In the first article of this new online column, we broadly discussed succession planning challenges for Federal government in light of an aging workforce, siloed work environments, differing expectations of the next generation of workers, the Federal workforce’s disproportionately small segment of Millennials (relative to Millennials’ significant presence in the overall U.S. workforce), and changes in the way today’s workers learn. Understanding and leveraging evolving trends in Learning & Development (L&D) will be central to overcoming all elements of Federal government’s succession planning challenges. Consider the following:
- Today’s new recruits are seeking self-led professional development opportunities.
- Effective Learning & Development will ready new workers to succeed.
- If executed correctly, L&D of tomorrow will even enable knowledge transfer from predecessor to successor.
Learning & Development within Federal government will continue a general transition from “push” (management identifying and selecting courseware for the workforce) to “pull” (employees selecting learning content according to need). Push won’t ever go away entirely; for example, basic ethics training and other courseware will always be required to stay in compliance with policies. Likewise, development of skills requiring 100 percent precision, such as landing a plane on an aircraft carrier or storing high-level nuclear waste, will continue to come from pushed content. However, much of the L&D that enables workers to excel in their particular roles increasingly will be learner-selected, consumption-based, and on-demand. As noted in the prior article, Federal government has begun this transition with more online learning and coaching.
However, this in-progress shift is slow and in danger of being outpaced by Federal government’s growing workforce needs, so it is important for agencies to take a long-view perspective of L&D trends and understand that what is “new” today is still evolving.
What to Expect
Certainly, for a workforce as broad and robust as the federal government’s, it has always been natural to default to more standardization of learning offerings and metrics. While maintaining that status quo is not feasible, agencies will be glad to see that an all-but-certain shift from the traditional learning management system (LMS) to a more robust learning ecosystem still will give HR leadership continued quality control and more meaningful metrics.
We anticipate that agencies will work within platforms that enable them to curate learning content and designate accessible courseware as appropriate to each learner based on his or her own role, as well as the broader mission. The role of Federal L&D leaders will shift from instructional design and content development to managing the selection of existing content and filling in the gaps to align with agency missions.
HR leaders will be able to leverage data analytics to measure the true business impact of learning activities, rather than simply confirm that required coursework was fulfilled. Agencies will be able to use predictive analytics and diagnostics to look at production levels and determine whether employees are performing as expected post-course. This data will be used to inform the selection of future learning activities for both entire groups and individuals.
Learning Communities
In addition to curating content, filling in the gaps, and assessing the data, Federal HR leaders will be responsible for enabling learners to connect in a community environment in which information can be shared via a quick post or a question that comes through a feed. This will come particularly naturally to Millennials, who are accustomed to sharing within online communities.
Community managers with subject matter expertise will need to be assigned to these communities to ensure accuracy of shared content. However, in the long run, the overhead required for management of learning communities will be far surpassed by the benefits that will come from related retention of institutional knowledge. All queries and responses, all downloaded documents, and all reference points to new material will be logged, enabling continued access to these learnings from predecessor to successor, as well as from department to department. For a workforce that now is grappling with higher turnover rates after depending on decades-long tenures for many, this access will be invaluable.
Steps to Take Today
There is no quick fix in the transformation of Learning & Development for any organization. 2016 is the year for Federal Learning professionals to come together and begin looking at the readiness of each agency to start the journey of transforming into this whole new way of thinking about Learning & Development. The public sector will be a bit behind in its L&D transformation, but it cannot be too far behind. With an aging Federal workforce and Millennials being the largest generation in today’s U.S. labor force, too much is at stake.
If you would like to share your best practices for public-sector workforce succession planning, send an e-mail to govsolutions@xerox.com for potential inclusion in an upcoming column.
Darci Hall is vice president of Learning Solutions for Xerox Learning Solutions, where she is responsible for growing, delivering, and developing high-impact learning solutions for Xerox’s clients.
