Organizations everywhere are rethinking how learning happens. Employees have less time for structured training, and their habits have changed. Most people reach for a phone when they need help. They search online or ask the person beside them. Learning has shifted from scheduled sessions to instant answers.
In our latest webinar, Frédéric Hebert, Chief Learning Officer at Rise Up, and Anjali Saraswathyamma, Global Digital Learning Leader at Claroty, joined Ashling Moran, Customer Value Manager at Easygenerator, to discuss this shift. They shared how speed, access, and relevance shape learning today and how teams can design support that fits the real world of work.
🎥 Watch the session: Missed it live? Watch the full recording below.
Why learning in the flow of work matters now
Work moves faster than ever. Teams need answers at the moment of need, not days or weeks later. Frédéric noted that speed and friction shape the learning experience. Employees want to access information without stopping what they are doing. They want resources that fit their role and context, whether they work on a factory floor or in a digital workspace.
Ashling highlighted how daily habits influence workplace learning. When people have a question, they turn to Google, YouTube, TikTok, or AI tools. That expectation for instant help has replaced the idea that learning must always start with a course. L&D now needs to give employees the right answers at the right time and keep those answers relevant to the organization.
Anjali added that learning must support business outcomes. She sees younger employees entering the workforce with very different expectations for how they learn. Their content habits come from social platforms, not classrooms. L&D teams must design learning that fits these habits and still maintains accuracy and clarity.
Together, the speakers painted a clear picture. Formal training still matters for foundations. But performance support in the flow of work is now essential.
What learning in the flow of work really means
Learning in the flow of work is about support that does not interrupt the job. Frédéric explained that interruption looks different depending on the role. A factory worker may need to leave equipment to access training. A knowledge worker may need to move away from a digital tool. In both cases, the goal is to keep people inside their workflow.
Anjali described flow as dipping in and out of learning as needed. It is not about pushing mandatory training. It is about making resources available at the right time, based on the sales process, product lifecycle, customer interactions, or operational tasks. She also noted the importance of integrated systems so learning shows up where people already work.
Ashling added practical examples. A QR code on a machine can give workers step by step instructions. A short video or quick guide can help someone complete a specific task. These formats work because they answer a real question in the moment.
The speakers agreed that microlearning and flow of work learning support each other. Microlearning offers bite-sized content. Flow of work learning offers timing and context. When combined, they help employees take the next step in their job without leaving their environment.
Challenges teams face and how to move forward
Moving to flow of work learning brings real challenges. Frédéric pointed out that learning and performance tools must integrate with the tools employees use daily, such as Teams or Slack. Without easy access, even good content will go unused.
Anjali shared that many L&D and enablement teams have not been trained to think about business outcomes. Some focus more on design than on the problem they want to solve. Others are not fully aligned with the company message or value proposition, which makes learning less effective.
Ashling noted that teams need both infrastructure and content to make this approach work. Integrations help deliver learning at the right moment. Content must then answer the real questions employees have. This starts with understanding the business. For example, if support tickets are increasing, L&D needs resources that help people solve those recurring issues.
She also encouraged teams to start small. Work with one team. Identify the top questions and convert them into useful resources. Make content actionable. Focus on what someone needs to do next. Measure reach, reaction, and changes in performance to know what works.
The panel also shared simple ways to find moments of need. Talk to subject-matter experts. Collect frequently asked questions. Watch how teams interact during the day. These signals show where learning can make the biggest difference.
The future of learning in the flow of work
The speakers see a future where learning blends naturally into daily tasks. Peer learning will continue to grow. User-generated knowledge will reduce bottlenecks and make learning more company tailored.
AI will help people get guidance in real time. It will sit inside the tools they already use and provide suggestions, examples, and steps. Digital coaches will become more common and will support employees during tasks instead of after them.
Over time, learning and working will feel inseparable. People will get support at the exact moment they need it. L&D will focus more on outcomes, relevance, and impact.
The bottom line
Learning in the flow of work fits how people learn today. It reduces friction, supports performance, and keeps knowledge close to real tasks. Formal training still matters. But learning that helps people in the moment is what drives confidence and results.
To turn this kind of learning into sustained impact, organizations also need ways to support and measure performance beyond training. When learning resources are combined with clear goals, feedback, and visibility into progress, employees are better equipped to apply what they learn on the job. This is where talent and performance support comes into play. Using dedicated performance management solutions like Sprad help teams connect learning in the flow of work to real performance outcomes and ongoing improvement.
For L&D teams, the opportunity is clear. Create resources that answer real questions. Deliver them inside the workflow. Start with one team, learn from the data, and grow from there.
👏 Huge thanks to Frédéric Hebert and Anjali Saraswathyamma for joining Ashling Moran for this conversation.
🔗 Learn more about Rise Up here: https://www.riseup.ai/en/
Webinar transcript
Ashling: My name’s Ashling, and I’m a Customer Value Manager here. And I have the pleasure of hosting or moderating today’s session. And I would like to introduce you to our lovely guests who are joining us today to talk about learning in the flow of work. I’ll hand over to them so they can introduce themselves. Fred, you’re first on my screen. So, would you like to get us kicked off?
