Martyn Sloman forecast that corporate culture will move towards more ‘learner centric’ solutions during the next ten years. This will ensure employees are focused on learning the more specialised and specific skills they need to be effective at increasingly technical job roles.

Sloman, whose new e-book 'L&D2020: A Guide for the Next Decade' will be published in September, was speaking to leading learning and development professionals at e2train’s user group meeting. The event celebrated ten years in business for e2train as suppliers of learning and performance technologies and services.  It was held at Claridge’s Hotel, London.

Explained Sloman: “The next 10 years will see a shift in balance of the learning and development professional’s skill set towards greater business understanding, change management, organisation development and use of new technologies. At the most basic level, learning and development builds organisational benefits by enabling them to offer higher value products and services. The challenge is how to do it in practice in the context of the organisation.  Hence the profession needs both a new mindset and a new skill set which is designed to meet individual rather than collective needs.

e2train Business Development Director Martin Belton backed up Sloman’s comments. He drew upon e2train’s own experience of market trends, working with over 200 clients in the learning and performance sector. Explained Belton, “The more widely learning is available through free channels such as YouTube, the greater the need for learning professionals to understand and identify what isn’t available but still critical. That inevitably means a greater focus on individual learner demands. We’re going to get that most easily through better reporting and performance measurement. We are also seeing a move toward learning professionals adopting ‘guerrilla’ corporate learning tactics. That means  using local intelligence to deliver tailored learning where it will have the greatest effect rather than just creating all encompassing learning programmes designed around meeting blanket learning objectives”.

The discussion about what learning would look like in ten years time was sparked by the celebrations at the event marking the company’s first ten years of operations.  Looking back, Managing Director Rob Caul commented; “In 2000, most people were still connecting up to the Internet using dial up! We had to be really careful to create elearning content we which would load a page inside 15 seconds which today seems an age.” Rob concluded by thanking the many clients who have worked with e2train during the last 10 years. “We have been fortunate to be able to draw on the collective knowledge and advice of some expert learning and development professionals to develop the Kallidus software. That has contributed significantly towards us becoming the UK’s most popular learning and performance management system today. We look forward to their support and further advice in the next ten years.”