In early 1913, the first Autobahn was created in Germany- a disruptive innovation for its time. But it was only in the 1940s that the role of Autobahns in the transportation of World War II equipment took on a pivotal, almost indispensable role.

Global events may not always create technological advancement, but they certainly accelerate it. With hybrid work becoming a norm across large organizations and small ones alike, how much technology will be used to balance face-to-face learning events in the future?

With companies such as The New York Times, Salesforce, and others announcing a major investment in education this year, the possibilities are exciting. Imagine students receiving educational opportunities via hologram or participating in digital educational experiences that incorporate simulations and artificial intelligence.

When it comes to EdTech trends, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: blended learning is king.

Technology has been increasingly integrated into workplace learning across industries, and it is taking center stage in the field of education. Colleges and universities now use traditional corporate training applications to deliver videos, manage user compliance, and capture performance data. Students are using LMS systems to create social networks, collaborate on projects, and complete group assignments. In this article, we look into a few trends that could potentially shape the future of EdTech.

Gaps In EdTech’s Role In Education Will Continue To Close

According to a PwC report from July 2021, there are 25 areas where EdTech can have a tremendous impact on education, including learning analytics platforms, online tutoring media, communications tools, and virtual school systems but these areas have not yet been addressed by current market solutions.

As was the case with technology in the late nineties, EdTech will eventually undergo a period of consolidation where several small players with complementing offerings will be bought out by one large player offering a suite of tools at the disposal of an L&D team or an educational institution.

As a result, we will be using fewer tools to do more, and this in turn can make EdTech more accessible to the institutions that need them in order to teach hundreds and thousands of young learners. Think tools that allow users to interact with content, provide completion reports at the back-end, allow users to submit and review peer assignments, and even allow them to sit for proctored exams, all from a single dashboard. Such a technology framework can remove siloes, streamline learning, and make it easy for even non-technical stakeholders to access the full potential of the solution.

EdTech Tools Will Be Simpler Rather Than More Complex

The near-term future of EdTech solutions will be in their ease and simplicity, not in their power or sophistication. Solutions and tools that are easy to understand, simple to operate, and that actually work dominate the market now and will continue to do far into the future. Those solutions that require little to no development, training or new hardware or systems will find eager audiences.

The reality is that many of those who work within our education system are quite busy. They have students and parents to educate, test scores to raise, funds to raise, grants to write, reports to file and administrative tasks to run. Adapting to a new tool may not top their list of priorities.

Instead, solutions that work as soon as they are implemented will be picked up and used widely. In a very rudimentary example, we have seen this happen with Google Classroom at the beginning of the pandemic. We have reason to believe that this will be true even in corporate L&D environments.

Teachers And Educators Will Begin To Adapt To Technology

Several teachers have begun to realize that the “one size fits all” approach does not work for students anymore and they are beginning to look at alternatives such as personalized learning programs that suit their student’s needs. The new breed of teachers will be more tech-savvy and will have a better understanding of how technology can be used as a tool for efficiency rather than a barrier.

The change won’t be overnight and not everyone will adapt to it at the same pace. But as this happens, many teachers would start adopting technology to make their lives easier and also make learning more engaging for students. Technologies which help teachers in automating repetitive tasks, enabling remote collaboration and help in planning lessons are going to be most popular among educators.

The Largest Group Of Learners Will Be Adults

With the rapid advancement of technology and complex process automation comes the challenge of skills shortage. Some learning experts are of the opinion that it takes workplace skills just six years to lose their relevance, which creates a massive skill gap in most industries today.

A 2021 report from McKinsey is quite alarming in this regard- 87% of surveyed executives felt that their company was experiencing a skill shortage, or would experience a skill shortage in the near future. Interestingly, however, only 6% of respondents are looking to contracting as a way to address these gaps, and nearly 60% of them would prefer to initiate a companywide reskilling policy instead. As a result, several learners may look outside of the conventional education system to hone and pick up new skills, irrespective of whether their companies offer reskilling initiatives or not.

