Why HR Departments Should Take a Longitudinal Approach to Professional Training and Learning

By Joe Miller

When it comes to learning, one of the biggest challenges all humans have is being able to effectively retain long-term knowledge. In fact, according to a report from Work-Learning, people forget 50 to 80 percent of what they’ve learned after just one day. Factor in the fact that a recent Microsoft study found that the average human being now has an attention space of just 8 seconds, and you can see why HR departments sometimes struggle with how to keep employees engaged and focused in their training and development programs. Even if someone intensely and comprehensively learns within a dedicated period, that knowledge can degrade as time passes if that learner isn’t continuously exposed to the teachings. This is also known as the forgetting curve. This can become problematic for professionals who have one to two-week long training on a new concept or even a refresh of something they learned long ago.

Longitudinal Learning: Alleviating the Forgetting Curve

One-way of helping to mitigate the forgetting curve is longitudinal or continuous learning. This is the concept that people learn more effectively when instruction is given out or reinforced in small chunks over time. The skills-based learning often seen in sports is an excellent example of longitudinal learning. An individual can take a class and learn the fundamentals of basketball: how to shoot, dribble, and pass. However, if the learning stops there, then much of their basketball learning and development will degrade (forgetting curve). Another example can be seen in the advertising industry, especially when you are dealing with mass media. The ability to build impressions through increased frequencies is at the heart of effective advertising. The “Marketing Rule of 7” states that a prospect needs to “hear” the advertiser’s message at least seven times before they’ll take action to buy that product or service. One Super Bowl advertisement may generate a million impressions, but a series of optimally-spaced ads delivered to an audience multiple times over a longer period will be much more effective in creating understanding and building engagement with an audience.

A good skills-based curriculum will slowly introduce all of the pertinent concepts over a longer period of time with continued practice and reinforcement built into the program after an initial completion. This continuous reinforcement is really the crux of longitudinal learning, a strategy that encourages employees to constantly learn and provides them with the tools and support to help facilitate the increase of knowledge and new skills.

Closing the Skills Gap

In today’s fast-paced society, where technology is constantly evolving, it’s important for professionals to keep skills up to date. According to ATD research, 83 percent of organizations report a skills gap in their organization and 78 percent expect their organizations will have a skills gap in the future. While the skills gap is mainly a shortage of people skilled in the STEM (science, technology, education, and math) industries, there is also a gap in soft skills, such as communication and advanced leadership skills. Teaching soft skills is considered a top priority for organizations, as 92 percent of executives say soft skills are equally important, if not more important than technical skills, according to the 2018 Workplace Learning Report.

Two of the world’s largest retailers, Walmart and Amazon, are taking the skills gap into their own hands by making efforts to close it in the areas of work they need the most for their employees. In October 2019, Walmart will offer nearly-free college training to its workers who want to become healthcare professionals to help the company fill healthcare jobs at Walmart and Sam’s Club 5,000 retail pharmacies, 3,000 vision centers, 400 hearing centers, and the first-ever Walmart Health center in Dallas, Georgia. In addition, Amazon’s AWS recently announced it will team up with 19 Los Angeles area colleges to help teach the skills needed for a growing number of in-demand jobs that require cloud computing. Both announcements are signs that the labor market and the institutions educating those who wish to enter the job market are finally working together to make sure there is alignment between the skills and training needed and where the job growth is coming from. It’s imperative for all organizations to jump on this bandwagon to adopt a learning culture that celebrates, rewards, and encourages continuous learning.

Longitudinal learning enables learners to maintain mastery of a subject, skill or function for a much longer period of time, to the point that it can offset the forgetting curve. Like learning to ride a bike or tie your shoes, it may take months or years of practice and repetition, but once you learn how to do it, you don’t forget. This type of learning provides an outlet for being able to demonstrate proficiency. It also provides an avenue for enabling learners to improve their knowledge over time, and creates an environment where employees are more open to learning new concepts in bite-sized, micro engagements that fit within their day-to-day work and personal lives.

How Organizations Can Foster Continuous Learning

Organizations should be mindful of how their learning curriculum is being designed and delivered and not just stop at the point of an assessment. Often, training is designed to be contained within a set time period (such as a 1-day workshop); while that in itself is good, it will lose its effectiveness if that content is not reinforced and constant in nature. Enterprises should look for ways to incorporate a learning culture within a company, and provide post-workshop reinforcement, such as small snippets of content with quiz questions emailed out once a week, or incentivize employees to log into their learning platform to accomplish small weekly knowledge missions, with rewards and recognition available – anything to enable employees to stay connected with the materials.  

A learning culture ultimately drives behaviors, shapes relationships, and impacts overall success. For learning and training to truly make an impact on an organization and its employee progress, they must build and influence a continuous learning environment. 

One way an organization can cultivate a learning culture is for the leadership to be on board. If learning is a priority for executives, employees feel more enthused and accountable in working hard to reach business objectives. In fact, according to a 2018 Workplace Learning Report, 94 percent of employees say they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career development. Similarly, managers should also actively encourage continuous learning. While it might mean time away from their desk, in the long run, the knowledge gained will not only benefit the employee, but also the overall business. Managers motivating employees to attend networking events or sign up for courses will create an atmosphere of support, respect, and growth. 

Last but not least, investing in an online, omni-channel and learner-centric platform can make it easier to access learning material in one, comprehensive destination, when and where employees have time to digest the content. Employers and employees agree that making time to dedicate to training and learning is a challenge, but by providing them with a digital option, where they can learn on their own time, it helps to reduce this friction.

The workplace landscape is changing. We are increasingly seeing employees work remotely and more individuals are working as freelancers versus full-time employees. But one thing that hasn’t changed is the need to keep refreshing workplace skills – whether technical or soft – and continuous learning or training is the best path in helping the knowledge stick. A positive learning culture should be imbedded and praised by leadership so that employees feel empowered to keep learning. This will not only help employees succeed in their careers, but create an environment for overall business growth.