Social Learning and Dealing with the Recession at a Lower Cost

An updated document from Accenture has been made available. It addresses what it calls the ‘Capability Recession’. Due to cut backs made, many companies are less able to service their customers, produce sales, or innovate like they used to.

One outstanding question that applies is how to generate better performance from their workforce.

The answer is not to jettison a company’s existing approach to enterprise learning—even one that relies heavily on more traditional and formal classroom learning experiences. The answer is an additive one: Optimize the blend of formal training, informal learning and knowledge-sharing activities that a company makes available to its people.

All employees have the opportunity within the learning environment to establish a presence or social profile that reflects their expertise and interests. They can then create and share their knowledge and experience, even search for peer insights, all organized by user-generated tags and topics. People and their content are linked to one another through team sites, instant messaging, blogs and discussion threads. Material is also rated by peers during the sharing process according to quality and applicability.
Accenture recommends proceeding on the path to social learning in the following way:

• Strategize. Work with senior leadership to conduct a business-case analysis of where opportunities exist to improve employee productivity and performance through an improved learning environment. State those opportunities explicitly in terms of wasted spending as well as opportunities to generate better business results.
• Evaluate. An important step for Dare2Share was an “innovation day” when we brought together many of our best thinkers and practitioners from BT and Accenture to review and debate the merits of various Web 2.0 technologies. The point of review and debate at this stage is not about just the technologies but the business and learning needs those technologies address.
• Prove. Start with a workable proof-of-concept followed by a pilot test involving a representative sample of your employee population. Test the technology, functions, usability, content, learning networks and rewards programs.
• Promote. Use the success of your pilot to generate enthusiasm around the rest of the organization. Use good marketing methods and senior executive sponsorship to increase awareness and engagement.
• Measure. Monitor usage, gather feedback and measure results, feeding all that back into subsequent releases of the social learning solution.

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