Fred: Yes, thanks. So I’m Frédéric Hébert. I’m the Chief Learning Officer at RiseUp. So what is RiseUp? We are an all-in-one learning solution, providing all the elements that L&D needs to be equipped with. But to give more context about myself: I used to be in L&D for 15 years before running large organizations such as Danone — and I guess that’s a name for the brand — or big companies like GE. And before that I was also in tech, so I used to have a first life in tech, then a second life in L&D running large organizations. And I’ve also been an Easygenerator client a long time ago — we deployed their technology at scale at Danone for 100,000 employees.
Ashling: Wow. Well thanks Fred. I’m sure you’re going to have a lot of interesting insights to share. So we’re really happy to have you and have you back again. Anji, would you like to say a few words about yourself?
Anji: Oh yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Ashling, lovely to see your smiling face by the way. Everybody, I’m going to be smiling along so you know, bear with me on that. So I’m this little person with a lot of energy and Easygenerator knows that. And Fred, how lovely to meet you as well and know your background. So okay, who am I? So I am Anji and I am an engineer turned into a learning and development strategist. I’ve been in this industry for over two decades, literally started from the beginning all the way up to where I am today. And in this span of time I’ve had the opportunity to work with clients like technology clients — HPE, Apple, IBM, you name them — because I was with distribution as a consultant. And one of the last projects that I worked on was with Cisco on cybersecurity, and that got me hooked, because you know, being an engineer with a love of technology, I was like: cybersecurity — this is like food and textiles. You cannot be without clothes and you cannot be without food. So cybersecurity is one of those things that is here to stay. If you haven’t thought about a career in cybersecurity, think about it. So I’m so grateful that I’m here with Claroty. I’ve been with them for coming close to three years now, and I kind of head up the digital enablement for Claroty globally. And in that time I’ve had the amazing opportunity to work with Easygenerator — for our 50 to 80,000 learners, for a growth company of our size, it has been amazing working with EG. And I think this is such a fantastic topic and discussion to be part of, where learning in the flow is evolving, every technology and cybersecurity is evolving. So you’ve got to find ways of making learning interesting for our learners on the floor. So yeah, excited to be here, looking forward to all your questions. Please be open and let’s have a fantastic session. Thank you, Ashling.
Ashling: You’re very welcome and thank you Anji. Love the enthusiasm, I’ll try to match you. But I definitely agree it’s an exciting time to be in learning or in tech more generally. Which also segues us nicely into what we’re talking about today, which is going to be learning in the flow of work. So we’re talking about how we help people solve problems but also build skills without stepping away from their jobs. So instead of carving out hours for formal training, it’s about delivering support at that moment of need — whether that’s a quick checklist, a tooltip in a piece of software, or a two-minute video that you access on a shop floor. The principle here is pretty simple: if something or a piece of learning interrupts work, it’s not in the flow. And if it supports work, it is in the flow. But we’ll dive a little bit deeper. And today we’re going to explore how organizations are making the shift, what’s working in practice, and where we’re headed next. So I think we have some really smart minds here. We can dive into why learning in the flow of work matters now. Why is learning in the flow of work becoming a priority? And Fred, perhaps you’d like to provide some input on that.
Fred: I mean it’s a good question. When I hear what you said, it’s funny because I’m thinking about my old days when we were discussing LIFOW a couple of years ago. Because it’s not a new concept. I will slightly reframe it to why learning in the flow of work is even more important now than it was. It’s not a question about being important — it’s becoming even more important. And this is mainly due to the context we’re living in. We know, as experts in L&D, that the world is changing and evolving very fast. Most skills will change, based on analyst and research estimates, within two years — the lifespan of skills will shorten. So there is a question about time to skill: the idea that you have a skill and you need to be upskilled as fast as possible. And LIFOW is one of the solutions, because if you don’t have this approach, it creates a bottleneck. If you need to interrupt your job and wait six months to be upskilled, that’s a problem, because we know skills change quite fast. If I’m trained in 16 months but my skill has already changed in six months, the training doesn’t mean anything. So there is a question about immediate actions, and that’s the pure logic of why it’s important — even more important now — because the world is changing so fast.
Fred: If you look at what AI is bringing and how jobs are changing, it’s a question of surviving. I was reading an article this morning about the workforce and the impact of AI. The good news is that in a couple of years AI will create more jobs than it destroys. But what we know is that in the next two to three years there is a huge impact on the current workforce. So we need to take action right now for the next couple of years to make sure people are upskilled for this new context. That’s why doing LIFOW is key — because you don’t have the time to wait. You need to take proactive, immediate actions. And this is why it matters the most. So it’s not a question of whether it matters, it matters more now.
Ashling: Yeah, I like that — reframing it to why it matters more now. And I think it’s something that we all see and we’re all learning. There’s new skills and new platforms, new ways of working popping up and we need to keep pace with that. I think I’ve also noticed — and I maybe made up a word today, maybe I didn’t — but I was speaking to a client about how we’ve also come to expect different types of knowledge and I’m calling it the TikTok-ification of learning. But yeah, if you ask my younger sister to do something new, I promise you she’s not phoning a friend, she’s picking up her mobile phone, and she’s going to TikTok, Google, YouTube or a platform that I don’t even know about yet. But yeah, Anji, I’m curious from the practical side, boots on the floor — do you have anything to add here about why learning in the flow is important now, or more important now as Fred said?
