The future of learning - KPMGContents Factors shaping the future of learning 2 An ever-evolving...

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The future of learningCultivating an innovative learning experience for the modern worker

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ContentsFactors shaping the future of learning 2

An ever-evolving learning ecosystem 4

Workforce insights, shaping, and delivery 6

Enabling technologies 7

A new face of learning 9

Tomorrow’s learner experience 11

Cultivating a positive culture of learning 13

Creating the learning ecosystem: getting started 14

We’re here to help 15

About KPMG’s “Future of” 16

1The future of learning© 2020 KPMG LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership and the U.S. member firm of the KPMG network of independent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative (“KPMG International”), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved. The KPMG name and logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of KPMG International. NDP069957-1A

Disruption is hard to anticipate, as recent global events clearly show. Skills learned at universities are expected to be obsolete in five years. All of these factors make the ability to upskill and future-proof your workforce more important than ever. Providing a work environment that enables learning while working to solve problems and fill skills gap is critical to organizational success in this new norm.

It is no secret—the relationship between employer and employee is not only shifting, it has also evolved to a symbiotic relationship between the two. Customer and employee expectations are becoming one and the same. Frictionless interactions in the near term will be designed around stakeholder experience rather than business processes. Urgency to work in agile teams and the need to keep up with an accelerating pace of work is creating shortened decision cycles.

1 “Global CEO Outlook—Agile or irrelevant,” KPMG International, 2019

Factors shaping the future of learning

81%of executives indicating talent to be their number

one priority.1

Trends shaping today’s businesses have made talent development a

critical focus, with

Disruption of global labor markets is driven by the increasing speed of business, rapid technology change, conflicting generational demands, and other unexpected events.


At the center of this workforce disruption is one constant—learning.Along with talent development priorities, rapid market disruptions are also altering workforce dynamics and challenging the way organizations think about success—their own and their people’s. These disruptions are influencing the way we think about work at a macro level. For example, advancements in healthcare make the case that 50 to 60 percent of children living today will likely live to be 100, stretching the scale of traditional economic activity.2 As a result, an organization’s resource pool will continually be composed of multigenerational talent with different engagement styles and learning preferences.

These different employee groups will require that an organization executes strategies that support lifelong learning, consistent opportunities for onboarding, and reskilling and upskilling. The focus will be on human skills, such as creativity, empathy, collaboration, interpersonal dynamics, and teamwork in addition to the technical skills. The need for this blend of skills will require design thinking that tailors learning to each audience within the workforce while driving business value.3 The increase in contingent and gig workers adds yet another new dynamic to the evolving workforce.

Organizations are rethinking their learning strategies, investing in new technologies, and changing the way they enable learning development. It is as important to anticipate tomorrow’s challenges as it is to seize tomorrow’s opportunities, and work toward cultivating a learning ecosystem and culture that positions you to do both.

“The future is about humans and machines working together, but in workplaces that are

redesigned. Hence capabilities such as design

thinking, innovation management, caring,

conversing, teaching, and systems thinking will be just as important as coding and creating neural networks.”

Robert Bolton Partner, People & Change

Centre of Excellence, KPMG International

2 “Global CEO Outlook—Agile or irrelevant,” KPMG International, 2019

3 World Economic Forum—Davos 2020


As learning becomes more important in an organization for workforce enablement and employee experience, it is essential that an organization’s learning ecosystem becomes more intentionally nurtured and maintained. It will form the foundation that will allow organizations to drive the behavior change required in response to disruption and to further drive disruption in the future.

Regardless of its current state, every organization already has a learning ecosystem that has come about deliberately or not, much like an organization’s culture manifests with or without the desired intention.

An ever-evolving learning ecosystemWhat is an ecosystem? The Oxford dictionary defines an ecosystem as a biological community of interacting organisms and their physical environment.

Functions

Culture

Employee experience

Technology

Learning

Data

Business strategy


Learning opportunities should be relevant, timely, tailored to each learner’s needs and seamlessly woven into business and HR applications.

Business strategy

The nucleus of the learning ecosystem that feeds and guides the integration and codependencies of the ecosystem

The remainder of this paper explores these key elements of the learning ecosystem in more depth and provides day-in-the-life scenarios of each.

