Lifelong learning: let’s discover more about this topic and the related trend for its application in HR.
Recent trends in learning & development are more and more often oriented to lifelong training: let's analyse together this phenomenon and the evolution of its business applications.
The interest of HR managers and leaders of organizations is increasingly focused on talents and specifically on guaranteeing their company the quality skills that are needed: the training topic is always on the table, and today more than ever it is rethought and redesigned with the aim of attracting and retaining the best talents identified on the market.
Lifelong Learning: what is it about?
In this context, the concept of Lifelong Learning makes its way: continuous and lifelong learning, a new logic for implementing innovative and stimulating training programs, designed as seamless growth paths.According to recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute, very few countries have developed a viable system that provides affordable access to high-quality adult education. Today's technological transition should drive further evolution to ensure universal, high-quality and affordable access to education, from early childhood to retirement, and to ensure that education programs can make citizens' skills truly usable in the job environment.
The importance of this principle in the society of the future is easy to understand: a constantly improving society, where knowledge becomes a driving force for development and becomes a fundamental tool for eliminatinginequalities and guaranteeing equal opportunities for all, without discrimination.
Lifelong Learning as a philosophy of life
Applying the principles of Lifelong Learning to corporate training means to rethink traditional training in a fluid, flexible and customizable way. Traditionally, companies have set up training with a static approach, divided into rigid and not really customizable schemes. A Lifelong Learning setting, on the other hand, offers a continuous training, accessible in remoteway and at anytime of theday, easily adaptable to different needs.
The key concept is to feel part of a continuous learning process, which allows people to integrate skills and increase their knowledge, reflecting an improvement in the quality of life.A key feature of Lifelong Learning is the "personal" approach, because the individual himself is responsible to take cares about his/her Lifelong Learning to improve his/her skills and his/her knowledge box to get the expected professional results. We can define it as a self-orientation process that accompanies all stages of life, as a personal philosophy of self-improvement.
Lifelong Learning: HR applications
Digital transformation in the HR world perfectly fits with these concepts because new technologies offer tools and solutions designed to learn remotely, at any distance and any time: it is the anytime and anywhere principle, thanks to smart devices which are equipped with fast connections and easily accessible online content.Digital skills are one of the pillars on which Lifelong Learning is based: technological innovation in continuous evolution requires people to be able to keep the pace with change, exercising continuous learning of new potentialities offered by Hi-tech tools or from updates/new software releases. The new item is the possibility of learning through micro-learning, an innovative method that “segments” information into pills, which means to realize easily accessible micro contents.
The video mode is the most suitable with this principle: short contents, visible from any type of device and accessible at any time, designed with an engaging and dynamic mood to stimulate a call to action in the user.Another type of content that is well suited to the idea of lifelong learning are podcasts: audio content for active listening that can be listened at any time, even while driving in the car or waiting in line for a commission.Setting the education programs in this dynamic way generates a continuous and lasting learning, allowing people to quickly elaborate the contents and eventually to review / listen to them several times in any moments in case of need.
At the same time, this training methods framework make it possible to keep a high level of attention in users, without the risk of losing interest or getting bored that inevitably occur during long classroom sessions.
One of the important elements for structuring a Lifelong Learning plan is regularity: it is essential to establish a calendar with micro-objectives, to allow employees to perceive their progress and to maintain a routine made up of positive steps, always keeping the aforementioned flexibility that distinguishes this method.
Glickon Glow's training solutions are designed to offer stimulating and multimedia content, in a simple and fast use platform, easily adaptable to different business needs.
