Three reasons why Virtual Training / Face to Face training is not going to be effective in 2021 and beyond. Those are Cost/Time, Scale, and Learning Effectiveness.

1. Parthiban Vijayaraghavan 8 January 2021
THREE REASONS WHY FACE TO FACE /
VIRTUAL TRAINING IS NOT GOING TO BE
EFFECTIVE IN YEAR 2021
By Dr. Parthiban Vijayaraghavan
Context
Before I delve into why Face to face / virtual training is not a good strategy for 2021, let me set the context.
Do you know learning motor skills are much harder than learning cognitive skills? It takes longer and with
repetitive practice to learn a motor skill. Now imagine, you can learn a motor skill in 20 hours. Is it too good
to be true? Forget the 10K hour rule. What if I say it is possible to learn any new skill in 20 hours. Think about
it how many things you want to learn. What is on your list? What is holding you back from getting started? In
most cases, the time and e
ff
ort it takes to acquire new skills are the blockers. The time you don’t have and
the e
ff
ort you can’t spare. According to research, it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill to mastery. In
this VUCA world, who has that kind of time?
The year 2021 is going to be a pivoting year for many companies, organizations, industries. The World
Economic Forum reported that about 42% of jobs will need di
ff
erent skills in the next three years, and over
one billion workers will require reskilling by 2030. This unprecedented change is due to changing
technology and economic drivers. The critical factors which will dominate 2021 are 1. Reskilling 2. Remote
working. Many companies are adopting WFH as a long term strategy to optimize cost structures which
require altogether a di
ff
erent learning strategy.
Be it a generalist or specialist in your organization, everyone would like to learn the skill as fast as possible
and apply the same. The old face to face or virtual training is not going to solve this problem and here are the
three reasons why.
https://linkedin.com/in/pvijayaraghavan/ 1

2. Parthiban Vijayaraghavan 8 January 2021
1. Cost / Time:
Many companies are facing unprecedented pressure on margins and cash
fl
ow. Face to face / virtual training has a signi
fi
cant cost impact and the
downtime faced by employees while in training. Employees are increasingly
facing challenges to manage competing priorities which means any form of
downtime will face resistance. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine a
person's maximum capacity to lift a weight is 99.5 KG, for many it may
sound, oh it is only 500 grams, you can lift since it is not much however for
that person, that 500 grams could collapse him.
2.Scale:
Having limited resources on budget and time, face to face / virtual training can only be extended to a
limited set of employees. This not only fuels an unhealthy political climate and also leads to
disengagement. In today's context, reskilling is needed, especially in the new norms of working
(remote, WFH), communication, collaboration, innovation, project management execution have gone a
paradigm shift. Hence the reskilling is needed across the board, instead of a few sets of individuals.
3. Learning E
ff
ectiveness:
Face to Face / Virtual training is done in 1-3 days, which means the
contents, competencies, knowledge, and skills are all compressed to
fi
t
in those 1-3 days. We know practically how hard is to get all the
participants under one roof or aligning the calendars to be present. So
we tend to make the maximum utilization of the training program which
has a repercussion. Each participant has a di
ff
erent pace and learning
style. Hence the only handful is engaged and learns during such
cramped sessions others simply switch o
ff
. For any learning to take
place,
fi
ve key components need to ful
fi
ll. 1. Need 2. Intent 3. Motivation
4. Time and 5. Resources (Content). At the most one can cater to point
2 to 5 in any face to face / virtual training for all the participants. No 1
which is need is highly contextual and situational to each participant.
If face-to-face / virtual training is not an optimal strategy then
what it could be?
The optimal strategy is "Situational Learning": Learning needs to happen 365 days and needs to be
embedded on to day to day work. This will enable the transformation you are desiring for. Let me explain why
is this e
ff
ective.
As I shared on components of Andragogy, situational learning is personalized to an individual learner rather
than a cohort. Which means, it serves Individual Need, creates Intents, promotes motivation as it helps the
learner to become better of themselves. The other two components on the Time and Resources will be
covered in the How part. Situational Learning recognizes that for learning to happen, it must
fi
t around and
align itself to working days and working lives. Instead of thinking of corporate learning as a destination, it’s
better where learning happens daily. Through good design thinking and cutting-edge technology, some
solutions and experiences make learning almost invisible in our jobs.
How:
https://linkedin.com/in/pvijayaraghavan/ 2
“While we often
think of training
as programs or
courses, a new
paradigm has
arrived, one I call
“Learning in the
Flow of Work.”
- JOSH BERSIN

3. Parthiban Vijayaraghavan 8 January 2021
Learning the experiential platform (LXP) enables situational learning. Firstly chunking the concepts into
smaller bite-size learning helps the learner with Time. Using AI, LXP can curate the appropriate content for
the learners thereby saving enormous time spent on searching for content. This not only solves the time,
content part of the andragogy, this also helps solve the Need. Let me share with you a real use case. Macro
Research (Name Changed) has over 200 employees, the primary business activity is providing research and
analytics to their clients. An organization servers the USA / Europe market and have tight schedules, which
leaves not much room for downtime. One of the top competencies for the role is Advanced Excel Skills
(Macros). In past many training classes were conducted however it did not seems to be e
ff
ective, upon
diagnosing we found, due to time compression, such training was cramped in 1-2 days and most could not
pick up the skills, a handful picked up however they left the organization. We implemented LXP, which gave
every employee
fl
exibility to learn at their own pace, time, and place, the ability to share knowledge and skills
on the platform, created a buzz and engagement around the topic, with the help of leaderboard and the
quality of content shared by the peers on LXP Platform, we were able to identify the subject matter expertise.
We encouraged SME to hold the Ask me session on the Platform which drew many audiences inside the
company. After 6 months, HR con
fi
rmed the productivity has increased by over 30% and as a result, there
was a better work-life balance and the e
ff
ect of the same was seen as a reduction in the attrition.
LXP helps with cost as it is scalable and used over 365 days. Secondly, we have great content available out
there, LXP helps to organize, contextualize, and chunk into bite-size for easier consumption, comprehension,
and application. LXP promotes engagement and creates a culture of learning. Finally, LXP with help of good
design thinking helps to embed the learning in the
fl
ow of work. In 2021, if you want to cater to your every
changing, dynamic work environment, having a multi-generation workforce with di
ff
erent learning pace and
style, LXP will is the way forward
Reference:
1. https://
fi
rst20hours.com/
2. https://joshbersin.com/category/enterprise-learning/learning-programs/
3. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1477971420918602
4. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1045159520984547?journalCode=alxa
https://linkedin.com/in/pvijayaraghavan/ 3