6 Reasons Why Agile Learning is Best for Learning and Development?

What is agile learning?

Agile learning is adopting agile methodology in an employee learning and development program. Kanban boards, work sprints, and daily scrums are all project management tools and methods used within an agile learning framework.

Agile learning is a relatively newer approach to learning and development programs that emphasizes flexibility, collaboration, and speed. A group of software developers in 2001 pioneered the concept of agility in learning to help them build more efficient applications by developing software program in smaller chunks, collecting feedback, and implementing it between cycles. It helped them assess their progress and realign their objects while developing to ensure they were moving in the right direction.

What are the benefits of agile learning?

Agile learning has many benefits. It promotes flexibility, adaptability, and receptivity. And this mindset embodies all sorts of benefits:

1. Adaptability to change: It ensures that the employees will be fast enough to catch up. It helps them build new skills and capabilities, but most of all, it teaches them to take risks and stay open-minded. It also promotes learning from their failures as well as from their successes. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics 2018 found that organizations with less than 100 employees only give 12 minutes of training every six months. As a result, knowledge decay sets in very quickly. Agile learning through continuous learning prepares the learners to adapt.

2. Better cross-team cooperation: It promotes knowledge through sharing and cross-team cooperation, diminishing the chances of vital information ever falling through the cracks.

3. Increased customer focus: It goes hand in hand with a customer-based culture. After all, the motive is to create an environment where the decision-making process is sped up and there is a constant feedback loop. Agile teams base business processes in the environment on what customers value the most. Using interactive media and virtual training, agile learning prepares employees for every customer service scenario. It points out new challenges and customer pain points. This increased customer focus positively impacts businesses.

4. Improved overall efficiency: Employee training that focuses on agile learning makes companies more successful. Because it teaches employees to make mistakes and try out new ideas, it creates a company culture where knowledge and skills are more important than sticking to the straight and narrow out of fear of failure approach.

5. Flexible in nature: Agile learning’s incremental approach allows adjusting throughout the development process. This contrasts with ADDIE, a linear training development method that requires analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation steps to be completed one at a time and in order.

6. Speed up the learning process: It helps employees to learn faster by reducing the time they must wait between training sessions. Employees gain confidence through the instant feedback approach of agile learning, which results in a swifter upskilling process.

How do we build an agile learning culture in the workplace?

Start by implementing the following employee training strategy.

1. Continuous learning: Employee learning and training should not have an end date. Instead, there should be a culture where continuous learning is not only encouraged but celebrated. It is the only way to keep the employees engaged, fulfilled, and striving for excellence. A way to encourage continuous learning is to develop upskilling programs. It will help the employees feel more fulfilled as they develop new skills and make promotions more accessible.

2. Microlearning: Microlearning delivers learning in short bursts. This type of content is produced and consumed quickly, making it ideal for agile learning. Microlearning is the ultimate solution for complex training content like compliance. The bite-sized pieces of knowledge will make retaining crucial information easier.

3. Continuous communication and collaboration: It promotes cross-team communication and collaboration and that, in return, boosts cross-team trust.

4. Mobile learning: Agile learning is all about flexibility. One needs to deliver the content in a way that is easy for your employees to consume, and mobile learning does that. Most of your employees, especially those remotely training, will prefer to consume content on their phones. Mobile learning allows them to use social media and cloud computing to make the most of a session.

5. Peer learning: Peer learning is an extension of continuous cross-team communication. Peer learning can bring in experts from other companies as guest instructors. An agile company culture allows the employees to become instructors on subjects they may have unique expertise in.

6. Team learning: This extends the idea that the best learning happens when people engage in communication. Team learning means setting up training tasks to promote collaboration among the employees. It lets the employees learn from each other. Ultimately, it generates a culture where they can reach out to one another when they need to for work matters later.

7. Flipped learning: Flipped learning involves delivering the core content before a hands-on classroom session rather than lecturing. The idea is that the employees can better use their live sessions by diving deep into the topic and engaging in conversation if they have already studied it on a fundamental level beforehand.

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Conclusion

Agile learning democratizes and demystifies agile methodology. Agile learning makes employee training less rigid, fast-paced, and effective. Organizations should try to integrate agile learning into their training if they struggle to hit objectives, achieve high customer satisfaction rates, or suffer from low morale. More importantly, it helps to build an agile culture from the ground up. An agile culture makes the employees feel seen, appreciated, and brave enough to attempt new things. This culture helps companies survive and thrive in this crazy, ever-changing world. You can read more here about agile learning design.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Agile in simple terms?

Agility is about adapting and moving quickly in the face of change.

What is agile learning education?

Agile learning education is adopting agile methodology in an employee learning and development program.

What is the benefit of learning agile?

Agile learning makes employee training less rigid, fast-paced, and effective. Organizations should try to integrate agile learning into their training if they struggle to hit objectives, achieve high customer satisfaction rates, or suffer from low morale.

When do you need agile principles?

Organizations should try to integrate agile learning into their training if they struggle to hit objectives, bring products to market on time, achieve high customer satisfaction rates, or suffer from low morale.

What is agile in learning and development?

By agile, we mean that a continuous approach to learning is taken, be it in terms of the content or the courses. This is done with the help of continuous feedback loops that regularly iterate on course creation and create highly collaborative working environments.