— Functions: The business activities within your ecosystem

— Learning: The nutrients that help your ecosystem thrive—diverse learning pulled from experiences inside and outside of the organization

— Technology: The connective components of your ecosystem that enable the interactions

— Employee experience: The way the ecosystem impacts and is impacted by employees—it should be relevant, timely, and tailored to their learning needs

— Data: Signals of the biorhythms that flow through your ecosystem to identify priorities and evaluate effectiveness

— Culture: The way that things get done in your organization


According to KPMG Future of HR 2020 insights,4 66 percent of HR executives cite upskilling among their top priorities for managing the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies, yet only 5 percent say their HR function is fully prepared to accomplish this (63 percent feel at least reasonably prepared). In order to stay ahead of the competition, businesses will need to continually identify current and future skills gap within their workforce and the appropriate competencies to fill them.

Due to the advancements in AI and related technologies, organizations will have the ability to perform analytics on accurate and timely workforce data. Indeed, data is a critical piece of the learning ecosystem and is necessary for the harmonization of the learning and business strategies.

In addition, over a third of HR executives ranked advanced/predictive workforce analytics to be a priority in the next two to three years; however, only a quarter have Data Modeler/Scientists among their top three role investments within that timeframe. Although it will become more critical to have these skills in future learning organizations, it is the limitations in technology platforms (47 percent), poor quality/unreliable data (41 percent) and a lack of resources to use/create workforce analytics (38 percent) that are the top barriers among HR executives for leveraging workforce analytics.

It is essential that the keepers of workforce data be a critical partner in this process by ensuring integration of accurate data points across multiple systems. This partnership will enable use of meaningful data to deliver learning at the point of need, as well as provide insight into learning metrics that will drive continuous improvement and ensure that learning is impacting business goals.

Taking the learning process to the next level, data partnerships can pave the way for new intelligent automation (IA) technologies. IA can use enterprise data to drive innovative learning experiences that can be personalized for each employee, as well as offer learning programs for new skills and competencies when the opportunities arise.

The more an organization leverages its workforce data, the more the learning and HR functions will be empowered to partner and bring their capabilities to bear when shaping the employee learning experience. Each function will play a critical role in supporting a sustainable learning ecosystem, by drawing insights from qualified data in a way that strengthens their workforce and talent strategy and contributes to achieving business goals.

Workforce insights, shaping, and delivery

4 “Future of HR 2020—Which path are you taking?” KPMG International, 2019

Day-in-the-life scenario—Upskilling in the flow of work:

A level 1 IT Service Desk Representative has worked with her manager to establish the goal of moving into asset management (a level 2 responsibility). Her goals are documented in the performance management system and she has completed “awareness level” digital training in the learning management system. Shortly thereafter, she receives a service desk call requesting assistance acquiring Microsoft Project. Voice- enabled technology recognizes the request and interfaces with the learning ecosystem to recognize the employee, her performance goals, and that she’s completed baseline training. A chat bot then pops up in her service management tool and presents a microlearning checklist to help walk her through the steps in the asset-management request process. She is able to support the caller with his request and provide him with MS Project.


Enabling technologies

To be able to deliver these initiatives, the enabling technologies need to be in place and be able to evolve with technological innovation. Future enabling technologies will offer employees a variety of user experiences to accommodate different learning styles and preferences, as well as the kind of content being delivered.

When it comes to learning, organizations traditionally think about learning technologies such as their Learning Management System (LMS) and Content Management System (CMS). Today learning technologies are increasing exponentially and are expanding into areas such as digital performance support, microlearning platforms, learning experience platforms, and mobile enablement. These technologies change the interactions of your employees in how, what and where they obtain learning.

To truly improve the analytical capabilities, you need to leverage technologies outside of your learning ecosystem—such as people-related data, financial data, etc. Technology must therefore interface with a single source of workforce data across the organization to power analytics that will provide workforce insights and which informs strategic decision-making. That means learning technologies cannot be kept in silos. Rather, they need to be a core component of the overall corporate digital strategy and must be nurtured to allow for continued alignment with evolving business needs. Many companies are investing in learning experience platforms, but even these richer experience-driven learning interfaces need to be able to evolve with the increasing insights coming from predictive analytics and AI.

The table on the next page provides a timeline view of how learning technologies are evolving and some examples of the learning technologies that are future-focused on the employee experience and data analytics.

KPMG Future of HR 2020 insights found that for those HR executives who are planning on updating their learning technologies and methods, the method that ranked the highest was “learning in the flow of work,” with gaming and gamified learning cited specifically at the top of their learning initiatives focus.


