{"id":61055,"date":"2020-01-14T22:22:46","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T22:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/explore.local\/2020\/01\/14\/get-the-most-technology-investment\/"},"modified":"2025-04-04T19:29:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:29:29","slug":"get-the-most-technology-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/degreed.com\/experience\/pt-br\/blog\/get-the-most-technology-investment\/","title":{"rendered":"Four Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Technology Investment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In most organizations, learning and development budgets are tight, even when L&D is expected to play a transformational role within the company. Often, success requires maximizing the budget or using existing technology your team already has access to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Strategy<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So how can you make the most out of your investments in learning technology? While the right software can prove to be truly transformational, it won\u2019t be effective without a clear learning strategy behind it. Maximizing these platforms comes down to how administrators implement, utilize, and market them to their companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help get you started, we brought three powerhouse L&D teams to LENS 2019, our annual conference, to share their strategies for leveraging learning in highly competitive fields: travel, telecom, and healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This panel featured Kylie Rasmussen and Richard Rundle of Booking.com, Peter Sheppard of Ericsson, and Darci Hall of Providence St. Joseph Health. Their insights have been summed up as four big ideas for maximizing your technology investment. You can also watch their full presentation at the bottom of this page. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Make it match your mission.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Providence St. Joseph Health is deeply dedicated to their mission. The healthcare nonprofit began in 1859, started by five courageous women who founded the Pacific Northwest\u2019s first permanent hospital. Now Providence St. Joseph Health employs nearly 120,000 caregivers, serving patients across seven states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The caregivers are the core of Providence St. Joseph Health. When surveys revealed that the caregivers did not feel cared for, the nonprofit decided to overhaul its approach to L&D to better serve its people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe talked about implementing Degreed as our promise,\u201d recalled Darci Hall, the Chief Learning Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health. \u201cThis promise is to our caregivers, to know them, care for them, help them grow, as they do their patients.\u201d Personalized learning<\/a> technology gives caregivers unique professional development, so they can keep up with the hallowed work of healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Booking.com has a very different mission, but it also drives the company\u2019s technology investments. The travel website started in the 1990s and now has 18,000 employees working across 220 territories. Booking\u2019s mission statement reads, in part, \u201cWe are on a mission to make it easier for everyone to experience the world. We promise access to everyone, to all life\u2019s experiences, whenever, whatever, and however.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The L&D team at Booking.com connected the mission to their own work. \u201cLike traveling, learning is a continuous process of curiosity, exploration, and creating memorable experiences,\u201d explained Richard Rundle, one of Booking\u2019s Digital Learning Specialists. To uphold its mission, Booking.com invested in tools that piqued people\u2019s curiosity and enabled rich learning experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Make it easy and enjoyable.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ericsson makes the systems that make cell phones work. That is a tremendous task considering how the tools are constantly changing. Learning is the key to success in this dynamic industry. Since the work is complex and the scale is huge, Ericsson needed a simple system that makes people want <\/em>to learn and allows them to do so with autonomy. \u201cLearning made easy, that is what we\u2019re trying to achieve,\u201d said Peter Sheppard, Ericsson\u2019s Head of Global L&D Ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTechnology, of course, does not exist for its own sake. It exists to enable that experience for employees. We want to make it easier. We want it to matter. By making it matter, it helps build that elusive learning culture,\u201d Sheppard added. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Booking.com shares this priority, too. They found that social technologies supported their learning culture. \u201cWe\u2019re quite lucky at Booking because we don\u2019t need to worry too much about promoting this culture of learning. We focus on maintaining it,\u201d Richard Rundle reported. \u201cI think that\u2019s really about social interaction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThose conversations happen around the coffee machine but I can also do that on Degreed, where I can maybe follow a Skill Plan. I can leave some comments, some takeaways, or I could even share that bit of content,\u201d said Rundle, focusing on keeping things simple.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the right technology, online learning can be more social than chatting around the coffee machine. \u201cIt really allows for that social interaction,\u201d Rundle pointed out, \u201dand that\u2019s one of the biggest things for Degreed that we saw in our organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Get strategic about the future.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Healthcare workers are bracing for disruption. \u201cWe have folks like Amazon, Warren Buffet, and Chase that think they can do healthcare better,\u201d remarked Darci Hall. She expects that automation will change the industry, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, these newcomers don\u2019t have experienced caregivers like Providence St. Joseph Health. The challenge for Hall\u2019s team is to prepare the caregivers to keep up in the fast-changing field. \u201cWe\u2019re looking at how to create a more personalized experience,\u201d she declared. \u201cKnowing them, what they\u2019re doing, how they\u2019re doing, what they need, and when they need it. We\u2019re developing personalized learning journeys that will help with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In telecom, for the last few decades, disruption has been constant. Ericsson is showing its employees how to keep up. \u201cWe are trying to create a new skills ecosystem<\/a>,\u201d Peter Sheppard shared, \u201cwhere people can really recognize their skills gaps, both at an individual level but also at an organizational level.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alignment is coded into the core of Ericsson\u2019s strategy, he noted. \u201cTo some extent, it comes down to your business case for your technology. We do \u201cline of sight\u201d workshops, where you can see the line of sight from what the business goals are, right through to what the learning requirements are.\u201d This clear connection keeps workers on track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Cultivate your champions.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even the smartest tools are powerless unless people actually use them. To ensure that the entire organization actually adopts the technology, leading organizations have to invest in their advocates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ericsson\u2019s learning team made an important alliance early on. \u201cIf there\u2019s one stakeholder that really matters when you\u2019re creating around your technology ecosystem, it\u2019s the IT team,\u201d Sheppard asserted. \u201cWe\u2019ve introduced new technologies in very different ways at different times. The ones that have been successful got IT on board from day one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For their newest video learning platform, Ericsson gave leadership roles to individuals from IT. The technical team was brought in from the beginning and stayed engaged throughout the development process. When everything was finished, it was the IT leaders \u2014 not the L&D team \u2014 who presented the platform before Ericsson\u2019s product council. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The learning team at Booking.com<\/a> also understood this principle, so they brought key influencers onto their new platform. \u201cWe gave early access to a group of people,\u201d said Kylie Rasmussen, another of Booking\u2019s Digital Learning Specialists. \u201cWe identified users across the globe and at different levels, and targeted them as learning champions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll of them were already really passionate about learning. They had already developed that learning muscle, and they were already doing it in their day-to-day,\u201d Rasmussen said. \u201cThey were talking about the platform, helping their colleagues sign up, using the platform, adding takeaways, sharing content, and joining Groups.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Invest<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to Booking.com\u2019s learning champions<\/a>, when other employees logged on, they entered into an ecosystem that was already thriving. Watch the full LENS 2019 Presentation below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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