On a daily basis, both employees and leaders need to develop expertise or learn new skills to ensure they make meaningful contributions to society. They can do this by asking each other questions about how to complete new tasks, or by researching the best approach. Whichever methods they use, lifelong learning is a human pursuit, and those who engage with learning regularly are proven to be happier.

When you are at work and you need to complete an unfamiliar activity, what do you do? While there are steps you can take independently, if your organisation has a developed learning culture and openness to ongoing training, you are far more likely to be confident with the learning process and understand how to get started.  

Over time, the 70:20:10 model for learning and development has become increasingly popular with organisations. As leaders started to recognise that the traditional, structured approach to learning no longer supported strategic goals, they started to seek out an alternative approach. The 70:20:10 model is simple, and recognises that the majority of learning opportunities occur outside of formal lessons. 

In this article, we are going to explain the model and share some advice on how to put theory into practice in workplace learning. 

The 70:20:10 model can be described in different ways, but is essentially a framework for workplace learning. It offers guidance as to which types of learning have most impact on employee development, and the balance learning and development professionals should aim to strike. The different types of learning referred to in the framework are:

This is learning through practice and experience, followed by reflection, critical analysis and application.

This involves learning through speaking and interacting with others.

This learning takes place on formalised courses, both face-to-face and online.

The model is also known as performance-oriented learning, which mostly happens as an employee goes about their work day. While traditional, formal modes of learning are undoubtedly useful when there are specific skills employees need to develop, the theory outlines that the majority of learning takes place through practical activities. 

However, the ratios are not fixed. They are suggested as a guide to ensure learning and development strategy remains balanced. How the ratio is implemented will depend on the organisation and skill types employees need to develop. Invariably though, the weighting towards each type of learning remains constant, with experiential learning being the most important. 

The application of the 70:20:10 model gives those responsible for learning and development a clear structure for both creating and reviewing strategy. The following points summarise the ways in which the theory can be put into practice: 

1. Build in opportunities for experiential learning

Experiential Learning methodology encourages critical thinking, problem solving and decision making, and this accelerates learning. It also creates stronger memories through employing multiple senses and emotional connections.

Learning in this way bridges the gap between theory and practice, and gives employees an opportunity first-hand to apply what has been taught. This improves retention of concepts and new ideas. 

While they are similar, experiential learning is not as simple as employees learning on the job by osmosis. Thinking critically is an important part of the process, as well as reflecting on how to improve upon current practice. This isn’t necessarily a focus during the average work day. 

In order to create opportunities for experiential learning, the process needs to be made explicit, either by providing employees with resources, or by training them in how to engage in experiential learning techniques. Once employees have been shown how to learn through experience, they can take ownership of the process. The only need for guidance would be for learning and development professionals to review the process, and look at how the learning aligns with an employee’s performance review.  

According to the 70:20:10 model, social interactions account for approximately 20% of learning in the workplace. Much of this learning will in fact happen organically, but leaders can facilitate it and ensure that it is learning focused at opportune times.  

A focus on learning through discussion can be achieved by setting up a formal opportunity to discuss learning throughout the week, perhaps as part of the agenda at team meetings. Sharing resources with staff can also help to generate discussion, and help to guide learning conversations.

Leaders can also model discussion about learning at appropriate times.  Perhaps somebody in leadership recently learnt something new. They could share that experience with staff when giving a presentation, or if they have questions, they could ask a relevant team member for help using learning-appropriate language. 

When approximately 10% of time for workplace learning should be allocated to formal learning, investing large sums of money in face-to-face training might not be the most effective use of a training budget. Online courses are a more cost-effective way to offer employees opportunities for formal learning. 

Online courses can serve as a foundation for both experiential and social learning opportunities. Those responsible for learning and development might set employees an additional experiential learning task based on the knowledge they acquire in an online course, or set up a reflective discussion relating to a course next time team members come together for a meeting. The content found in online courses can feed into other types of learning. 

4. Review with staff and ask for feedback

Most importantly, employees should take ownership of their learning and feel that it is a two-way process. If leaders invite employees to give feedback on the learning and development processes in their organisation, they will feel both invested and involved in the process. 