Day-in-the-life scenario—AI anticipating learning needs:

An employee has a meeting related to data and analytics later today. A bot recognizes the topic in her meeting invite and pushes her relevant learning assets prior to her meeting to help her prepare.

Day-in-the-life scenario—Integration into corporate data lake & analytics:

A manager for a manufacturing plant is seeing breakage rising and increased downtime for machines in two production stations on the plant floor. Through his learning portal, he’s able to identify learning content on reducing breakage and machine operation for those two stations. He’s able to see which learnings have had the most positive impacts in other plants and target them at workers who have not completed them. After completion, he’s able to analyze the impact the learning content has had on breakage, machine downtime, and the resulting financial impact.

Learning experience today Learning experience of the future

Learning Management System (LMS)

Content management tools

Learning teams delivering blended learning

Interactive scenarios/game-based learning

Development tools and SCORM packaging

Limited and cumbersome reporting

Individual learning plans

Laptop-based

Self-authored/tailored learning portals

— Social learning platforms— Innovative podcasts

— Cohort-based learning program platforms

Immersive learning and virtual reality

Recommended learning at the point of need

Talent management underpinned by systems of record

Future skilling powered by AI and machine learning

Mobile-first design

Examples of future-focused technology providers

Instilled

Looop

— Microsoft Teams— Fuse

— CrossKnowledge — Nomadic learning

— STRIVR Labs— Microsoft

— Filtered Magpie— Cornerstone— Percipio

— EdCast— Degreed

— Workday Skills Cloud— SuccessFactors HXM

— Docebo— Skillsoft


KPMG Future of HR 2020 insights5 reported that coaching and developing the executive leadership team to better support the changing workforce is among top priorities for 77 percent of HR executives.

Going forward, traditional learning-function skills, like instructional design, will need to be augmented with a macro understanding of how the learning ecosystem interfaces with other organizational components. Instructional designers will need new skills such as design thinking, user experience and interaction design to create digital and blended learning journeys consisting of highly engaging learning programs, immersive and microlearning content. Likewise,

A new face of learningProfessionals within the learning organization of the future will need to assume new roles and acquire new capabilities to enable them to rapidly reskill and “future skill” a changing workforce, in particular ensuring the executive leadership of the organization has skills necessary to lead the changing workforce.

77%


New roles include learning architects and engineers, who will bring agile, digital, cognitive, and analytical skills and capabilities to the learning function to help:

1

2

3

Maintain the learning ecosystem

Set curriculum strategy including external content curation, rather than creating one-off courses

Establish the leading practices and standards for learning development within the broader organizational ecosystem.


as mentioned above, the learning organization will need to partner with data owners and business teams throughout the enterprise to identify skills gap, and then design new career frameworks and pathways for competency development and performance support.

In addition, future learning organizations will no longer develop their offerings in a top-down process, but rather adopt a more organic approach. Training solutions and assets could be created by the learners themselves, drawing from their experiences inside and outside of the organization. Similarly, a cross-functional learning environment—encompassing the learning organization and the business functions—will empower subject matter experts (SMEs) to submit learning solutions they develop in real time. The learning organization will receive and refine these learning solutions from SMEs and combine with other solutions, populating a content repository accessible by all learners. The curation and maintenance of the content will utilize AI and machine learning to incorporate the organization’s evolving contexts and goals to promote learning solution alignment.

Examples of cross-functional learning solutions are videos, apps, games, graphics, job aids, case studies, information packets, and audio files.

Further, continuous-learning solutions for regulation, compliance, and future skilling will be designed in coordination with business leaders. Lines of organizational hierarchy and functional alignment will become less important as the focus shifts to providing a more collaborative and socially engaged employee network.

Examples of collaborative and continuous learning solutions include cloud-based team rooms, whiteboards with live-streaming for chat and polling, academy-style programs with interactive content delivered within a single cohort-driven platform, podcast series, and AI-powered knowledge-sharing databases with up-voting and sharing capabilities that help recommend learning content to individuals.

Ultimately, the learning function must work with the business functions to regularly review evolving learning needs and work collaboratively to adjust offerings and technologies that optimize business results. For example, learning professionals work in an advisory capacity across business units to align learning strategy, drive resource decisions, and design and deliver the learning experiences to build the workforce of the future.


