What do learners want?

Several members of our panel have taken steps, in their various ways, to find answers to this question. Those answers proved, in many cases, surprising.

One of our delegates, from a global media concern, has responsibility for his employer's intranet, and instituted research into what users really wanted from it. The answer was something quite basic, and in a sense obvious - but nevertheless came as a considerable surprise to management. It turned that the users wanted information about how to make the most of their employee benefits.

Probing the needs of inductees in this company it was further found that this group felt a pressing need for information on how to carry out specific tasks related to their jobs. They wanted to get doing as soon as possible.

In contrast, research among new starters carried out by a delegate from an international name in leisure, to establish what joiners most wanted out of that company, found that the demand was for information about NVQs - i.e. transferrable qualifications.

The contrast between these two examples is instructive. The former company has a global name that looks good on any cv, and has traditionally been first choice of ambitious graduates in the field. The second company, though no less well-known a name, has for the most part a low-skilled workforce with high staff turnover.

In the former company the employees primary concern is to demonstrate their worth quickly, the faster to entrench themselves within the company and align themselves with this powerful brand. They are probably assuming that they will stay at the company for at least two or three years. In the second example inductees, already seeing beyond this period of employment to the next, look to the external endorsement offered by a recognised qualification to ensure their further career progress.

Clearly such an exercise raises many issues for the organisation concerned. But for our purposes, perhaps the most important point to fasten on is something that really ought to be just common sense: learners are chiefly motivated by self-interest. The things they want from the company will relate to their own personal needs and development, rather than to any agenda of the organisation's.

'Brand you' and the labour market

Which is not to say that employees don't care about things like brand values. On the contrary, if the organisation has powerful brand values, they are extremely keen to leverage that brand equity for themselves - to bolster up 'brand you': credibility by association.

In promoting themselves to the employment market, employees instinctively want to attach themselves to powerful brands - and benefit from the cachet that results from having worked at a company famed for turning out well-trained people. 'He's a McKinsey man', carries a certain clout. If you've spent a year working for McDonald's, it can be assumed fairly safely that you know a thing or two about unit consistency in catering.

And if employees are not lucky enough to work for such a company, the next best thing is the credibility offerd by a recognised qualification, whether it's a degree from Ashridge, a diploma from the Chartered Institute of Management, or an ECDL certificate from the local learndirect.

It's all about branding. And this principle operates throughout the labour market, from the bottom to the top.

Employees not altruists shock

So here is shock one that hits the organisation struggling to become learner-centric. Employees do not necessarily keep the organisation's long-term goals in their daily prayers. In fact their black little hearts are more often than not plotting an exit strategy - to a better-paid job, to a more prestigious company. And their chief motivation in pursuing learning and development - unless it is merely to put a tick in the box and hang on to the job they have - will be to further their own selfish ends.

The news is worse than that, even. We might not be talking about the whole workforce here; we might only be talking about the most motivated and ambitious segment of it - which is, paradoxically, the segment you most need to encourage and retain.

However, unless the organisation is able to engage with this perhaps unpalatable truth it will not be able to motivate its employees to learn - as the learning function becomes less and less about compelling attendance, and more and more about marketing the value proposition of its learning provision.

Next>>
Intro:Moving from 'training push' to 'learning pull'
Marketing becomes crucial
The challenge to organisational leadership