Anji: I think definitely, like Fred said, why is it more important now? And Ashling, so good to hear the analogy of your younger sister. I’ve got two daughters, one is 8 and one is 13 — they’re all going on God knows what ages. But yes, you’re right. And Fred, you will relate to this — we’ve learned in such a different way and our mindset of learning was so different versus the mindset of learners in this day and age. Forget about Gen Z or whatever you call it — even people like us have to evolve, right? To kind of stay up with them. So for me this is more like: the psychology has changed, the whole mindset around learning has changed.
Anji: And I want to give every business context here — every business is working towards outcomes, whether that’s go-to-market teams, product teams, marketing, customer success. This is my experience at least working with Claroty. And within learning and development, it’s now essential that learning drives the business outcomes. I don’t know if you are all aware of the 6D methodology of designing — and D1 is: define the outcome. What’s the business outcome? And people are so used to AI coming in, taking over the world positively, everything available at their fingertips. So that’s the mindset people have: I can just watch a TikTok, I can watch an Instagram video for one minute. My learning speed has changed, where I could spend hours and hours on something — now I really don’t, because my mind is getting conditioned to: give me something quick, give me something I can consume very quickly. So our company — me — I’ve kind of adapted to a strategy of microlearning for that purpose, that we can’t overload our learners with heavy learning. We have to break it down, we have to put it in bite-sized pieces and train them in how to learn in that manner. Of course we will never be able to do that in a TikTok or Instagram manner. But microlearning has definitely become a lot more significant. So programming their brains and mindset away from your traditional learning — that’s kind of my take on that.
Ashling: Yeah. And I think you’ve connected it really nicely. So yeah, TikTok is maybe a far-reaching example here, but we need to connect to the business and business outcomes, and microlearning is an easy way of doing that. Which brings up a second question for me, and perhaps some people joining us are thinking the same thing. Fred, you mentioned speed and being able to fill those skill gaps and reach learners. But today we’re also focusing on how we ensure that we’re helping with performance. So I’d be curious where you see the difference between teaching someone and helping somebody to do something.
Fred: Yeah, before answering this question, I wanted to react a bit on what we said before. I think what’s interesting is we are facing two problems: the pace of change that I mentioned, and the TikTok effect that we discussed. And I think those are two different topics that we need to tackle at the same time. Because one thing happened — the freedom of the internet, which wasn’t available at our age. But the new generation is used to that. So it’s important to have these two elements in parallel, because one is about upskilling and we need to do that. And the other one is also about retention and engagement. So both need to be cracked together. That’s quite interesting and I wanted to just highlight that. And the question about helping versus teaching — it reminds me of a quote, and I’m hoping this is a real quote. It’s about Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. He said: you can help someone to get a fish, or you can help them to know how to get a fish and they will eat forever. So it’s a question about providing help right now — okay, I’m doing your job. Did you learn anything? Will you be able to do it again tomorrow? Or can I show you and guide you to be independent later? To be honest, I prefer the second option. I believe we need to help people to be more independent and not rely on support from others. So for me this is a big difference between helping and teaching: making people independent to perform an action and ultimately to perform at work. And I think teaching is more important than just helping. We can help for sure, but you should not take ownership of everything. You need to also upskill people to make them independent. That’s what you do with your kids — you help them but you’re also raising them. You’re not helping them with laundry all their life. At one point you need to know how to do your own laundry.
Ashling: Yeah, 100%. So yeah, it’s really important. And I think it’s something that we can all relate to. When we’re learning something, if we want it to be impactful, we need to be able to take what we learned and put it into practice. And I think if we go back to this — there are two questions here: one, how do we reach people? And then also the content that we’re providing. We spoke about TikTok and other platforms, but there is a danger that learners are accessing incorrect information. So Anji, I’d be really curious if you have any insights on how we can enable professionals to get access to the right information, or the most relevant information at least.
Anji: Yes, so I’ll share the use case that we have here within Claroty. And I think a lot of organizations are not thinking like this. In my on-demand learning world, where traditionally learning was designed to be provided on a certain day or on a certain topic — with training targets and times and all of those things defined — how we are doing it here at Claroty, and quite rightly like Fred said, we want to make sure that we are not stopping people from functioning. So one of the things we’ve implemented here within Claroty is we have mapped our tools in such a way that they integrate into everything else that our people are using. For example, your CRM. So Salesforce is something that we use. And making sure that our Easygenerator content is integrated into their HiBob HR tool. So that integration is so important — all the learning needs to be available where they are and where they spend the maximum of their time. We have mapped all our content to roles, to the capabilities of those roles, to the sales stages. So if somebody is stuck in discovery, they immediately know that there’s training available that is going to help them right at that stage where they are struggling, in a format that’s easy for them to take. It’s not: okay, now you need to park two hours to sit and take the training. No — it’s a quick five minutes, and even then they have options. They can go into module one or module two. It’s not sequenced like your MBAs or heavy certifications. For me, that is so important: making sure systems are integrated so that the learnings are fed directly where our consumers will consume it. And that’s where we see our consumption rate going up and our learner performance going up, because they’re getting everything as and when they need it.