Within an effective learning ecosystem, “learning moments” will be embedded in the flow of work in a way that is seamless to the learner. Instead of requiring learners to navigate a traditional learning management system, learning of the future will be integrated within enterprise applications and across IT systems so that all platforms will be points of entry.

Learning-experience design techniques, anchored in design thinking on the employee experience, will address these “learning moments,” using the same core principles needed for the customer experience. It has been found that the employee experience can directly influence the customer experience and can lead to increased business profitability. Organizations that invest in the employee experience can have more than four times the average profit, more than two times the average revenue, as well as higher engagement levels, which all lead to an organization outperforming its peers by 147 percent in earnings per share.6

A large part of design thinking is also about empathy, that is, understanding employees from multiple perspectives. By adopting a more human-centric mindset, design thinking can lead to a more satisfied, efficient workplace wherein employees have access to the required resources, possess the right mindset, function within the right culture, and are able to give their best to the organization. This, in turn, could lead to improved employee retention and engagement.7

Many of today’s working professionals are already taking advantage of innovative ways to access learning materials. With easy access to on-demand platforms outside of their work (e.g., YouTube, LinkedIn Learning), they are rapidly building skills, gathering information, or exploring new concepts sourced by peers.

Tomorrow’s learner experienceBeing able to provide the right learning at the right time in the right format will be paramount in an effective learning ecosystem.

Day-in-the-life scenario—Seamless learning:

A sales manager is given responsibility over a new region that has different tax regulations from the regions she has previously overseen. The change in responsibility triggers the learning system to push a short video with the important details about the different regulations in the region and links to get more information to the manager as she is actively creating her region’s sales strategy.




Successful learning ecosystems will adapt these new types of delivery methods for the benefit and convenience of the organization’s workforce. For example, highly relevant learning will be available just-in-time, driving optimal workforce performance. Even face-to-face learning will be reinvented by providing expert-driven, real-world scenarios, role play, Q&A reflection, and may include learning technologies such as games and computer simulation to further enhance the leaner experience. Contrary to learners today who receive the majority of their learning through classroom-style instructor-led trainings or e-learnings (e.g., video-based or web-based), tomorrow’s learner will consume learning delivered in modalities that suit their learning styles in the moment of need (microlearnings, coaching, immersion experiences, and on-the-job training). This highly curated, customized learning experience, including immersive in-person learning experiences, will be critical in meeting the sophisticated and nuanced performance requirements of the workforce of tomorrow.

But delivering these kinds of learning experiences requires targeted audience customization. Developing a learning environment that supports personalized learning journeys based on employees’ upcoming activities will be key. Not only does this approach increase engagement, but it also helps different learners with different needs and potential learning difficulties to retain information by reinforcing concepts through multiple vehicles over an extended period of time.

Learning organizations must leverage the principles of employee experience and enabling technology to deliver this enhanced and more personalized curation of learning content, and importantly, allow learners to drive their own learning journey.

Day-in-the-life scenario—Microlearning:

A new-hire account manager is capturing customer information in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application but is unsure how opportunity stages are defined within her new company’s sales process. Microlearnings seamlessly embedded into the CRM will coach the new hire on capturing opportunity stages accurately along with every other data point within the CRM. These microlearnings will be pushed to the new hire including a “short how-to” video on classifying sales opportunities. Usage of the microlearning will be reported back through the learning ecosystem to provide additional data that will drive continuous improvement of the learning experience.


The mission of the learning organization has already shifted. It has moved away from simply developing and delivering training to being one that is an active participant in the design of an environment and culture of learning throughout the organization. Many organizations are formalizing the role of the Chief Learning Officer for this very reason; however, some organizations are taking culture and learning a step further by creating the role of Chief Culture Officer. These two key roles together with the Chief Human Resources Officer, the Chief Communications Officer, and Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, apply pivotal people strategies to nurture a culture that underpins growth mindset behaviors and an overall passion for learning.

Further, an organization’s culture is characterized by the set of underlying mindsets and behaviors that define how work gets done. The learning organization can pinpoint the “moments that matter” and other drivers that influence culture to identify these desired behaviors.

The learning organization of the future will enable this shift in culture. But it will take deep discussions, strategic planning, time, and investment from organizational leadership. The benefits of a well-designed learning experience can be profound: empowered employees, who direct their own learning and careers because they feel valued by the meaningfully crafted learning experiences provided by their employer.

