When onboarding new employees or helping people adjust to new roles, your biggest responsibility is going to be teaching them everything they need to know for their new position. But what are the best ways to do this?
One relatively new philosophy in the world of education and training is role-based learning. But what exactly is this philosophy, and how can you use it to greatest effect?
What Is Role-Based Learning?
Let's start by looking at the basics of role-based learning. Traditional forms of education focus on teaching people specific principles; your curriculum is put together based on a hierarchy of knowledge, and students are required to learn specific facts in a specific order.
But with role-based learning, the focus is slightly different; the highest priority is equipping students with all the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in a specific role. To create the perfect training program, you first need to understand what the responsibilities of a given position will be. From there, you can structure your educational program to make sure that each employee learns everything they need to know to be successful.
There are several advantages to this approach, including:
- Practical takeaways. Instead of focusing on specific facts or skills that seemed like they might be valuable in some way, to some person, you're going to be focusing on things that you know will be valuable for a specific role. Employees who go through this program are going to walk away with very actionable, specific takeaways that they can apply in their job as soon as they return to work.
- Solid curricula. You'll also have a solid foundation for future teaching exercises and other roles. When you put together a compendium of educational content for a specific role, you'll be able to call upon that for each new employee you want to bring into that role. It's a great way to save time and still be sure that each new onboarded employee has all the tools and knowledge they need for success.
- Employee engagement. Employees tend to be more engaged when you offer role-based learning. Oftentimes, people get distracted when they wonder what the value of the educational content truly is; if they don't understand why they're being taught something, they're not going to pay much attention. But because your training is meant to be grounded in practical value, the benefits and value will be clear.
- Ease of modification. Generally speaking, as long as you're using the correct platform, role-based learning programs are easy to modify. You can remove certain resources and replace them with better ones, you can update your training schema based on new developments in the position, and you can change the program entirely to make it better suited for a different position.
- Individualized approaches. No two people learn exactly the same way. A resource that is stimulating and informative to one person may seem boring and useless to another. Some people prefer conceptual learning, while others like to get more hands-on. Role-based learning allows you to provide the best resources and the best approach to fit each individual employee in your organization, based on their future role.
- Automation and time savings (with the right platform). Because many role-based learning platforms in the modern era are based on machine learning and AI, you also benefit from automation and time savings. Much of the customization that happens for an individual role happens on the back end, requiring very little in the way of human effort.
- The death of passive learning. Passive, indirect learning tends to be boring and relatively ineffective. Role-based learning puts students and employees into a more active role, giving them context for what they’re learning and keeping them attentive and invested.
Tips for Integrating a New Role-Based Learning Strategy
Role-based learning certainly looks appealing for most training and education programs. But integrating it into your existing curriculum, or preparing your students/employees for it can be difficult.
Here are some strategies that can help you:
- Explain the philosophy. Consider explaining the core philosophy of role-based learning to the employees and students who will be engaging with it. If you explain the benefits of this approach, and help students understand why they’ll benefit by undergoing instruction in this format, they may be more willing to embrace it.
- Provide examples. It’s difficult to conceptually explain role-based learning or convince people that it’s worth pursuing. But it gets much easier if you have real examples of role-based learning in action. Find a way to demonstrate just how powerful role-based learning can be.
- Change gradually. You don’t need to completely transform your organization, or your approach to training and education, overnight. Focus on making one small, yet significant change at a time.
Enter the Learning Experience Platform (LXP)
If you want to tap into the most powerful benefits of role-based learning, one of your best options is to use a learning experience platform (LXP). LXPs are platforms designed to make training and education within an organization as easy and seamless as possible, while maximizing employee engagement and retention at the same time. Your LXP will be a centralized home base for a variety of different educational resources, including in-house content, third-party content, and even user generated content.
Even better, LXPs are easy to integrate and are fully customizable, allowing you to use them in conjunction with major business partners or other software currently used in your organization.
Does your business need an overhaul to its learning and development approach? Are you in need of an LXP platform that can accommodate role-based learning? Readynez365 could be the ideal solution. Schedule a free consultation with one of our representatives today!