Their feedback will be the best guide as to whether learning and development strategy is in balance, as they are personally experiencing the learning. Assessing an individual’s learning experience without asking for their opinion is challenging for obvious reasons!

For more insights, be sure to subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

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The 70:20:10 model recognises that most learning opportunities occur outside of formal lessons. In this article, we explain the 70:20:10 model, including how to put theory into practice.

Optimising the 70:20:10 model for learning and development

As technology progresses, organisations are under increasing pressure to upskill their teams and equip staff with the necessary skills to thrive in the modern workplace.

Accordingly, building a robust learning and development program is a key challenge with which organisations must engage. Opportunities for workplace learning are crucial to engage employees and retain them long-term. 

Higher-order thinking skills, such as innovating, creating, and critical thinking, are now in high demand. We expect this trend to continue as the need to develop new products, ways of working, and technologies increases. 

Despite this, there is a significant gap between the skills students are leaving school with and the skills necessary to succeed in today’s workplace. According to Skillsoft’s Mind the Gap report, 48% of L&D employees believe their team is underskilled to deliver what their business need. 

The current structure, composition, and delivery of learning contributes to these skill gaps, particularly the types of skills students are encouraged to develop. These days, schools allocate little to focus on the creative, divergent thinking skills many organisations need to remain competitive.

We think it's about time that changed. So, in this article, we will explore the personal and professional advantages of higher-order thinking skills. We’ll start by asking, ‘what are higher-order thinking skills?’ before delving into five benefits of developing higher-order thinking skills.

Higher-order thinking skills are learning concepts such as analysis, synthesis, and metacognition that help learners consolidate knowledge and deepen their insights. In many ways, higher-order thinking skills are precisely what they sound like: skills that take your learning to a 'higher' level. 

Indeed defines higher-order thinking skills as: “​the thought processes that help you connect information in meaningful ways and use those connections to solve problems. Sometimes the word ‘innovation’ is used for higher-order thinking skills because it also refers to thinking that synthesises knowledge in new ways. Critical thinking is one example of higher-order thinking skills, as well as synthesis and metacognition.”

Similarly, Teachmint adds that "higher-order thinking refers to the ability and the skill to  think above the information which was gained. In simpler terms, to think  on a level that is above the memorisation and rote information. It is  basically using your cognitive ability and doing something with the information shared with you and not just memorising it."

In the context of an online course, learning designers might encourage higher-order thinking by asking learners to come up with a unique way to solve a problem specific to their field or industry.

For instance, in a workplace health and safety training course, learners might be presented with a potentially dangerous scenario and asked to explain what they would do to meet workplace health and safety requirements. The learners might then be encouraged to share their thoughts and use communication tools to discuss the similarities and differences between their responses. 

Bloom’s Taxonomy is a fantastic starting point to understanding the different thinking skills people draw upon for learning and work. In particular, Boom's Taxonomy is foundational to understanding higher-order thinking skills.   

Developed by Benjamin Bloom and his team in the 1950s, learning and development professionals continue to implement Bloom's research today, finding it as relevant now as it was then. 

According to Simply Psychology, "Bloom’s Taxonomy is a hierarchical model that categorises learning  objectives into varying levels of complexity, from basic knowledge and  comprehension to advanced evaluation and creation." 

In a recent article, we looked into how learning and development professionals can use Bloom’s Taxonomy to choose engaging learning content. The following diagram shows the ranking of different thinking skills in Bloom's Taxonomy, with higher-order thinking skills such as designing, building, constructing, producing, inventing, judging, and critiquing appearing at the top:

Now that we have defined higher-order thinking skills, let's look at some examples. Common higher-order thinking skills include:

5 benefits of developing higher-order thinking skills

For L&D professionals and organisational leaders alike, understanding which courses and activity types will help learners develop higher-order thinking skills is vital.

To emphasise this point, LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report identified the highest and lowest priority skills for L&D professionals, based on the percentage of surveyed L&D professionals focused on developing these skills. At the top of the list were leadership management (57%), creative problem solving and design thinking (42%), and communication (40%). Unsurprisingly, many of the highest-ranking responses were examples of higher-order thinking skills. 