EdTech startups are basking in this sunshine. Everyone from a famous NYU professor to a group of Y Combinator graduates has their own EdTech venture today, created to fill out this glaring gap between what companies want and what people can offer today. Traditional education systems would do well to follow suit and offer smaller cohorts of their more famous courses through a hybrid delivery model enabled, of course, by technology.

Geo-Political And Global Economic Instability Will Accelerate Remote Learning

The schools of the future must prepare students for jobs that don’t yet exist with technologies that haven’t been invented using tools we can’t predict, to solve problems we can’t conceive. Moreover, they must do this in the context of political uncertainty, war, and transmigration. As more children begin to be displaced, the need for low-bandwidth media streaming and virtual classrooms will only continue to grow.

Technology has been the great equalizer of the past four decades, evolving faster than any of us could have predicted. It is now education’s turn to experience technology-enabled disruption, and that’s a good thing. If we learn from the past and ensure equal access, equal opportunity, and seamless learning for everyone involved, technology may just become the force for good that can amplify the effect of these good choices and make education accessible for all, whether that is at the workplace, or outside of it.

In the face of a global event, the world undergoes tectonic shifts. The world and democracy as we know it today are a product of the aftermath of World War II. Likewise, the pandemic is a global event that will continue to define us and our choices for several years to come. In the context of the pandemic and the emerging composition of employee mix, The Great Resignation is a trend impacting business in a scale and industry-agnostic manner. We must ask ourselves, why are people resigning, and why are they leaving now?

The answers to those questions lead us to a much larger question- who are we as people, now that we have experienced a world event?

Today, organizations planning their Learning and Development efforts must consider two individual-level aspects:

• The entry of a new generation of workers into the system. These employees are digitally-native, have grown up observing the impact of existing economies, and primarily hold perspectives that might seem alien to today’s corporate world.
• The changing priorities of existing workers. People have begun to realize that work can be accomplished even remotely and that work does not always figure first in the order of priorities.

In our current social context, movements like Black Lives Matter, and our evolving understanding of workplace harassment, it becomes clear that a rigid L&D approach that focuses on skill delivery at the expense of its cultural relevance is no longer relevant. We believe that the most significant shift in the corporate learning space will come from, and as a consequence, a more nuanced understanding of diversity and inclusion. The United Nations has a Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) program that supports corporate initiatives towards diversity in developing nations, essentially signaling that the world at large is ready for such a shift.

With this background, let us understand what the terms diversity and inclusion mean in the context of corporate learning and development.

Diversity and Inclusivity In The Context Of Corporate Learning

According to the University of Delaware’s Center For Teaching And Assessment Of Learning, diversity recognizes multiple opinions. At the same time, inclusion creates an environment in which these opinions can be heard and shared. Equity takes us one step further- it allows us to see these differing perspectives as valuable and proposes that we would be at a loss without them.

Likewise, organizations looking to build a culture of Diversity and Inclusion through learning interventions must also recognize that this is essentially a three-step process.

• Creating systems and structures that allow for ease of sharing. These may come in the form of mediated brainstorming sessions, encouraging the quietest people to speak up, and hiring for diversity as a norm rather than an exception.
• Backing these systems up with a flatter organizational hierarchy that allows everyone to be heard and developing programs that encourage a better understanding of diversity.
• Over time, encouraging those in minority groups to pursue learning models that help them go after leadership positions.

Making The Change: Stability vs. Dynamism In Corporate Learning

In a September 2020 article from McKinsey & Company, the authors call out the pandemic’s impact and why our existing learning models may be too rigid to allow for any change at all. The article proposes a stability vs. dynamism model for corporate learning that enables new ideas to grow while preserving the best practices of existing models. Under the dynamic umbrella, we have aspects like learning in the flow of work and developing strong learning networks.

