Recent trends in the learning industry point towards an increase in the need for the learning experience to be experiential. And since the spring of 2020, that also means it must be virtual.
For more and more companies, the employee experience is becoming as important as the customer experience, if not more. In these new times of working from home, making sure that the employee is engaged, responsive and tuned in is critical. Here we explore, how the industry is reflecting the importance of the employee experience within its learning strategies and take a look at how companies can best develop those experiences.
The rise of the Chief of Learning Experiences
A recent survey highlights that one of the key HR trend for 2021 is to “energize the experience”. People need to be inspired “with an energizing and empathetic employee experience (EX)”. One can argue that companies need to redefine the employee value proposition fit in 2021 as well as beyond.
And in doing so, the industry is also rethinking the role of the Chief Learning Officer (CLO) and the structure of the learning and development departments they lead by reflecting the importance of the “experience” within their job titles - CLOs are not Chief Learning Officers anymore but “Chief of Learning Experiences”.
Giving employees the ‘big picture’ experience
To be a good employee, working from home, and a good leader, one must be not only an expert at their field, but also be able to see the big picture. Leaders needs to have a broad experience.
In the book Range, David Epstein explains that “generalist triumph in a specialized world” because they are able to see the big picture and have a broad knowledge (breadth or range) with a specialized knowledge in only one or two areas (depth).
Companies are looking for ways to give employees that experience, without putting the company’s resources or results at risk.
A highly effective experiential learning tool
One way to develop employee engagement and the big picture outlook is through using an experiential tool, such as a business simulation and group work on application.
At StratX ExL, we’ve been using the power of experiential learning for over 30 years to create memorable learning environments for leaders of some of the top Fortune 500 companies and time after time, we see the business impact experiential learning brings. Business simulations provide the perfect risk-free yet highly competitive environment, which brings a fun element to the whole thing!
Experiential Learning for Impact
We share our experiential learning success in our recent Experiential Learning User’s Guide – download the guide today to discover:
- What is experiential learning
- Why use experiential learning
- How to measure impact with experiential learning
- What are the benefits of using experiential learning
- Where is experiential learning applied
- Experiential learning case studies
- Our best practices