More than ever in the digital era, employees must use their knowledge to create, innovate, or design to add value. Learning to develop these skills via workplace training is especially valuable.

With this in mind, we'll explore the broader benefits organisational benefits of developing higher-order thinking skills:

1. Participants build skills for creativity and innovation

The ability to create and innovate are among the most critical skills that employees require today. As technology advances, organisations and employees need to adapt to rapidly changing environments to keep up with the pace of innovation. 

Thinking creatively and innovating comes naturally to some people. However, for others, these skills need to be developed. Unfortunately, as creative thinking is not currently a focus in schools, many new graduates enter the workforce without any chance to develop these vital skills. This lack of creative skills becomes an issue when graduates enter the fast-paced modern workplace and feel unprepared. 

According to research by Deloitte, fewer than four in 10 millennials (36%) and three in 10 Gen Z (29%) graduates believe they are fully prepared and have all the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in the modern workplace. What's more, 32% of millennials expect to have fewer opportunities for a fulfilling career, compared to 46% of Baby Boomers.

Notably, millennials only credit school/university studies with 23% of the skills, knowledge, and experience they use at work. In contrast, on-the-job training from employers and continuous professional development contribute to 52% of what millennials use at work. In the future, approximately eight in 10 millennials say that on-the-job training, continual professional development, and formal employer-led training will be crucial to help them perform at their best.

Encouraging learners to engage with higher-order thinking skills requires far more attention and utilises more of their brain capacity. As a result, learning becomes more interesting, and learners are more invested in their professional development. Online learning courses that implement these activity types are often far more applicable in real-life scenarios.

Better engagement in workplace learning can also improve staff retention. Staff retention is a problem across organisations and directly impacts productivity.

When employees engage with learning tasks that give them the confidence to innovate, the potential for new ideas in an organisation skyrockets.  

As technology progresses more and more rapidly, innovation will become a key advantage for organisations to remain competitive. Already, those who can quickly adapt to market shifts are more likely to survive digital transformation. 

4. Learners build transferable skills for real-life scenarios

Learners who engage with higher-order thinking skills through online courses are more likely to apply this knowledge after the training concludes.

Learning tasks that encourage divergent thinking skills that apply to a broad range of situations (and are not bound by specific topics or job requirements) are ideal for building transferable skills and engaging learners.

5. More opportunities for collaborative learning 

Learning activities which encourage higher-order thinking skills are often more conducive to employee collaboration. While finding ways for learners to collaborate can be challenging with online learning, tools such as discussion boards and information sharing allow participants to share their ideas throughout the learning process. 

For more insights on developing higher-order thinking skills, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

Organisations are under increasing pressure to equip staff with higher-order thinking strategies to thrive. Here's why they are essential.

Future proof your business with higher-order thinking - Go1

Organisations are under increasing pressure to equip staff with higher-order thinking strategies to thrive in the modern workplace. Here's why higher-order thinking strategies are essential to future-proof your organisation. 

Develop higher-order thinking skills to future-proof your organisation

Go1 is pleased to announce a new partnership in The Netherlands, teaming up with learning technology specialists Educontinu.

Based in Utrecht, Educontinu guides organisations throughout the selection and implementation of the right learning technology, helping companies to reach their business goals.

“We see that companies are struggling with the internal production of engaging learning content and are looking for options to extend their training library with high quality and up-to-date content of external providers. With Go1 Premium, they will be able to preselect courses from more than 100 different content providers and make those available to their employees on the company’s LMS or via the Go1 platform. 

We also see big potential for Dutch content providers to consider Go1 as a distribution platform so they will be part of this huge content library and leverage the bigger reach.”

Go1 Senior Account Executive, Paddy Boyd said:

“Educontinu help L&D professionals to create and implement the right tools and software for learning that really has an effect on the results of the organisation. The combination of years of experience in learning technology and content creation drives the Educontinu team to always find the best solutions to overcome digital learning challenges.

“Together, Go1 and Educontinu are excited to help organisations throughout Europe reduce costs and save time, with access to thousands of quality learning resources and curation of off-the-shelf content.”

