With the recent announcement of the shortlist for the 2021 Learning Awards we continue this weekly series of L&D QuestionTime featuring those individuals shortlisted – today we hear from Emma Forbes – Shortlisted in the Rising Star of The Year Category.
In your opinion what is the biggest anxiety within the world of learning and development at the moment?
Providing value to clients and learners whilst working with diminishing budgets. In the current and impending economic climate, L&D, with all other business functions will have to do more with less. Therefore it’s now more important than ever that L&D professionals work with the business to identify, measure and track how learning and development can positively impact productivity and profitability.
Who or what is informing your thinking around L&D?
I’m very lucky to work with an incredible team at Electra, where everyone’s happy to help. My network is made up of our staff team as well as contractors and partners that we work closely with.
Over and above that, we lean on the LPI. This year we’ve been given a unique opportunity to quickly go digital with all of our processes. One of the biggest areas of rework was training delivery and for this we turned to the LPI – my colleagues and I dialled into a lot of the initial sessions at the start of lockdown to help guide how we’d make this transition and found the information and resources incredibly helpful.
We rely on LPI articles and online resources, as well as those provided by the CIPD, and Prosci. We also work with Gartner to keep updated on the upcoming trends in the IT and digital spaces to ensure we’re able to develop learning programmes that meet the needs of our clients and delegates.
What is the most exciting innovation on the horizon for learning?
Virtual reality (VR) learning experiences have been talked about for a long time and I definitely think they have the power to revolutionise the way that we can deliver training. When done correctly, VR has the potential to provide a completely immersive and interactive space for learners to run through scenarios, test out ideas and all without any distractions from notifications – it’s a dream!
What “game changers” would you like to see and why?
Historically eLearning has been branded as the hub for mandatory training, but with the Learning Management System (LMS) tools we have available today it has the power to be so much more. An LMS can be your one stop shop for information – where personnel should be able to ask and answer questions quickly, complete courses, schedule training and store notes. It would be a real game changer if we could help everyone to make this a reality.
I’d also like to see more accessible learning experiences – with digital tools this is becoming very easy. We should remain mindful and make use of live closed captions in virtual training sessions, use webcams for those that lip-read and use tags on media content to prevent barriers to learning.
What do you think the world of L&D will look like by 2030?
I think that digital learning is here to stay. We’ve made incredible progress in the past eight months in rapidly developing content to be delivered online. We’ve found that actually we can use video training, webinars, podcasts and eLearning to push out key business messages. We can facilitate soft and technical skill training through live online events, and make use of tools such as instant messaging, polling, quizzes, screenshare and so much more to engage our learners in new and interesting ways.
I would also love to think that one day we will return to classroom training, when it’s safe to do so. However, hopefully 2020 has paved the way to proving that classroom training is not the only option!
What advice would you give your 21 year old self?
Worry less and say yes to every opportunity – you never know what could come of it!
About Emma:
Emma Forbes is a Senior Learning Consultant with leading IT change management and learning specialist Electra Learning. With offices in Aberdeen, Scotland and Calgary, Canada, Electra Learning provides clients with an end-to-end IT change service, from consultancy and training to eLearning development and Learning Management System hosting. Emma leads a number of project teams, working with blue chip organisations across the UK oil and gas industry. Her role involves developing client proposals, project planning and resourcing, developing and delivering training programmes and tracking projects’ profitability and productivity.
Connect with Emma on LinkedIn
Leave A Comment