Learning Needs Tool: Ship Training Your Team Actually Wants

The horizon keeps shifting. We’ve learned new words like “upskilling” and secondments”. Internal mobility is becoming increasingly important. We’re seeing the biggest tech giants initiate layoffs while also hiring because they are focused on efficiency, but also need new skills.

With roles and business objectives changing, it’s a lot harder to gauge which skills are a priority as you develop the next training. It’s time to remove the guesswork of identifying which skills learners need.

We’ve shown you a better way to launch training projects and engage subject-matter experts with our Projects and Experts Engagement tools. Now, we’re introducing a learner-centric feature for building the right training roadmap with our Learning Needs Tool.

Read on to find out more!

Crowdsourcing learning needs shouldn’t be a chore

Traditional training needs analysis is out of sync with the flexibility L&D teams need. Generally, most teams conduct an analysis annually - or biannually at best. By the time it’s complete, your teams could have a whole new set of unmet learning needs.

Fortunately, there’s a better way to find out what your teams need - and want - to learn: ask them. This is a key facet of upskilling from within. Encourage people to reflect on their aspirations, and help them see L&D as more than a box-ticking exercise.

However, the reality is that not every L&D team has the time or capacity to create, distribute, and analyze regular pulse surveys. That’s because they’re spending far too long creating eLearning resources or being distracted by time-consuming tasks like chasing compliance.

There should be an easy way to build your training roadmap while including input from your learners. That’s why we’ve built a tool to make it quick and painless to find out where your teams need the most help, and how you can address these learning needs.

Introducing: Learning Needs

3 steps to build your training roadmap with our Learning Needs Tool

Our Learning Needs Tool uses three steps to take the hassle out of asking your learners about their training needs, priorities, and objectives.

1. Collect learners’ requests directly on the platform in real-time

In 360Learning, prompt learners to request new learning needs in a 3-question form. Admins can ensure learners include the objective and scope of a learning need. Now, everybody goes to the same place when they have a new skill request as they do when they are ready to learn.

Remote onboarding? Data analytics? Axe-throwing? No matter what your learners need help with, they can let others know by declaring these needs with the necessary context. This gives L&D teams clear visibility over these needs and lets them respond with the right expertise.

Once you’ve done that, it’s time for a little collaboration.

2. Encourage collaboration between teams

It’s always hard to gauge the level of interest in different learning needs if they’re only declared in individual silos. That’s why the 360Learning platform makes collaboration between learners a core part of declaring learning needs.

As soon as a learner expresses a need, the platform prompts them to share it with other teams. Learners can upvote needs they also have - which makes it easy for L&D managers to rank. Upvoters can also add details or clarifications to make the process even more accurate.

More often than not, internal subject-matter-experts can help develop the skills and expertise your learners need. All you need is a forum where you can identify these needs, identify experts, and iterate to improve content over time. Save time and resources by enabling internal experts to quickly create courses that meet your learners’ needs.

Finally, it’s up to L&D leaders to track these learning needs and build a training roadmap.

3. Monitor learning needs and build your training roadmap

With the Learning Needs Tool, visually prioritize learning needs according to the number of upvotes they get. This gives you a clear sense of the skills and expertise people want to develop, and exactly how many people share that need. Filter and sort needs to stay on track with your learning strategy.

Having a clearly-defined list of the learning needs declared by your teams is a helpful way to make your learning strategy real. Build a more accurate and targeted training roadmap and deliver the exact needs expressed by learners. Empower your learners to take charge of their own development needs, set their own goals, and contribute their own subject-matter expertise to help others.

Your learners want to share their priorities - you just need to ask!

Leading companies around the world are looking for alternatives to traditional top-down prescriptive approaches to L&D. Our Learning Needs Tool offers one such alternative, putting learners in control by giving them the ability to quickly and easily declare training needs. Upskill from within and develop the learning strategy your teams need to achieve business goals.

With 360Learning, you can analyze learning needs in minutes, not months. This helps you put people at the center of your learning strategy, and distribute ownership of your learning across your organization. It’s all part of collaborative learning at scale.

Interested in the rest of our Collaborative Learning features? Check out our Relevance Score, Video Pitch Assessment, Reactions, Authoring Tool, Discussion Forum, Projects Tool, and Expert Engagement Tool.

If you’d like to see how our comprehensive learning platform can help you, book a free demo with one of our learning experts!