Educontinu was founded in 2014 and supports organisations to (co-)create online and blended training programs, organise expert knowledge being captured, shared or reused, and facilitate social and continued learning as part of daily work. 

Go1 makes it easy for businesses to train their staff, with the world’s largest compliance, professional development and general training marketplace. By providing a single platform that extends from first aid training through to degree bearing courses, Go1 makes it easy to find and compare the best training options available. The marketplace features over 500,000 courses and other learning items created by local and international experts. Customers include HAYS, Surrey County Council, Rohlig, Jellyfish, Robertson, and Applegreen.

Since launching in 2015, Go1 has grown to be a world leader in online learning and education. Local and overseas investors include Y Combinator, SEEK, M12, Tank Stream Ventures, Black Sheep Capital, and Our Innovation Fund.

Go1 announces new partnership with Educontinu

Let’s get straight to the point. Optimising your employee lifecycle is all about improving your employee experience so that you improve employee engagement. Improving employee engagement results in happier and more productive employees, and this, in turn, produces happy customers, which subsequently generates more revenue. That’s a win for your customers, a win for your employees and a win for your business. In a world of increasing complexity and demands on our time, having the right systems and processes in place to enhance the employee experience is essential.

 In this article, we will be exploring the critical ingredients for improving your employee experience via two under-leveraged pathways: 

1.     Implementing intelligent HR automation for the right tasks and processes during the employee lifecycle, and

2.     Providing learning and development opportunities in the flow of work so that employees can fit it into their schedules.

 Iron Mountain have conducted a significant amount of research into how automating HR processes provides a means to create the time HR needs to focus on more strategic work. Results indicate that respondents from highly automated HR departments are about twice as likely to enjoy above-average productivity and considerably more likely as those from the least automated HR departments to say they enjoyed above average HR effectiveness (38% to 25%).

 Learning is the top-rated challenge among Deloitte’s 2019 Global Human Capital Trends report. People now rate the ‘opportunity to learn’ as among their top reasons for taking a job, and business leaders know that changes in technology, longevity, work practices, and business models have created a tremendous demand for continuous, lifelong development.

We’ve outlined 4 considerations below for improving your employee experience through HR automation, learning and development. The positive results available to HR professionals will flow on to benefit the organisation as a whole to enhance overall performance and long-term growth.

1.      The model of the employee lifecycle

 The proven model known as the employee lifecycle (ELC), is a powerful way to visualise the journey your employees take and how they interact with you. Understanding this model helps you ensure that you’re engaging them at every touchpoint they have with your organisation.

By optimising each stage of your ELC, it is possible to attract and retain a top tier talent for your business.

Here is the framework for the employee lifecycle model:

1.     Attraction: Build the right brand and culture to attract the best candidates to your business.

2.     Recruitment: Develop a multi-channel recruitment strategy and don't forget referrals when assessing who is the best fit for both your company and the role.

3.     Onboarding: Provide an engaging employee experience is essential to the retention and the success of new team members, existing employees and the organisation.

4.     Development: Foster ongoing professional development and continuous improvement across your business.

5.     Retention: Develop strategies and processes to ensure you retain your top talent. A positive company culture is essential. 

Separation: All good things must come to an end. Put a process in place to learn from the experience, continue good morale within your team, and ensure that departing employees leave on good terms. 

2.     Leverage HR automation to enhance employee performance

 Did you know that almost 70 per cent of HR work is still unstructured, relying on excel, email and calls? According to the study on The State of HR Automation in Mid-Sized Organisations, 59% of respondents said the HR professionals in their organisation spend over half their time on manual administrative tasks. Essentially that means that if you don't have the right automation in place, manual, unstructured HR tasks will result in unnecessary complexity, time wasted, and a productivity drain for both HR (and other employees). 

The work required to map, assess and automate the right tasks and processes in your organisation (so as to optimise productivity and minimise complexity), can seem daunting at first. But it doesn’t need to be.

According to Willis Towers Watson’s research, once the decision has been made to adopt automation and artificial intelligence technologies, leaders have to consider the following questions about how to implement that decision:

How, when, and where should we apply automation in our organisations? 