Ashling: You’re reaching them where they are, I suppose, in all the different systems. It makes sense.
Ashling: And I can see that — I hope the conversation so far is resonating with people. I see some comments in the chat. For example Tiffany — we absolutely agree that the way people learn has definitely changed and younger employees do expect instant answers. So it’s interesting to see how this is happening. And that’s why learning in the flow of work is so powerful — it meets the needs of different generations and different people, and it’s not forcing one learning style on everybody. Which I think brings us nicely to our second point here. So we’re talking about learning in the flow but we haven’t really dived into what that means just yet. So I’m curious Fred, do you have any takes on what makes something truly in the flow versus an interruption?
Fred: I mean, you just play with the word interruption: as soon as you need to interrupt your job, that makes a big difference, it creates a bottleneck. So for example, if I use a previous example — when I was at Danone and we were doing yogurt or water, if you need to stop the production chain, you need to stop it for many people at the same time, you need to plan. There is a full logistic that could be counterproductive. So a simple example: when you’re on a shop floor, you have the production machine. If you need to lock the production machine, you’re not producing anything for a certain amount of time. That’s not truly in the flow of work. It means you need to schedule and think about it. So for me, when it becomes truly LIFOW, it’s if I can get access to learning right away — information in general, whatever helps me to upskill myself right at this moment. So that’s the ideal case. It’s not always possible depending on the population. But for me the end game is really to be able to access any type of information that helps me to perform my action at the right moment. So for salespeople, if I have a CRM, I can access my learning. Or in HiBob I have access to my learning because I need to know the five powerful questions to ask a candidate. That can be right there in my solution. So it really depends on the job — it’s not always easy because frontline workers are a bit more complex — but it’s really the question about time. I need to have access to the information required for me now. That’s really what LIFOW is. And I know it’s complex and challenging based on what you’re operating in terms of job, but that’s what companies like ours are trying to solve.
Ashling: It makes sense — it depends on the role, but maybe even potentially the person. And I like that you touched on the word interruption — it all hinges on that. Anji, again somebody who’s working on implementing training into the flow of work, I’d be curious to get your take as well. So what makes something truly in the flow versus an interruption?
Anji: Right. So I think we have to think about how we are designing the courses as well, because learning and development has always been perceived as: okay, they’re the ones who will create the trainings, they will provide us whatever it is that we need. I think we need to move away from that assumption and actually work with the business unit. So one of the things that works beautifully in our organization here with Claroty is I work with every single business unit. I’m not just working inside my own business unit — the Digital Enablement or the Excel Academy as we call it — but I also work with the customer success team, with the go-to-market team. And I ask them: what do you want from learning? How do you want to learn? And also getting to know the product knowledge — we are not just waiting for the content to be handed to us and then we put it into Easygenerator and it creates the course. That’s what EG does wonderfully. But it’s about what content we are putting in there. Because then the content becomes very relevant to them, because it triggers that part of their brain where they’re thinking: that is why I need to do this course. So in every course we design, there are two elements. I ask: what is the problem that we are trying to solve? And if you take this course, this is how you can think about the solution. Literally every single course has these two things covered: what is the problem statement and what is the solution? Because that is how salespeople function, or that is how the product team creates content — why do we need to do this, what problem are we solving? So our courses, our learning, needs to reflect that. And that will be the hook for how the learners are going to learn. And that will kind of take away from the interruption side of things because they are naturally seeing: that’s the problem I want to solve for my customers, and if I take that content, it’ll help me get that solution to the customer.
Ashling: So it makes a lot of sense. You’re hooking learners with the content, making it relevant for them. And you’re doing that through — if I understood correctly — working with all business units across the organization. Which I think there’s a question from the chat that could be really relevant here, around how do you manage the content in this case and ensure that it’s up to date? Is it hosted all within Easygenerator and your LMS, or what’s your approach there? What would you advise somebody looking to take a similar approach?
Anji: Oh my God, updating the content. Especially in my world of cybersecurity, where every day new threats are coming, the R&D team is coming with new things. We need to add those things into our content. So for us, that dynamic way of updating content is critical — mission critical — because we need to keep our learners updated with how the product is evolving and what the new threats are. So one of the things that’s absolutely helped us in the past few months is adopting the dynamic update approach. And I love what Easygenerator has — the dynamic updating where we’ve created the content. For example, we are currently in Brazil doing a workshop for about 30 of our partners who help us sell our solutions, and we created pre-work for them that they need to come to the academy and take. Now as we did that, the product team comes and says: no, no, no, these two things need to be added — the partners need to know that. So because we had that dynamic scan file available from Easygenerator, we were just able to go in and make the update, so the learners don’t have to stop and take a version two. They still continue with a notification that these are the two things that have been added. So it’s not that they have to take the whole thing again — they just know what the update is. So for us — and I think for any business — you should think about how you can do things dynamically, not having to put a pause to a course, pull it out and then relaunch it again. And everybody’s learning online so that element is super critical, at least for our business.