In this context and our outlook of the future of work, we believe diversity and inclusivity can be one of the core organizational foundations in the future. Every organization can establish diversity markers that guide what is and isn’t acceptable in the new culture. The dynamic elements can then be layered atop this foundation by delivering learning programs to achieve business objectives, establishing mentoring programs that foster better workplace relationships, and reviewing all existing and planned content against set diversity markers.

Why Do It Now?

The need to develop a more diverse and inclusive workplace has been understood as early as 1964, when a documented report of diversity training exists. Why are we still seeing diversity in corporate L&D as a continuing topic over five decades? Several factors come into play here, such as:

• A change in the diversity of today’s workplace when compared with the eighties: for several years, the need for diversity wasn’t felt beyond its legal implications.
• A shift in working models: today’s most valuable worker is a knowledge worker, and it is only now that we understand how much diversity matters in that context.
• Conversations around race: We understand today that the concept of race is highly irrelevant, and yet some suffer generational trauma. It is no longer enough to make diversity a box to tick, and companies know this.
• The pandemic-exacerbated differences: Every individual’s lived experience is different. We have seen this with our co-workers these past couple of years. It makes everyone question why our workplaces are so uncomfortably similar in their expectations when we are all so different.
• A more aware workforce: Today, every brand has a digital front, and its policies directly impact its sales.

As a result, relegating diversity and inclusion to just one training program is no longer sufficient, and organizations are looking for a cultural shift from within.

Making diversity a part of all learning interventions, as opposed to just another training program, is the need of the hour. Education is a powerful tool in creating social change, and boardrooms should be no exception. All future-focused organizations would do well to consider diversity in the context of their existing culture. Organizations that do this sooner will attract and retain better talent aligned with similar values and develop a strong brand that will serve them for years to come.

Integra helps Institute for Community Living, New York, transform an instructor-led in-person training into a scalable remote learning program.

How do you create a high-performance team in the shadow of a pandemic? Trauma has impacted everyone, from CEOs to frontline employees. Traumatic events, such as anxiety, fear, powerlessness, helplessness, worry, anger, and restlessness, can affect people across all walks of life at any time. Organizations are looking for ways to build high-performance teams that foster environment of care and empathy while also addressing traumatic impact on their workforce.

Recently, Integra helped the Institute for Community Living, New York, transform an instructor-led in-person training program into a scalable remote learning program. In this article, we will explore what a trauma-informed workplace is and how organizations can build high-performance teams despite pandemic-related uncertainty.

Before you proceed with the rest of the blog post, it would be worthwhile to watch this short snippet from the webinar ‘Training complex behavioral skills like trauma-informed approach in workplaces through online self-learning programs’ to get a quick overview of the subject matter of this article.

What is a trauma-informed approach?

According to Buffalo Center for Social Research, University at Buffalo, “Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) is an approach in the human service field that assumes that an individual is more likely than not to have a history of trauma. Trauma-Informed Care recognizes the presence of trauma symptoms and acknowledges the role trauma may play in an individual’s life- including service staff.”

A trauma-informed approach focuses on the impacts of traumatic stress on the individual, organization and society. Trauma-informed practices are based on recognizing that people experience a full range of reactions following exposure to any form of traumatic experiences in the past. Trauma-informed practices attempt to address these concerns by supporting an employee’s ability to manage their reactions and emotional responses to trauma through understanding, communication, collaboration, community building, and creating healthy boundaries.

‘Trauma Awareness’ training is a workshop that explores how leaders can design a safe working environment for their team members while fostering an environment of care, empathy, and kindness.

How can trauma-informed workplace benefit employees and employers

The world is trying to emerge from a pandemic that impacted every walk of life across all strata of society. Trauma shaped to a great extent the way people across different occupations and professions are dealing with life post-pandemic. Traumatic experiences during the pandemic have manifested themselves in several forms, as noted above, including anxiety, fear, powerlessness, helplessness, worry, anger restlessness, among others.

