The technology industry is a whirlwind. Things change at a breakneck pace; what was cool yesterday is passé by next week. Competition is fierce—there’s no such thing as resting on your laurels, even when you’re at the top of your industry. You need to keep pushing and innovating, or risk being sidelined by a competitor.

It’s exciting, but also extremely demanding. Tech is facing several challenges at the moment: global and economic uncertainties, new regulations, and a talent shortage are all putting strain on the industry. How can technology firms solve these challenges while staying on top of their game? If you’re a regular on this blog, you already know what the answer is: learning.

How can the technology sector better use learning?

The list below details how learning leaders and managers in the tech sector can rise to the unique challenges of their industry through workforce learning, while exploring some of the most intriguing new technologies in Learning & Development (L&D).

1. Embrace innovative learning solutions

Tech companies watch each other. We know what’s up, not just with competitors, but with innovation in general. Something cool has just come out? We want to get our hands on it. Not just because we love technology but because we want to discover emerging solutions to complicated problems.

So, tech companies looking to upskill their workforce naturally want to know: what’s new in L&D?

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML): AI has been having a moment in several industries and L&D is no different. AI and ML can be used to personalize learning, make learning more engaging, and make sense of learning analytics.
• Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR): AR and VR have been talked about for years, but the technology is constantly evolving and getting better. VR can be used to simulate an environment where you might not want to risk a mistake (safety training or customer interactions) and AR can be used to inject training into real-world situations.
• Nanolearning: You’ve heard about microlearning, but what about nanolearning? While microlearning delivers information to a learner in small chunks, nano learning aims to educate your team in even less time, usually in under five (or even two) minutes!

The great thing about tech companies is their willingness to try new tools, but it’s important to remember that using a new learning technology for its own sake isn’t effective learning. Be smart about how you deploy learning technologies; make sure the technology fits the information you’re trying to teach.

2. Reskill the workforce

The tech industry is facing a major skills gap. Technology companies are battling over job candidates with in-demand skills, but there are still more empty roles than there are qualified candidates. Rather than hiring the workers you’re looking for, why not train the workforce you already have?

L&D calls this “reskilling”: it’s the process of teaching existing employees new skills so they can perform new jobs. Reskilling programs are a major focus for L&D organizations at the moment. LinkedIn finds that large-scale reskilling programs are the third most important priority for L&D this year: they help to close the skills gap, keep people employed, and make companies more agile.

3. Offer agile training

The world is changing quickly, as is the tech industry. Training needs to be able to adapt to new tech and new realities quickly — otherwise you’ll be providing yesterday’s training to your team while they’re dealing with tomorrow’s problems.

To keep your training fresh and relevant, use a Learning Management System (LMS) that adjusts at the pace of the technology industry. An adaptable LMS makes possible to develop courses for even the newest technological advances extremely quickly. That way, when your team starts using a new tool, you’ll already have training that will teach them how to use it.

Changing quickly will keep your learning, and your team, agile.

4. Creation vs. curation

You don’t have to develop all of your training in-house. Use high-quality, off-the-shelf courses to augment your custom modules and create a library that addresses all your needs.

Combining curation and creation strategies can be especially valuable if your organization is experimenting with new technologies like augmented or virtual reality. In some cases, the content libraries available for brand-new technologies like these may be limited. Rather than purchasing content that doesn’t meet your needs, you can use your off-the-shelf budget for more general courses and your internal content creation resources to develop the AR or VR content you need.

5. Create teams to test new solutions

Teamwork is essential to any successful business, especially in the tech industry. To implement successful technology solutions, you do need to perform some level of testing. Rather than singling out only your QA or Support groups to do this often-tedious work, consider using cross-departmental teams. They can share the workload and compensate for the time and resource constraints of any single contributor. Team-based testing and learning experiences provide better technology outcomes as well, because people from different disciplines bring different skills and competencies (as well as weaknesses) to the table, which all help expose areas where more or less training may be needed for particular groups.

Change is the new normal

It’s not just the tech sector that’s undergoing major changes. Many industries are evolving due to advancing technology, and you could argue that most companies are so heavily invested in tech that they have become tech companies themselves.

That change has also affected L&D, as learner expectations and innovations have evolved. To reach your learners, you need to evolve as well. As we have explored in Training Industry’s recent Anatomy of a Modern Learning System report, we have to change our perspective: training isn’t a one-time event – it is an ecosystem made up of technology, data, and tools that work together to help the workforce learn.

Given their affinity for tech stacks and their adaptability to constant change, tech firms are well-positioned to adopt this new mindset and make the most out of their workplace training through modern technology.