The 70:20:10 challenge

70:20:10 - Whats all the fuss about blended learning and why do we need to think differently about todays modern learners?

Our May forum took inspiration from Learning at Work Week, focusing on the 70:20:10 Learning and Development model1, and its relevance in the world of work today. A longer session this time and were delighted to welcome three outstanding guest speakers: David James, UK Lead for Looop and Laura Jubb, Head of L&D at Volkswagen. We again used the fabulous space at Kinnarps - our thanks to them for their hospitality. The forum kicked off with an open discussion about the model, our interpretation of it, and the practicalities in our workplaces. So what’s it all about?

For the purpose of the forum, we outlined our interpretation as:

70% Experiential Learning - collaboration and on the job development
20% Social Learning - peer learning, coaching and mentoring, forums and discussion
10% Formal Learning - classroom based or off the job

Now the question… How can we support this, and what are the challenges of getting near to this model in our organisations?

Overall it was agreed that the stats were about right for the majority of organisations. A common theme was that time and budget restrict the amount of formal development, with most being learnt on the job simply to get the work done. Another challenge discussed was how to get the support of the leadership team - but more importantly ensuring that they are also developing themselves. There seems to be a general shift away from the culture of curriculum-based learning, with a move towards developing a more integrated approach. Have a look at some of the current, practical experiences that were brought to the discussion:

One organisation is moving away from individual development, and focusing instead on team development, so identifying gaps in the team and working together towards those development needs
Formal (classroom based) training is now avoided as much as possible, with much more emphasis on networking events both inside and outside the organisation, holding cross function and even cross country forums to discuss development opportunities
A challenge raised is how we go about measuring the success of a more informal learning offering
The L&D function is changing, moving more towards a Business Partner role and less towards stand up delivery
Action Learning Sets seem popular - with the idea that 5 minds are better than 1 when there is a topic to discuss
The Line Manager role has developed more into a coach/mentor role – so as HR professionals let’s help to support and develop them
It’s difficult to manage this new unstructured way of learning, and there is a need to create a more ongoing flow

More and more often, staff are using Google to find the content they need… (Isn’t there a comparison here with home life?) Most learning is done by finding things out yourself and not relying on training courses. To summarise, the phrase “Add, Embed, Extract, Share” emerged as a sound bite to describe how development is working right now.

In wrapping up, some significant points came to light:

As new graduates are coming into one organisation, changing mindsets are in evidence - they are going off and doing their research on what they want to learn about and coming back to discuss their findings with L&D
Companies recognise that they should be helping their individuals grow, focusing on both the company need and the individual
Knowledge sharing is absolutely key - 10 people on a training course is 10 days out of the office - in the classroom, every minute counts 
The more informal the training, the more formal the values need to be

So what are we saying? That Learning and Development needs to be collaborative, compassionate, customer aware and nimble. Perhaps L&D has now become a kind of ‘curating role’, gathering all the information and making sense of it, and being more of a facilitator, which is a shift for the L&D Professional.

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