Ashling: And just to make sure I understood correctly: the knowledge holders or the business is also coming to you and saying we have an update. So keeping that relevant also lies with the knowledge holders or leaders within the business. Okay, fantastic. And yeah there are lots of questions, which is exciting to see. Fred, I know that there are some you can also help with as well. And that’s a question from Eldon around how you see the difference between training and knowledge management — both are important but also slightly different.
Fred: For me they are two different concepts. They achieve the same need but they are two different things. Basically you manage your knowledge. Training is the action of training people. Both things could be under learning, which is upskilling people. They are two different modalities and they don’t happen at the same time. I need knowledge to upskill myself. And sometimes knowledge could be transferred to a training, but they are really two things that are totally complementary. And it’s funny because in my previous life when I was in both IT and learning, it was always a question about who owned the priority — learning or knowledge management. But at the end we were all working together. So it’s two different elements but always working together.
Ashling: Yes, of course — two different things that complement each other, but both important. And I see even more happening in the chat. I know there’s focus as well on content and training in general, and how we can maybe transform some technical trainings or heavy PowerPoints. And yes, long PowerPoints aren’t maybe how people learn anymore. They are important, we are using them. But there is an opportunity now to turn that knowledge into quick, useful resources that people can access when they need them. And of course sometimes you can even enable those knowledge holders to transform that content themselves, whether it’s something quick or something a little bit longer depending on the topic.
Anji: Can I just quickly add something to that, Ashling? So I work with a whole team of instructional designers, you know, designers and developers. They come from a place where they have done development of traditional training, converting PowerPoints into all different types of training. But I think now, because we are thinking about people who consume content in a TikTok and Instagram manner, how do you cater to all the different learning types — your auditory learners, your visual learners, your kinaesthetic learners? So you have text, but it’s not super text-heavy. You put in flip cards or images or a little bit of 3D scenarios. And when you’re actually doing your voiceover, one of the things we’ve recently tested is we are not just translating the text into voiceover, because we observed — and the feedback we got from our learners was — that it’s very monotonous. So we made it very conversational using AI, using EG’s AI. We set the prompt to make the text conversational. And it was just so interesting to see how the audio flows into the visual. That is one of the things that if there are any instructional designers here, they could really benefit from — we’ve got some amazing feedback on that.
Ashling: So yeah, from the design approach, there are some tools you can use to help make that jump or that change a little bit easier. And I know Fred, that you’ve had experience rolling out this type of approach at Danone. Would you perhaps have anything to add here to the conversation?
Fred: No, I mean it’s quite interesting. I’ve seen the comment from Rob about user-generated content — the tension between, I think it’s Rob who said something about top-down versus bottom-up approach. Just to share a concrete example: I’m a very big fan of the bottom-up approach. When I was at Danone, I purchased Easygenerator for the entire company — meaning the 100,000 employees — and what we saw was more content created, more learning happening outside of the learning team. So technically it’s possible. The full challenge behind that was a political decision to explain to L&D that okay, you’re in charge of training and upskilling people, but in fact you’re just a fraction of what’s happening within the organization. And it’s super complex when you’re in L&D to explain that to other L&D and HR colleagues. By the way, you may only represent maybe 20% of what is upskilling internally. I used to call that shadow learning — these five-day trainings where people are booking meetings, sharing PowerPoints, and you were not capturing anything because you didn’t know that they were doing learning. You were losing the knowledge, losing the information. And then you create a lot of issues — like when experts leave, you’re also losing that knowledge. So that’s why I deployed digital at scale: to be able to capture this shadow learning and take this bottom-up approach.
Fred: So it’s possible, but it’s really something where you need to influence the learning team and HR to let go of a bit of control. It’s really about losing control, guys. Then you do moderation, you can do whatever you need. But the equation about loosening control and not thinking you are the only expert in the company to do training — there are a lot of experts in the company. To be honest, when I was running this, the last numbers when I left the company, I had something like 2,500 authors. And the total workforce was 100,000 people. So you see the gap: 25 times more creators providing learning than the learning team — just because we democratized it. And what we saw at the end was really good content, really good training done by experts that we were able to elevate and share more broadly. But this requires change management and a culture change. Loosening control is not losing your expertise, it’s not losing your job. You just adapt a bit. You’re not the only expert. So this is something important. And the thing is, it’s clearly a question of accepting that you’re not the only expert. You’re much more here as the guardian — like the captain who manages the team. But it’s a mindset change and it’s about democratizing user-generated content through change management. I’m a big fan of that. You see why YouTube does well — because other people are creating content on YouTube. When you see new good content on YouTube, it goes up in the rankings because people are watching it and learning from it. Bottom-up approach, 100%.
Ashling: Yeah, 100%. And I think it’s interesting — I know we’re saying loosening control, and for some people that might strike some fear. But perhaps you could rephrase it as: look at what you’re gaining. You’re gaining knowledge that’s being shared and captured in one space. You’re gaining time, maybe data. You’re getting data, you’re getting knowledge, you’re securing knowledge, you’re making sure you have business continuity.
Fred: In fact, you’re not losing — you’re gaining. You’re getting more than you believe. But it’s also, for me, I don’t think it’s rocket science. I’m not saying let’s put a spaceship on the moon. For me it’s common sense. But sometimes common sense is difficult because it touches humans who have been in a position for 20 years or more, who have control — this is their job. And we come and say, no, it will change. So it’s really a change management approach. It changes the job and says: guys, you’re not the only expert now. Your job will slightly change. You will be the guide more than the trainer.