Trauma awareness and trauma-informed approach are not terms that apply only to the field of human services. Today, across all industries, every organization is faced with a challenge where most of their employees have experienced trauma due to prolonged lockdowns and working from home. When it comes to work, stress can drain employees’ energy and concentration and reduce their productivity. It also diminishes creativity and optimism, which are two essential ingredients for success in the workplace!

Employers can help their workforce understand trauma-informed principles, manifestations of symptoms, and methods to overcome problems that affect employees every day. Trauma-informed principles mean that care and empathy are at the forefront of how organizations should operate. Since workplaces depend on healthy employee morale across all levels of the organization, employers must provide a safe environment for employees.

Why should businesses invest in this training staff on a trauma-informed approach?

Organizations do not have to succumb to the side effects of employee stress and anxiety-induced behaviors. The trauma-informed approach is a new way of understanding and working with people. Trauma-informed workplace training is a necessary investment to ensure the organization has access to all of its employees and can maintain high-performance standards.

Trauma-aware organizations are better equipped to deal with the day-to-day challenges of living in an uncertain world, including operational continuity in times of crisis or pandemic response. There are many benefits of a trauma-informed workplace, such as:

• Improved communication and collaboration
• Reduced conflict, passive aggression, or social isolation
• Improved productivity, creativity, and optimism
• Reduced absenteeism and turnover
• Improved health and safety, well-being, and resilience

Trauma-informed training enables employees to confidently deal with work and life demands when both areas are also affected by uncertainty. Additionally, a trauma-informed organization is more likely to be resilient and better equipped for dealing with prolonged, compounded stress in the event of any unforeseen events.

The future is uncertain, and we need to face it head-on. A trauma-informed high-performance team can help an organization of any size.

The best thing that can happen in an organization is a workforce that cares about collective well-being and wants nothing but all of the stakeholders to succeed together. This kind of behavior will only help as we face our ever-changing environment with uncertainty because such teams strive to adapt quickly without becoming paralyzed despite painful past histories or experiences.

Behavioral skills training: Experiential learning through custom eLearning

Trauma-informed approach in workplaces can be achieved by addressing the needs of employees through self-awareness, education, and management practices. Training complex behavioral skills like trauma-informed approach in workplaces can seem like a daunting task. It requires time, patience, and commitment for all stakeholders involved, but it is worth the effort.

Traditionally these training sessions are conducted in a classroom setting. However, considering the current challenges and with a majority of the workforce still unable to work from offices, experiential learning strategies delivered through custom eLearning is the most effective way. As the subject matter deals with human emotions and responses when communicating with fellow human beings, it is imperative that learners experientially participate in the learning process.

Experiential learning strategies can provide maximum success. Instructional strategies for building a custom eLearning course for complex behavioral skills training like trauma awareness and response are:

• Story-based learning
• Scenario-based learning
• Branching scenario-based learning
• Simulations
• Interactive case studies with built-in scenarios

One of the main benefits of incorporating an experiential eLearning approach is that participants can gain hands-on experience as the learner becomes part of the learning content.

Research has shown that participants of an experiential learning session retain more information when compared to traditional learning methods. Immersive eLearning content also provides an emotional connection that is difficult to achieve with conventional approaches like page-turners or rapid eLearning.

It is time to become a trauma-informed organization

Becoming a trauma-informed workplace is an ongoing process. Creating a trauma-focused workplace is an ongoing process, requiring both awareness and action. Considering the human element, it is essential to use learning strategies and methodologies that enable learners to participate in scenarios built into the content. Organization leaders should also factor in learning reinforcements using microlearning strategies as a means to increase the likelihood of long-lasting success.

Trauma-informed approaches are not just for the individual but also for an organization. Trauma-focused organizations have a competitive advantage to outperform their counterparts as their workforce is better equipped to deal with any future disruption like the current pandemic.

Integra offers custom eLearning, microlearning and training modernization solutions to organizations across multiple industries. Our team of experts can help you design impactful eLearning courses tailored specifically for your organization’s needs. Contact us today to learn more about how we can support you with this transformation!