How do we stay on top of technological trends as work and automation continue to evolve?

 Help is at hand, however. Based on decades of experience helping companies transform approaches to work and leadership, Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach for Applying Automation to Work offers a new set of tools for applying automation and artificial intelligence in today’s organisations.

 Ravin Jesuthasan, Managing Director at Willis Towers Watson, and John Boudreau, Professor and Research Director at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business and Centre for Effective Organisations have written Reinventing Jobs to help HR professionals, managers and business leaders tackle the challenge of intelligent automation.

To achieve the optimal combinations of humans and automation, leaders must implement the following four-step framework: 

1.     Deconstruct existing jobs into key tasks and categorise them.

2.     Determine the payoff of each task: Estimate the relationship between the performance and strategic value of each task.

3.     Identify automation options: Consider the different types of AI and robotics capable of performing each task.

4.     Reinvent the job by optimally combining human and automated work: Create new jobs by determining which human tasks should be substituted, augmented, or transformed by automation.

When viewed through the above lens, human-automation collaboration feels more logical, less scary, and more like a process that can have positive benefits for workers. Ultimately, the aim of HR automation is to enable businesses to improve the employee experience and optimise the employee lifecycle resulting in increased efficiency and reduced costs. By designing, streamlining and implementing solutions that transform manual work into digital workflows HR automation can deliver significant benefits.

Reduce unstructured work that relies on excel, email and calls.

Reduce errors related to data entry and misplaced/lost documents.

Mitigate compliance risk and meet regulatory requirements through digital filing and record keeping.

Enable faster processing and easier data sharing to improve productivity.

Make intelligent, strategic business decisions based on real-time data with actionable reporting.

Encourage collaboration by removing silos between departments and teams.

Improve employee engagement and reduce employee turnover.

Identify the best use of your employee talent through HR data.

Ensure your employees have time to focus their talents on more complex tasks like strategy and using their soft skills to do the work that matters.

 The Harvard Business Review reports that companies which offer comprehensive employee training programs can increase sales by up to 19 percent and profits by up to 29 percent (while also reducing employee turnover by as much as 72 percent). But that’s not the only reason why providing the right learning and development for your employees is important.

Learning and development are major enablers. Education and skills are perhaps the biggest drivers of an individual's own personal earnings potential throughout their career, so organisations that offer training, lots of developmental assignments, and a coaching culture, are now the premium places to work. As more and more robotics and artificial intelligence enter the workforce, Bersin's learning research indicates that for individuals, the 'learning curve is the earning curve.' 

If you want to develop a culture of learning and development within your organisation, Britt Andreatta (PhD), an expert on developing a learning culture makes the following recommendations: 

Honour the ever-present nature of learning.

Use blended learning to maximise options.

 Andreatta says that a learning culture could positively affect organisational productivity and profit in the following ways:

A growth mindset takes root yielding ever-higher levels of performance.

Enhanced creativity and innovation drives individual and team success.

New technology skills are easier to obtain.

4.      Build a self-developing organisation

The 'self-developing organisation’ is an organisation that has the capacity, the technology and the operational agility to develop, train and empower employees on the fly. With the rise of the need for real-time learning and empowerment on the rise, rather than think about your learning and HR strategy as one of 'delivering training,' think about it as 'building a self-developing organisation.'

 Here’s a roadmap for how that might look in your organisation:

Ensure that education and learning content is readily available to anyone, and it’s easy to find and use.

Develops teams where people make time to teach and coach others, and they are rewarded for it.

The company stops and investigates its mistakes, making sure teams learn from failures.

Formal learning programs are easy to access and highly regarded, so people regularly use them.

Leaders at all levels teach classes and workshops (professional, technical, and senior executives).

Onboarding is a serious and formal effort, with a focus on making people productive regardless of where they come from.

Every job has a transition management program to help people learn the job from internal transfer.

Learning technology is modern, easy to use, and fun.

Individuals are rewarded for self-development.

Books, magazines and other external research are readily available.

People are hired for their 'learning agility' and the ability to teach themselves.

