Communication trumps traditional online and offline corporate learning, a Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies survey has revealed.
The survey of more than 600 professionals showed collaborative learning within the team (85%), general conversations and meeting with people (79%) and personal and professional networks (75%) and communities were seen as some of the most essential ways of learning at work. Traditional training and elearning scored were viewed as essential for learning by 33% of respondents.
Results of the CIPD’s Learning and Talent Development Survey 2013, which were published at the annual HRD Conference this week, showed only 15% of the 1,000 respondents felt elearning was an effective way of delivering learning. On the job training was seen as the most effective method of delivery.
Delegates at HRD heard that communication is central to Google’s L&D strategy. Stephan Thoma, director of L&D at Google’s PeopleDev team said the company has developed a peer to peer community where colleagues can share who they are and what they know. They have also built a TV channel to help colleagues share content and the company is developing a learning recommendation engine for Googlers to vote up useful content.
The L&D team at Google is also using Google Hangouts to connect colleagues. For example, in its leadership and teamwork development programme the company flipped the traditional classroom process by feeding course content to people online, delivered community based assignments, managed flow through reminders and carried out debriefs in hangouts. Google found the flipped approach using its communication tools to be more effective and cheaper.