Ashling: So yeah, taking a new kind of approach to L&D — acting more as a guide, but also freeing up time to focus on more of the strategic priorities. Anji, I know you mentioned some of the design principles, so I’m curious as well: if there are people on this call who would like to start supporting their subject-matter experts or knowledge holders to create training, do you have any practical tips from a design perspective that you would share?
Anji: Oh, 100%. I think I saw the question so I hope I can answer everyone’s points. I’ll cover the design. Somebody also asked about how to integrate this into Salesforce, so people are picking up on that directly. Somebody also asked about gamification. I’m passionate about design because I manage a team of instructional designers, and every day we’re thinking: how do we make it interesting but quick? Everybody needs quality and quantity and speed. We call our Excel Academy a factory, believe it or not. From an engineering mindset, we are running a factory — we need to make sure production happens very quickly and the quality is there and the quantity is there. So for us, one of the things that’s helped wonderfully, especially with Easygenerator, is we can get an SSO done — single sign-on — so I can pass my review links to anybody, to any subject-matter expert. And we faced — let me give you some real use cases. So we had a challenge where we had the Whole60 principle in place, we had an ADDIE model, we had all of these methodologies, but there are always things that can go the other way. So we created content, we were almost about to publish, and then a SME comes in and says: no, no, we need to change this whole thing. Six weeks of work — we had to redo it. So we were thinking: what can we do differently so that doesn’t happen? When we were designing, we shared the authoring access — we made our SMEs the authors of the content. So instead of them putting a comment, me making the change, me uploading it — you see how much time goes there, and that’s the traditional way of doing things — now because, like Fred said, we need to share control and have the flexibility, we make co-authors, we make the SMEs co-authors. They simply go in and make the changes. Then our instructional designers do the final edits and whatever is needed. So that has definitely helped in speeding up the design process enormously.
Anji: And gamification, again guys, it really depends on what creativity you’re bringing and what tools you’re using to gamify, and whether your LMS supports that gamification aspect. But there are so many different ways of doing that. And one thing that helps us with our content is our LMS speaks into Salesforce, so — like I said for one of the earlier questions — how can people learn without interruption? It’s when these courses show up on the CRM itself. So there are ways of integrating systems. If these courses show up in the right product development stage for the product team, in the right sales stage for the sales team, it just works for them.
Ashling: Thanks. No, it made a lot of sense. You shared a lot of practical insights that people can hopefully relate back to what they’re doing and trying to achieve. And I know we’re speaking a lot about change, so I think we should perhaps move the conversation a little bit forward and take a look at how we can make this happen. So yeah, I’d be curious Fred — what do you think is stopping teams from doing this, from learning in the flow of work? And how can they make this part of their learning culture?
Fred: It’s the complexities. It’s not complex in the way you think. It’s an easy question to understand with simple answers. But it’s complex to actually do it — having done it in two very large companies, because Danone was the smallest one at only 100,000 employees. In this range between 100,000 to 500,000 employees, what is complex? First, understanding the culture of the company. You need to clearly understand the culture of the company. Some companies are very top-down. Some others could be a little bit more bottom-up. First of all it’s really about understanding your culture, and then it’s about influencing and creating a dynamic from the top, and also if you can from the bottom. But in some companies you need to start the culture from the top and say: we need to change, we need to democratize. So it’s influence, it’s politics, and you will create that from there. And learning culture is not something that happens in one day. It takes time, it will be a long journey. I like to say that because when I joined Danone they said they wanted to create a learning culture and they were already advanced. And I said: no, guys, we will not create a learning culture in one year. At least I will make people curious. Because I can tell you: learning culture — I’ve been at GE, they started on learning in the 60s, and I’ve seen what learning culture is. It’s when it’s in the DNA of the company and every manager, even without talking about learning, is talking about experience.
Fred: So it’s a long journey. First, understand where you are in the company, try to understand the power and influence, who is doing what. And then it’s about influencing, democratizing, repeating, preaching, coming back like your parents. That’s what we call culture — we have a culture because our parents gave us something that they got from their parents, that they got from their parents. So it takes time: repeating, repeating, and also putting actions in place. And for that you need to really assess your company. What works well? Some companies are top-down, so you have to start from that. Some companies are more mixed. So you have more flexibility but you will have to repeat it. When I have this question about creating a learning culture, I always start by understanding where you are. When you’ve done the assessment of where you are, you have to remap, start, do the estimate, and start where it makes sense. Sometimes it will be about top-down, but you need to understand, repeat and influence. It will be a long journey. I know it’s not the super answer — like say, hey, you can do it this way, it will work. You would have to understand where you are and based on that you would start your plan. So it will never be the same logic. But there are some insights in there.
Ashling: And yeah, I often say I need a mug saying “it depends.” And I know it’s not always the answer people want to hear, but I think you offered some really practical advice there about what they can do.