Learning is valued as part of the culture and remains in place during good times and bad.

Finding the right training solution for your organisation doesn’t need to be difficult. There are solution providers that provide the right resources for all your professional development, compliance, onboarding, performance management and business training needs. Go1’s training and development courseware provides access to more than 50,000 courses from over 100 of the world's trusted and most respected content providers.

Selecting and implementing the right HR software to automate the types of manual, repetitive and time-consuming tasks that result in unstructured work can be a challenge, but to celebrate the partnership between Go1 and Subscribe-HR, we’ve created a FREE guide to make it easier for you.

 If you’re ready to discover the difference HR automation, learning & development can make to engagement and performance in your business, then this guide is for you. Discover which HR solutions you can use to automate which tasks and the courses you can share at each stage of the employee lifecycle to provide the right learning opportunities for your employees.

For more insights, subscribe to the Go1 newsletter to stay on top of all the latest L&D trends. Or, you can book a demo today to find out how Go1 can help with your team’s learning needs.

Human Resources Automation is about making sure that employees have everything they need to be successful, learn more in this article from Go1.

Optimise your employee lifecycle through HR automation and learning in the flow of work

 In a world of increasing complexity and demands on our time, having the right systems and processes in place to enhance the employee experience is essential.

We are excited to announce the customer-wide launch of Go1’s new content player!

Back in September, we launched one of our most exciting features to date  - 1-Player - into early access. This new feature allows users to undertake learning in one streamlined and modern interface. 

Thank you to those customers who have been early adopters of the feature. The response to 1-Player has been really positive so far, so we are excited that 1-Player will now be generally available to all Go1 users on November 20th. 

With the aptly named 1-Player, we've reimagined your learning experience on the Go1 platform. This new feature enables you to undertake learning across all courses and standalone resources in one standardised interface.

The new content player will support the following learning resources:  

SCORM / Video / Document / Weblink / Text / LTI / Quiz / Assignment. 

For Events, users will be redirected to the standard event interface, and Integrations will be supported in a future update.

In its new form, the content player resolves the limitations our users sometimes experienced when accessing learning, whilst also introducing a new and more streamlined content player. 

Open resources via the player and view summaries of each item before confirming enrolment!  🎉🎉

The overview panel on the right side makes it easy to see the contents of a course from within the player.

Users can navigate between different items in the course without having to leave the interface!

See clear indications of your completion status

In addition to the status being show in the top right corner, a special screen will also show for each item that has been successfully completed.

An overall simple and consistent experience

Go1 users can check the status of each learning item, as well as complete items more easily and clearly with buttons always being in the same location.

When exiting 1-Player(using the X in the top left corner), users will be taken back to where they opened the learning item from. This also applies to customers accessing Go1 content in an external LMS. 

For more in-depth information, you can read our support documents here.

Announcing the launch of Go1's new content player: 1-Player!

Virtual Reality (VR) gives participants the opportunity to immerse themselves in a completely different world, and to prepare themselves for challenging scenarios they might have to face and quick decision-making. 

Traditional eLearning courses use content such as articles, videos and quizzes to present information, but these activity types limit the depth of learning. By improving learner engagement and retention of information, research shows that VR can offer a richer, more active learning experience.

In this article, we are going to look at research into the potential of VR for improving learning outcomes, and the ways in which it can enhance compliance training. 

A recent Deloitte study, Real learning in a virtual world, looked at how VR can improve learning and training outcomes. Prior to the application of VR, workplace trainers had to weigh up how to effectively prepare employees for potentially dangerous situations. 

They could provide traditional learning materials like textbooks and classes, but these would likely not suffice as preparation for highly stressful or complex situations. An alternative option was to offer live training, which is not only hazardous, but costly to run. For many, the choice was between inexpensive and ineffective or effective and dangerous training methods. 

The report highlights that, with VR, participants can become totally immersed in a simulated scenario, which can induce the same emotional responses to a real-life experience. This is both a safe and effective way to prepare employees for potentially life-threatening situations. 