Creating a culture of learning doesn’t happen overnight; instead, it’s a steady evolution toward a culture that embraces constant upskilling and lifelong learning.

Cultivating a positive culture of learning

Day-in-the-life scenario—A learning culture:

When a global pharmaceutical company formed following a merger, its talent and learning leaders tapped into a wellspring of passionate learners using an unusual and creative medium—a 24-hour radio program featuring leaders from each global location. The leaders were interviewed about their own careers and development experiences. These interviews were interspersed with quick workforce development skits. Thousands of employees tuned in. Given its popularity and impact on employee learning following the merger, the company’s CEO endorsed the program and approved its continuation. This effort is an example of how learning leadership tapped into a “moment that mattered” to drive behavior change through peer learning with more than half the company’s workforce voluntarily participating in the program.


As employees increase their capabilities, the learning ecosystem should provide opportunities for social learning through collaborative interactions and learning sessions. When an employee learns a new skill, the learning ecosystem will provide the means, tools, and resources for them to share that learning immediately and effectively with their peer group.

The shared capabilities of IT and the learning organization will support that collaboration through innovation and understanding of how to optimize learner engagement. Data from the learning ecosystem will support continuing efforts in creating a more effective and engaging learning environment. Shaping the learning environment enables learning in the flow of work where the experience is determined by the learner/employee.

Creating the learning ecosystem: getting startedThe opportunities for learning and development within the learning ecosystem of an organization will only improve over time.

Thinking about your organization, how can the following actions help you move toward the future of learning?

Conduct a maturity assessment, with particular focus on your existing learning technologies against future strategy and business goals.

Determine your learning technology functional requirement and establish a baseline of your learning technologies within the broader learning ecosystem.

Transition traditional instructional design and development function toward a learning experience design-led learning function and digital design tools, with agile architecture and cloud-based production capabilities and tools for development, delivery, and reporting.

Develop key partnerships with workforce data owners in HR and the business units.

Invest in innovative learning tools that deliver shorter, more meaningful, and engaging content.

Invest in qualified learning libraries to augment learning program delivery.

Look at your organization’s future job architecture and determine future skill needs and how employees can become recognized for their skills.

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5

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Our approach is highly collaborative as we work with you to co-create guiding principles and a future-state vision, programs, and content that best meet your organization and workforce where they are at today. We’re delivering the operating models, processes, governing strategies, and learning design, development, and delivery experience(*) that organizations need to embrace the future of learning—now.

Don’t just take our word for it. We’ll connect you with our customers who can share their stories. Then come see for yourself in one of our learning innovation labs. Touch and feel the future of learning.

We’re here to helpKPMG is here to help you move from today to tomorrow. As disruption accelerates and learning needs evolve, we can help you use emerging learning technology to deliver that future learning vision and drive a positive learning culture.


For most organizations, disruption has become a permanent condition of doing business, whether driven by the increasing speed of business, rapid technology change, competition, or other unexpected events. KPMG’s observation is that leading organizations counter with preemptive disruption of their own from strategy, mindset, and capabilities that anticipate continuous change.

Our “Future of” initiative distills KPMG’s insights about these drivers of sustained organizational readiness as they impact key functions of the front, middle, and back offices.

The “Future of” program demonstrates KPMG’s commitment to helping our clients achieve tangible results by bringing them focused solutions that draw on the full breadth of our experience.

We will share our insights through a stream of “Future of” publications such as this one. Each will assess the emerging developments we expect to shape the HR function during the next three to five years. And each will also share our perspective on capabilities KPMG believes will be necessary to respond effectively.

To see other “Future of” publications, go to read.kpmg.us/FutureHR or register for our HR Real Insights to receive additional reports as they become available.

About KPMG’s “Future of”


http://read.kpmg.us/FutureHR

kpmg.com/socialmedia

Contact usTina KellyPartner, Human Capital AdvisoryE: [email protected]

Paul LipinskiPrincipal, Human Capital AdvisoryE: [email protected]

Mike MatherManaging Director, Human Capital AdvisoryE: [email protected]

The information contained herein is of a general nature and is not intended to address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Although we endeavor to provide accurate and timely information, there can be no guarantee that such information is accurate as of the date it is received or that it will continue to be accurate in the future. No one should act upon such information without appropriate professional advice after a thorough examination of the particular situation.

Some or all of the services described herein may not be permissible for KPMG audit clients and their affiliates or related entities.


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