There is no question that mobile usage has greatly influenced how we interact with one another and how we consume content. U.S. consumers now are spending up to five hours a day on their smartphones. If your legacy learning management system (LMS) is not conducive to a mobile experience, or your training content is not optimized for mobile, you’re bringing friction to your learning initiatives and (potentially) negatively impacting your outcomes.
Traditional learning solutions that have not bothered to introduce sensibilities from today’s consumer social app experiences stand to alienate the very customers they aim to serve. Deloitte has reported in its 2017 Global Human Capital Trends Report that 90 percent of companies are redesigning their organizations to be more dynamic, team centric, and connected. Yet most organizations continue to utilize siloed learning platforms that do little to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing. As organizations take inventory, they’ll soon begin to shift their tactics and tools, to be more aligned with their organizational strategy.
Mobile has not only affected how we interact and consume media; it also has influenced what we come to expect from a good user experience. Mobile design usually is minimal and highly intuitive, whereas many legacy learning management solutions still look and feel like 1990s CD-ROM experiences (i.e., not intuitive, bloated).
The shift toward learning on mobile is a natural evolution of current training methods—from in-person to online classes, social feeds, and more—to ensure employees are empowered and equipped to more effectively do their jobs. Here are some tips on how to empower your teams with the latest information:
- Reassess your policies and technologies. It is essential to review how you can empower employees via mobile rather than restricting them.
- Optimize your content and information for mobile. Make sure it’s short, sweet, and to the point, and be careful not to drag out your points.
- Be bold, experiment, and explore. There are so many different resources and technologies out there to embrace—mobile is a channel that provides instant access anywhere. If you’re not currently embracing mobile, you’re already behind.
Immediate Access
Mobile experiences are about being easy to use, being able to quickly access information, retaining that information, and fostering real-time collaboration or knowledge exchanges. Mobile is not necessarily about solving or working toward annual or quarterly goals (though it can), but rather about access to real-time knowledge; dynamically solving problems; having information at your fingertips and on demand; and producing outcomes daily, by the hour, by the minute.
This is the way today’s world works. Customers, and the world, do not have time for your employees to fire up an antiquated terminal, sit through a two-hour video, and then get back to work or solve real-time problems. If that’s your strategy, you’re already behind your competitors. Now’s the time to move ahead.
Iain Scholnick is the founder and CEO of Braidio, an online and mobile-enabled social learning platform for sales enablement and talent development. A veteran of the Internet, wireless, and security vertical industries with 20 years of technical, business operations and start-up experience, Scholnick was also the founder and CEO of LicenseStream, the first comprehensive platform allowing owners of digital content to significantly extend the reach and revenue potential of companies already licensing their content online.