A summary of the benefits of VR for employees

The application of VR to workplace training has the potential to both improve the learning experience for participants and employee safety when engaging in potentially dangerous activities. The following points summarise the ways in which the technology can improve the learning experience: 

Traditional eLearning tools such as articles and videos can help participants to understand a new concept, and they are easy for learners to access in their own time, at their own pace. However, these materials won’t prepare learners for highly stressful situations. 

A main function of compliance training is to ensure that a workplace is safe and that employees are engaged in safe practices at all times. If participants have the opportunity to practice processes or decision-making before going into potentially life-threatening situations, the chance for human error or unsafe practice is considerably limited. 

NASA has been using simulations successfully for many years to train astronauts for space travel. Their goal is to limit risk as much as possible, with astronauts preparing for as many different scenarios as they can imagine. 

2. Easy and increasingly affordable to roll out on a large scale 

While it may seem costly to purchase a VR headset, there are some surprisingly affordable options. Mobile headsets can cost as little as $15 USD, although a desktop headset could set organisations back $400 dollars. 

Yet, according to the 2017 State of the Industry report from the Association for Talent Development, organizations in the US spend an average of $1,273 per employee for learning. Of course, this figure depends on the size of the organization, with smaller organizations spending more per employee, and larger organizations spending less. 

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.” - Aristotle

A key advantage of VR is that it offers participants an experiential learning opportunity, which creates stronger memories through employing multiple senses and emotional connections.

VR brings and experiential element to online learning that is difficult to create with videos and articles alone. Repetitive learning or memorisation has long been out of favour in schools, with ‘learning by doing’ being the preferred option. Experiential Learning methodology encourages critical thinking, problem solving and decision making, and this accelerates learning.

It also bridges the gap between theory and practice, and gives employees an opportunity first-hand to apply what has been taught. This improves retention of concepts and new ideas. 

Experiential learning is directly linked to increased engagement in learning. VR provides an opportunity for employees to engage in a realistic scenario in a safe and controlled manner. 

For compliance training, participants are also required to remember a significant amount of important information to keep both themselves and others safe. Retention of information is essential in this case to ensure the safety of both team members and customers.

When learners are actively engaged with a task, they will also need to use high order thinking skills to complete it. These include applying knowledge to practical contexts, or using the knowledge they have gained in a creative way. 

5. Generates discussion, exciting new technology	

Perhaps most importantly, having the opportunity to use VR when learning at work is enjoyable! A ‘gamified’ learning experience has also been proven to increase learner engagement and enjoyment.

While it may seem like a gimmick set to pass by like many other fads, the benefits of VR for learning are clear, and so it is more likely to remain a permanent feature of workplace training.  

When comparing practicing safety measures in a virtual world to reading about them in a textbook, it’s easy to see why VR would be more popular and help to generate discussion around the workplace. 

At Go1, we offer a number of compliance courses with VR capabilities, in which learners can prepare for challenging situations at work in the safety of a virtual world. VR is an effective, engaging way to learn, and offers employers an exciting alternative to teaching from textbooks and manuals.  

How VR enhances compliance training and improves learning outcomes

While the range of content we have access to today is fantastic for broadening knowledge in almost any topic, sifting through the mass of information can be overwhelming. 

As Christoper Pappas, founder of the eLearning Industry Network explains, having too many choices can lead to a psychological phenomenon known as ‘analysis paralysis’ in which there are so many options to choose from, people are unable to make decisions as to which option would be best for them.  

With regard to workplace training, packaging content in a manageable, easy to access format is particularly important, as inundating learners with new information can quickly lead to disengagement and feelings of inadequacy. 

Carefully curating content relevant to your employees and using it to support the learning process is a great way to avoid information overload. In this article, we will be exploring content curation for workplace training, and the benefits it can bring to your organisation. 

Pappas explains that there are three main types of content curation: collaborative, semantic and social. Collaborative and social curation are linked, in that they both collate user opinions to rate the quality of content and filter out the best examples. Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, Reddit and Pinterest all offer content suggestions based on this method. 

Semantic analysis uses keywords learners are interested in to make suggestions as to which content might be appropriate for them. Mix, formerly known as StumbleUpon uses this system. 