Fred: It’s the worst thing. I will not tell you it’s magic, do it this way, it will work. It totally depends on the company, and really the culture and the dynamic, and how you get the CEO supportive of that. If you can have the CEO, it will help. But some companies treat learning as the last thing on the list. So you would have to preach for your own house and say it’s important. But yeah, if it was magic, we wouldn’t be having these discussions either.
Ashling: Yeah, yeah, of course. And then Anji, I’d be really curious for your thoughts as well on this topic. What do you think is stopping teams from really adopting learning in the flow of work?
Anji: Culture. Okay — and I’m going to think about it in a slightly different context. Because it’s not about — everybody always thinks it’s people’s responsibility to do the training, to take the training, to learn it. That is what L&D people always think: why are they not taking it, they should do it. One of the things I’ve done differently in my role here is to form the partnerships, make sure — Fred, you said we need to pitch ourselves to other business units. So partnering with other business units, making ourselves known as to what we are doing, why we are doing it, understanding their problems, and literally solving those problems for them. So it’s not that I’ve created content and I’m asking everyone to take it — consumption is going to be God knows what in that case. But if I say: hey Ashling, I’ve come to you, I want to know what is it that you’re struggling with? How would you like me to design the content for you? And give you those practical inputs of learning styles, microlearning, and all of those elements — you are more open to it then. And then you give me the exact context of what you want to learn, why you want to learn it, and what you want the learners to do. And then the content becomes relevant. So the only way we can have that continuous learning is if the content is relevant. Content is king, guys. No matter what we do, if the content is not relevant, no one’s going to consume it. But how do we make that content relevant? By making that partnership. So I make sure I spend time with every single person in the business if possible. I am going around smiling, talking to everyone — technical account managers, SDRs, ADRs. They’ve got to know that we are here to support them. And then that bridge, that partnership, matters a lot.
Ashling: Yeah, acting as a bridge — going to people and asking what they want. I will say from working with clients and rolling out these types of approaches, if we’re solely focusing on the content, we would recommend the same. This is what we see working: asking subject-matter experts what’s important to them, what are they getting stopped at the coffee machine to answer, what email is in their inbox every week. But also, looping back to the beginning of the conversation, looking at the business — what’s important to you as a business, what are your main KPIs, what metrics are up or down? Is there sales conversion down? Are safety incidents up? Starting there and tackling some core concepts. But I also think, when we’re highlighting things here, it might be a chicken-and-egg scenario — which comes first? And at the beginning of the call, Fred, you also mentioned speed. So you do also need to have an infrastructure in place to make sure that your learners are getting to your learning, or your learning is getting to your learners, at the moment of need.
Fred: It’s like a puzzle — you need to have all the pieces of the puzzle and put them together. You have to have the technology. I used to have a lot of analogies. For me the analogy would be the pipe. You have a pipe and something is flowing through the pipe. You have to have the best pipe ever to not create any bottleneck. That would be the delivery method. Try to make sure you have the right delivery method — LIFOW if you can — but having something that supports your delivery method as fast as possible. And then of course the content: if I’m putting something in the pipe that doesn’t look good, people will get it and they won’t care. So it’s a question about the speed of delivery, the content of what you’re delivering, also the modality. Because now you will see that modality will change in real time based on the different learning styles — people see and absorb things in different ways. So it’s really a combination of a lot of things together: having the right infrastructure, the right content, the right modality, and all of that will support the learning.
Ashling: Yeah, of course. And I think you wrapped it up nicely — the combination of things together. And thankfully there are tools on either end that can help you. So like RiseUp helping you get your content to people, or Easygenerator on our end helping you capture the information that you need. So yeah, thank you both so much for the conversation today. I know we have a little bit of time left and there are questions in the chat, so hopefully we can answer a few more of those.
Ashling: I’m trying to have a look at the chat to see what’s there. Anji, maybe you can help answer a question from Sylvia, and speak a bit about how you’re technically integrating the content into the learning systems — like you mentioned Salesforce.
Anji: Right. So we have got an API that connects our LMS into Salesforce. So you can connect through there depending on which particular system you use. All the systems integrate with Salesforce in so many different ways. So we connect ours using an API — we’ve got a custom-made API using Make that we use because we can make it do more things and go to the places we need. It’s not the native API offered from the provider, but we use our own API. Being a technology company, of course.
Ashling: Thanks Anji. It makes a lot of sense. And I know that providers will also offer different integrations as well, so it’s always good to check to see what’s available. I see there’s another question from Ellie on having any tips about making learning more accessible for learners, so supporting their different needs. I know you were touching on this Fred, so perhaps you can offer some insight here.
Fred: There are many things you can do. And I see something about voiceover — it’s one solution. Now it’s quite easy to have voiceover on any type of digital content. So if you have a SCORM module, technically I think Easygenerator supports this natively. Having voiceover is one solution. Subtitles is one solution. Let me give you a simple example: my kids have some issues with reading. They can read but they don’t anchor it. The only way for them to anchor it is to listen. So voiceover provides a new modality for this type of learner. Some others will be much more about how you interact with things — in French I know the word, it’s kinaesthetic. The fact that some people need to learn by touching is great news with technology now, because we can achieve multimodal delivery. So with one piece of content we will be able to provide different types of modalities, and that makes it the best for people. And the same story for people who have disabilities around colors — you can build in color adjustments. What’s important is that L&D will have to provide, and as a technology company we need to have solutions for that.
