyright © 2019 • Eurekos.com

About the Authors

David Perring is the Director

of Research for Fosway Group,

Europe’s #1 HR analyst. For

over 20 years, Fosway has

analysed the realities of the

workforce market, providing

insights on the future of

human resources, talent and

learning. Fosway analysts work

extensively with corporate

clients to understand the

inside story of the challenges

they are facing and their

real experiences with next-

generation strategies, systems

and suppliers.

David Patterson runs the

consultancy services at

Learning Light, a centre of

excellence for the use of

learning technologies, based

in the UK. He has 18 years’

experience in e-learning and

learning technologies and

has been with Learning Light

since 2005. He also provides

business development advice

to e-learning and learning

technologies businesses in the

UK and overseas and publishes

reviews of products on www.

learninglight.com.

Kenny Munck is the CEO

and Co-Founder of Eurekos.

Previous to Eurekos, Kenny

founded Mentorix, a content

development and training

company. During Kenny’s

23 years in both the public

and private sectors, he has

spent much of his time on

corporate learning, IT, program

management and business

development. His last ten years

have been focused on building

innovative learning technology

and strong corporate learning

organizations.

Nick Etlar Eriksen is the Chief

Technology Officer and Co-

founder of Eurekos. Since the

mid 90’s he has developed and

improved online experiences

and solutions in a wide range

of industries and business

areas for both the public and

private sectors.

Soren Raagard is the Vice

President in charge of business

development and partners at

Eurekos. Previously, he served

as the Director of digital

strategy at LEGO Digital and

LEGO Education. Soren leads

from London.

Omeed Aminian is a Senior

Consultant with Eurekos,

helping customers to develop

and transform their learning

cultures.

Hans van Bergen specialised

in the use of IT in education

for more than 25 years.

First, he created e-learning

courses in music for primary

school teachers. Then he

was involved in developing

and implementing a digital

portfolio in teacher training

for many years. And finally, he

was a consultant for innovation

in education at Hogeschool

Utrecht. Hans has presented

his ideas on blended learning

at Dutch universities and

other educational institutes

all over the world. Recently,

Hans retired from Hogeschool

Utrecht and is now senior

partner at Creblz International.



http://www.fosway.com/

https://www.learninglight.com










https://www.hu.nl/

https://www.hu.nl/


www.eurekos .com

Phone: +45 71 99 44 54

Email: [email protected] Frydenlundsvej 30H, DK-2950 Vedbaek, Denmark

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