How to Solve the Biggest Problems with Career and Learning?

When it comes to career development and learning, it’s never easy. Look at the findings from different studies that have been conducted on the given subject and you’ll find that they all highlight the same fact that it is only 10-20% of learning that gets transferred back to the workplace. It is indeed astonishing and even more, it highlights significant problems in our patterns related to career and learning.

The problems could be as given below:

1. There is a lot of emphasis on remembering the content with a little focus on practical application of what is being taught.
2. There is a complete failure in designing learning modules with an objective of meeting business objectives and organizational goals in the long run.
3. The learners are, often, found disengaged with the patterns of learning that are followed by educational institutions.
4. One of the major problems found plaguing career and learning sector is that both the parties- learning providers and learners, are focused on before and during learning aspects without giving any importance to what happens after learning.
5. There are no significant returns on investments made in learning and also, there is a complete failure in quantifying the effectiveness of courses and training that are undertaken.
6. Even if the learning modules are designed in a spectacular manner, they are not executed fully in most of the cases.

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Finding Solution to the Problems

Since we have already mentioned that the problems associated with career and learning have nothing to do with the design of the learning experience, it’s time to understand that solution to existing problems lie in carrying out the application change.

Given below are different strategies that may be deployed in order to address the problems associated with career and learning in today’s time:

• Efforts must be made to create a robust learning transfer process so as to be able to address the problems that are associated with the application of learning initiatives. To make this happen, it is recommended to start with the end in mind. This will help address the challenge of aligning learning with organizational goals and objectives.
• Proficiency is required in identifying the training needs of learners so as to bridge the skills and knowledge shortfall.
• Learners should be taught to focus on the right finish line that is they must be made to shift their focus from simply completing the course to imbibing skills in a manner that can help them retain their learning for a lifelong period.
• The moment learners start taking the responsibility of organizational success on their shoulders and stop passing it on to the next individual in the chain- the effectiveness of learning programs and training that gets imparted can easily be seen. It’s quite simple- actions always speak louder than words.
• Another highly effective method of addressing problems associated with career and learning is to aim at training learners for behaviors on an everyday basis in the workplace. Only when the learning providers get specific about the behaviors that should be seen in the workplace, a change can be bought that is capable of supporting the business goals and objectives.
• Another important thing to be taken care of is that learning should get imparted at the individual level. This is vital if a real clarity has to be created for learners as to what all they should be doing when they join their workplaces. What needs to be remembered is that every student is unique- their experiences, ability to learn and implement and their motivation, it all varies. Thus, it is not one size fits all theory that can be implemented for ‘learning transfer’. And this is one of the main reasons for which E-learning courses are gaining a lot of popularity over traditional classroom learning methods. The students get to choose their own pace and style of learning, and there is a lot of flexibility that is offered to learners.

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