Fred: And the good news is we can do that. But for learners now, we know that it’s a no-brainer — you need to have that, because otherwise you skip a big part of the population. So voiceover is one solution. But I will go even further than that. Working with colors, with animation, for people that need that to learn. For me, for example, I need to always have something in my hand to be able to retain something. Technology will support that. So voiceover is one good thing.
Ashling: Yeah, the same — I use fidget spinners as well after breaking many, many a pen handle. So yeah, I’m the same there. I have to have something practical. Thank you for that Fred. I see even more questions — there’s one coming from Eldon about how we compare just-in-time learning and microlearning within a knowledge management system. And yeah, Anji, I know you’ve been talking about this a bit so perhaps you can offer some more insight.
Anji: Absolutely. This is exactly what we do in our company, in our firm here. So what I’ve done is I’ve made sure that we’ve mapped it. So I’ve got that whole framework ready of what the roles are — pre-sales, post-sales — what are the roles you are catering to, what are the capabilities those roles offer, and what are the different sales stages or product development stages or whatever it is that your organization is doing. Have that mapping done. And our LMS allows us to skill map — pretty much all LMSs do. I think that’s now an absolute essential. And once you’ve mapped it and integrated your systems into your Salesforce CRM, Salesforce has integrated it automatically. That is the beauty of technology — it automatically prompts you. That is your just-in-time training. So I’m going for a meeting and I have full access to Salesforce, and that is where I can go and say: what training should I look into? And then you have categorization — this is your one-hour training, this is your micro training, this is bite-sized. Have all those categorizations ready as well. That is what learners like — make their life easy. Do not put the word “mandatory” because then they won’t do it for knowledge, they’ll do it because it’s a tick box. And that’s where L&D has to change its perception: we can’t make them do things because it’s mandatory. How can you creatively still make them do the training without using the word mandatory? This is what you can do: the skills mapping, making it available in the systems they are using. And making sure your systems are integrating with each other. When you’re doing workshops — blended, like I said, we are doing a catalyst workshop and we’ve got the pre-work already in the system and we make sure people do it, and then I’ve got this chat going on in the background: well done, this person has done it — you know, like a gamification moment. Well done Ashling, you’ve done it, you’re my star. I don’t have to give you anything, but even that word of praise and creativity matters.
Ashling: So yeah, and I think you’ve touched on another question that we’re getting in the chat about how you can blend self-paced content with classroom training. And Fred, maybe you have some insights here that you can share.
Fred: Yeah, I can. I mean I like this question because as I said, I’ve been on the other side and I was always struggling with that, and it’s also a reason why I joined RiseUp. Because when I saw the solution I said it’s something slightly different. And why? Because I like the way we talk about blended learning now. Because at first blended learning meant different types of modalities. But now most people when they say blended learning, they mean blending synchronous learning with asynchronous learning. And that’s what we want at RiseUp — it’s really in the DNA of the company. Every single training has been designed to be a sequence of synchronous and asynchronous learning. Synchronous learning is mainly online class or face-to-face training. But asynchronous is whatever you want. So how do we do that — first of all you get a solution that supports that. Because not all solutions are designed to support blended learning. Otherwise it’s a collection of learning that you try to make function together, which is slightly different. So to answer that: I have a solution that supports that. Otherwise you would struggle to create this logic of blended learning — you would do a lot of manual action, a lot of admin tasks that are not really relevant to learning.
Anji: I just want to add one more point there because sometimes we miss it. We categorize online learning as one thing and we categorize workshops or face-to-face sessions as one thing, and we call it blended training. But I think the end outcome is analytics. How are you going to measure the ROI? How are you going to measure the success of it — the business outcomes or the impact of your training? So the way you design your blended training should all be on your system, in your LMS. That is critical, at least from my perspective, because then I can easily show it to the business that they came to the system, they took the pre-work, nine out of ten people completed it. During the workshop, we make them log into the system, take an assessment then and there — keep them engaged, because then they’re hooked to the system. Once they’ve finished, we send them the post-workshop assessment that is also on the system. So you can literally marry every single element in one report. And that is what the business wants. So yeah, leveraging those learning platforms and learning systems like RiseUp.
Ashling: I know that. Yeah. And Anji and I had seen some conversations recently about how SCORM is now irrelevant and AI can do everything. And yeah, it’s nice to see that’s not the case in this conversation. L&D people, we are here to stay. We are just evolving with the technology. No one is taking us away.
Anji: And this is something I’m so passionate about. Ashling, you knew that, right? That L&D people are here to stay. SCORM is here to stay. Oh my God — it doesn’t matter what level of AI comes in. SCORM is here to stay.
Ashling: Yeah, of course, I agree. And then yeah, we also need a modality to deliver our training. So it’s nice to have them there. I am conscious of the time, and I know that yeah, it’s the end of the day for some people and the beginning for others. So I do want to thank you both, Anji and Fred, for coming. I really enjoyed the conversation and I believe everyone did too. So thank you both so much for being willing to share your insights.
Transcript produced from VEED subtitles. Speaker attribution assigned based on context and role.
