Following the resounding success of our inaugural Learning League UK customer event last year, we recently brought together our amazing 360Learning and Looop by 360Learning customers once more for a great experience filled with networking, insights from industry leaders, and invaluable knowledge sharing.
Let's dive into the highlights of this unforgettable event that left our attendees eager for more.
Unlocking the potential of AI in learning and development
David James, CLO at 360Learning, kicked off the event with an enlightening keynote which explored the profound implications of AI for the future of L&D. David engaged the audience by asking them about their experiences with generative AI at work, revealing a fascinating mix of curiosity and enthusiasm among attendees.
David emphasised that AI isn't just about scaling the status quo by creating more generic courses and getting more courses out the door quicker. It’s designed to help from the inside of an organisation.
He stated that tech vendors will be critical in developing ringfenced AI solutions within their products to allow organisations to leverage internal data to validate business problems, the first key step to building an effective L&D strategy. We learned that AI should be harnessed to:
- Identify work cohorts efficiently
- Generate support and guidance seamlessly using internal resources
- Empower subject-matter experts to customize resources for specific needs.
What else did we cover at The Learning League? Read on to learn more about proving your impact in L&D.
Related: Join the waitlist for our free AI certification for L&D.
Masterclass: Identifying KPIs and calculating L&D impact
It’s no secret that proving and quantifying impact continues to be one of the greatest challenges facing L&D teams. It’s a challenge that’s even more pressing today, as we face tougher economic conditions and budget cuts.
While our training programmes might not fit into a neat ROI box, there are ways to identify and calculate their impact, as demonstrated by Lina Garcia, Client Success Director, UK at 360Learning in her masterclass. She shed light on the crucial role of ROI in:
- Establishing credibility for training efforts
- Aligning training with strategic business objectives
- Securing support and resources for the training team
Next, Lina shared two common ways to estimate training ROI:
- ROI associated with L&D team productivity: ROI linked to training cost optimization (i.e. achieving better/more training with the same resources)
- ROI related to the enhancement of business performance: ROI related to changing the behaviours of business teams, such as improvement in sales team quota or the reduction of customer service tickets.
Lina went on to define impact in both quantitative and qualitative measures and also shared an ROI calculator based on industry type. You can download the ROI calculator here.
Mitsubishi Electric UK's training academy success story
Lance Hitchins, Head of Customer Experience at Mitsubishi Electric UK, shared an inspiring success story of how they revamped their customer training using 360Learning. Lance shared how he and his team successfully moved from fully classroom-based learning, delivered across seven sites, to a blended learning approach whereby they digitised 80% of the programme and created a two-hour virtual workshop to give attendees the opportunity to collaborate with their peers and provide feedback.
Lance shared the incredible results so far:
- Increased volume of attendees from firstly 12-90, and now unlimited
- Increased delivery efficiency by over 800% thanks to trainers not needing to be present for in-person training
- Reduced costs for customers, saving them 66% of the original course costs
- Sustainability savings: 9,687 reduction in plastic folders, 1,259,310 reduction in printed paper sheets, and 484,350 potentially saved miles (based on a 50 mile round trip to the training centre).
Read the full story of Mitsubishi Electric UK's success with 360Learning for a dose of motivation!
Winning over subject-matter experts: challenges and triumphs
In our interactive breakout session, attendees explored the art of winning over subject-matter experts (SMEs). They identified some common challenges, like the time crunch that often plagues SMEs, who tend to view L&D contributions as secondary to their main roles. It can also be a bit of a puzzle to pinpoint the real experts in fast-growing organisations, especially when managers sometimes act as gatekeepers.
But attendees didn’t only dwell on the challenges – there were some great success stories to learn from, too. One standout example involved getting middle managers together to share their experiences and advice. In this scenario, L&D played a facilitation role and then repurposed the content for broader use. Technology played a crucial part too, making content creation and collaboration a breeze. For instance, AI was used to whip up transcripts of interviews with SMEs, saving L&Ds and SMEs a significant amount of time.
Building trust and credibility with SMEs was another hot topic. Some strategies that stood out included creating platforms for SMEs to shine, offering instant feedback through interviews or events, and making sure SMEs got the recognition and feedback they deserved for their contributions.
Teaching SMEs how to create content was another discussion point. The key here was to help them understand the inner workings of L&D, provide templates, offer trial tasks, and guide them in crafting engaging content (even better if you can use AI to kick things off!) When it comes to working together, having a clear content plan, relevant courses, and collaborative validation makes a world of difference.
And sticking to the topic of making SME lives easier, we went on to introduce something very special happening at 360Learning.
Want more subject-matter experts on your team?
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Introducing 360Learning's latest AI-powered capabilities
As David James highlighted in his keynote, the secret to a successful AI strategy is combining it with a human touch and making L&D teams the hero. With that in mind, Mike Collins, Head of Customer Success at Looop by 360Learning, introduced attendees to 360Learning's new AI-powered authoring features.
In his demonstration, Mike highlighted that L&Ds and subject-matter experts should be seen as "content superheroes", providing much-needed additional resources to the time-strapped L&D department.
Mike also shared how these built-in AI features allow L&D teams to empower SMEs to accelerate content production, but still retain control of the prompts, tone of voice, inclusivity, course length and structure of the course. It also guides the SME on how to start, how to create key takeaways, and how to build knowledge checks or custom in-house technical prompts.
Attendees also got a sneak peek at the new AI certification course from 360Learning, designed to boost AI skills for L&D professionals. Interested in becoming an expert in AI? Learn more about AI certification here.
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