The world of talent development and adult learning has changed dramatically over the past few years. And leading contact centers are modernizing their learning to keep pace. They realize they must modernize or risk losing their next generation of frontline leaders to other opportunities. Get ready, because the modern call center school for supervisor skill development is much different than the old-school ways.
Executive Decisions
Leading organizations driven to improve business outcomes realize that leadership capabilities are the difference in success and failure and they are doing things different.
Executives are driving these changes. They want leadership development programs that can attract, develop, and retain employees in today’s competitive talent world. Because of this executive push, many are re-thinking their standard practice of developing frontline leaders with old-school event-based methods. They are also realizing that the “perceived” updated way of providing access to a library of videos is not good enough either. They are acknowledging and realizing that developing leadership skills in supervisors requires a journey approach with blended learning methods and time spacing because it meets the needs of the modern learner – and the organization.
Forward thinking organizations are rapidly re-examining their learning culture and approach to leadership development in an intentional and systemic way, allowing their leaders to become successful learners on a daily basis all along their journey.
You can learn from Bersin by Deloitte’s work in this area. For the modern learner, work and learning are intimately connected. Workers who are able to quickly find and absorb information are more agile and more able to deliver the business strategy.
To modernize the learner experience for supervisors, here’s 12 things contact center leaders need to know:
- Because of changing demographics, we have a new learner – a modern learner.
- Supervisors need access to learn at the point of need. 70% of employees are defaulting to accessing answers to on-the-job questions through search engines.
- Today’s learners are demanding learning options that are accessible whenever and wherever they want, which enable them to connect and collaborate with peers, not just to consume content.
- Only 38% of people feel they have access to long-term development at work. For contact centers, supervisory skills training is essential. Contact centers that deliver effective learning best to supervisors possess a huge competitive advantage.
- Employees say they can spend only 1% of their time on training and development. So, they are finding ways to get what they need – 48% access training on evenings and weekends, 27% to and from work, 48% during breaks and lunch. To differentiate, leading contact center should make certain to provide time for training.
- Today’s worker checks their phones 9 times an hour. This is driving their behavior to turn to their smartphones to find just-in-time answers to unexpected problems. Learning must work well on mobile devises these days.
- Learning needs to be micro. The modern learner’s attention span is very short and the classroom experience does not align with their needs.
- Learning happens all over, in hallways, in meetings, at computer screens. You must guide learners down the right path speed up learning and close skill gaps.
- Today’s modern employees put great value on continuous learning opportunities at work and seek out employers providing these opportunities.
- Rapid change in business and organizations means everyone needs to be constantly learning.
- High-performing learning organizations are 92% more likely to innovate.
- High-performing learning organizations have 37% greater employee productivity.
Expanding through Perspectives
A key aspect of learning and skill development comes from experiences. Unfortunately, internal bias in culture and depth often limit learning. For emerging and developing leaders, skill development is rapidly accelerated from discovering the experiences of others external to your organization. For the modern learner, access to an external Professional Community of Practice (CoP) provides a significantly greater learning opportunity.
Enhancing and moving beyond their own organization-focused supervisor training is opening up a world of value to leading organizations. And the more broader community perspective meets the needs of today’s worker – it’s the modern call center school approach.
Only by providing learning that meets the needs of modern learners and the organization is how contact centers will succeed. The struggle at the center of the modern call center school movement is not about doing what’s works best; it’s about letting go of what no longer works.
Disruption in Corporate Learning
In an article on Forbes titled Watch Out, Corporate Learning: Here Comes Disruption, Josh Bersin writes about how companies are starting to move away from their Learning Management Systems (LMS) and looking to provide a better learning experience for employees.
He shares that in a research study conducted by Deloitte that among 700-plus business and HR professionals, corporate Learning and Development (L&D) received a net-promoter score of -8.
And that the unhappiness is being caused by old-school corporate learning environments that fail to serve the needs of the modern learner – and subsequently failing the organization.
He shares that the L&D world isn’t changing fast, but right now we’re in the early stages of a major disruption for organizations. In two large chief learning officer meetings, most everyone said they’re struggling to provide a “digital learning” experience in their companies.
Becoming Modern is a Priority
Josh also states that the priority for corporate learning to modernize has increased. Deloitte Human Capital Trends’ research shows that “reinventing careers and learning” is now the #2 issue in business (followed only by reorganizing the company for digital business), creating the urgency and budget in for learning that modernization. 83% of companies reported that it’s important and 54% said the problem is urgent.
In contact centers, jobs are changing faster than ever, and automation is impacting how we do work more every day. If frontline supervisors are unable to access the learning they need, when they need it, or get access to new perspectives that are much broader outside their own organization, they will fail or change jobs.
Modern Learning Management Strategy
Josh states that if you build a modern learning solution for your employees (and hundreds of companies are starting to do this today), avoid making the old-school mistake of laying out millions of dollars to buy content libraries and software to make this work? Your employees might not want the content you have, or the materials or systems become out of date. This would end up being another big mistake that locks organizations into long-term investments in outdated content and technology.
Josh says, just as we now “rent” our news subscriptions, our email software, and most of our other tools, it’s time to shift much more of our L&D investment away from capital purchase toward “pay for use.” He says that there are some big disruptions taking place in L&D, perhaps more than he’s seen in over a decade.
You can learn more about how contact centers and the modern call center school comes together by reviewing ALERT: Leadership Training for Supervisors Is Being Disrupted and sharing your story.
