Since the Workforce is Overwhelmed, 3 Things to Keep in Mind!

Written by: Jason Averbook, CEO at The Marcus Buckingham Company

As we enter 2016, we continually hear and actually feel based on the new workforce tools, continuous emails and ongoing dialog with our managers and team leaders about new opportunities to learn and other ways to engage in what is happening at work. I was fascinated, though not surprised, to see a recent infographic from Bersin by Deloitte about the "Modern Learner" . A few key takeaways for me that I think are brutally relevant to the entire HR technology space in 2016 I will highlight below:

1) 1% of a typical workweek is all that employees have to focus on training and development

• This statistic begs and BEGS again for all of us in the learning, HR technology and organizational development space to think about how to embed learning and growth opportunities within day-to-day work instead of "siloing" learning opportunities as "learning opportunities". Much of this is change management and positioning that we all can do better but it is crucial based on this statistic that the workforce cant be expected to enroll and pull training but it must be pushed to them in real-time based on the context of the work they are doing in the systems they are using already to do their jobs.

2) 37% of the global workforce is expected to be predominately mobile by the end of 2015

• This statistic is SO IMPORTANT and reiterates that if our processes, systems and content are not being deployed via mobile devices today we have already missed the mark, period. This is not just watching videos via a device, this is making sure that we have intelligent transactional and interactional tools for the workforce that not just house content but prescribe content in an intelligent, context and content sensitive way based on other data and machine learning about what work is being done. Learning and coaching has always been best with a real-time, on the job application of it, and todays application requires real-time, on the job and on the device in order to truly add value to the workforce.

3) We have between 5 and 10 seconds to catch someone's attention before they turn away combined with the fact that people are unlocking their devices approximately 9 times every hour.

• ​This is called in my mind - TADD (technology based attention deficit disorder) or in other words - anyone who rolls out tools, content and processes to the workforce must make sure they catch attention immediately, show a quick "what's in it for me" value proposition and are designed to work with someone's work, not against it or in opposition to it like many of our HR tools today. More than ever, the importance of user acceptance, change management and pure beauty when designing tools is here and will never go away. Time will become harder to get and patience of the workforce will continue to wain. Tools have to show and market quick value, be beautiful, be easy and most of all, get people talking about the value they get out of them to drive adoption. Without this, stop rolling out tools because they will fail.

These types of research are so important to all that we do. 2016 is a year to finally put the workforce first in deploying tools, not the HR or administrative function. If you tattoo "WF" on your arm meaning workforce first and look at it daily, your chances of a successful deployment and long term value add to the business is guaranteed.

For more information go to ​https://theea.org/