- Building expertise within the company to strengthen business performance
- Increasing the company's attractiveness as an employer by enabling individual development
What does education and development look like in the digital age?
Birgit: "We are currently experiencing a paradigm shift in corporate training, as it has changed significantly in recent years, particularly in the wake of digital transformation. This goes hand in hand with the transformation of the working world towards 'New Work'," says Birgit.
She continues: "In the fast-paced VUCA world (note: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) in which we live, we must learn to respond particularly quickly and flexibly to often unforeseeable technological, economic and societal changes; we must learn to manage uncertainties and increasing complexity in many areas of work and to cope with an ever-growing volume of data and information."
These changes in the working environment mean that both employees and managers must continuously adapt and expand their skills and competencies in order to:
- Make agile decisions
- Simplify processes
- Solve problems collaboratively
- Build resilience to change
What does 'modern learning' mean?
Birgit: 'New Learning' as the counterpart to 'New Work' primarily means a mindset shift, as this type of learning is completely new to most of us. The classic separation between working time and learning time is increasingly blurring; informal and exploratory learning in the workplace is becoming ever more important, because in new learning spaces, learning increasingly takes place ad hoc and on demand. The expectations of learners have also changed significantly. The personalized digital experiences from private life – think of Netflix or Amazon Prime Video – also impact expectations regarding learning in the workplace."
What approach does Glacier take to corporate learning?
Birgit: "At Glacier, we have committed ourselves to the paradigm of the 'Learning Ecosystem'. A learning ecosystem is a highly adaptive socio-technical environment in which people and technologies interact closely with one another, with the goal of expanding competencies in the way best suited to them. It consists of a network of various elements such as learners and learning communities, external and internal stakeholders, learning content, learning cultures, but also technologies and data architectures, all of which are connected and influence one another. A learning ecosystem enables learners to shape their own learning process by giving them access to various resources. Above all, it provides access to a community of learners and the opportunity to collaborate and exchange with other learners and instructors."
The learning ecosystem...
... encompasses all components that contribute to employee development in the context of L&D within the company. These include the learning culture, learning processes, company stakeholders, but also technological conditions. Learners are therefore influenced in their learning process by:
- Learning offerings and formats
- The learning community
- Technologies and tools
The learning spaces within the learning ecosystem can be both physical and virtual.
In virtual learning spaces, learners can access digital learning materials, complete interactive exercises and communicate with other participants in online discussions. They enable flexible and personalized learning, as learners can track their own progress and set their own pace.
But the physical learning environment has not lost its importance in the digital age either, particularly for social interaction and the exchange of ideas and experiences. They are especially well suited for an in-depth transfer of knowledge and skills that goes beyond the purely digital environment.
The learning ecosystem thus offers a combination of both learning environments and enables learners to optimize their learning in the ways best suited to them. A learning ecosystem can also help to make personalized and needs-oriented learning possible.
"Overall, the concept of a learning ecosystem can make a valuable contribution to making climate education more personalized, more accessible and therefore more effective. This in turn means that more people are likely to actively participate in efforts to combat climate change."
…"We are trying to build a bridge between New Learning and traditional concepts of learning"
"While the learning ecosystem approach is in tune with the times, it also entails some challenges. If we take a look at practice, we see that many companies still cling to traditional work and learning concepts.
Overall, the L&D area is still strongly oriented toward traditional 'top-down' concepts such as the watering can principle, where the transfer of knowledge – e.g. in the form of a 'training catalog' from HR development – is centrally controlled, and learners are regarded, in line with the watering can principle, as passive recipients of knowledge. In many places, we still see little personalization and cohesion of offerings, as well as a low level of maturity in the area of data and technologies. Data is often still stuck in silos, and a lack of interoperability means that systems do not communicate with one another.
We are trying to build a bridge here between New Learning and traditional concepts of learning, and we make sure that learners are actively involved in their learning process and have the opportunity to take their individual learning needs and styles into account. We also rely on the use of technologies to support learners and provide them with access to a wide range of resources and tools. This enables them to adapt their learning process to their needs and to expand their skills and knowledge in a flexible and effective way. By creating a learning ecosystem, we meet the needs of both the organization and the learners."
Business development through climate protection training
In the Glacier Climate Academy, companies and their employees receive training in the field of climate protection and acquire industry-specific expertise and competencies for implementing CO2 reduction measures. Education & development requires additional effort, but offers great added value to companies.
Training employees in the area of climate plays a particularly important role because:
- Companies make a significant contribution to the climate crisis through their production and their use of resources and energy, and can thus minimize this impact
- Employees with climate protection expertise have the skills to design their work area in a climate-friendly way and to implement sustainable practices, which ideally results in a sustainable product and the company's transformation toward net zero
- The positive reputation and image of the company are strengthened when climate-active steps are taken
And it doesn't stop there – there are several more benefits of climate protection training within the company.
In summary, this means…
…that while training employees represents a certain effort in terms of organization and implementation, it offers great opportunities both in terms of company performance and employee satisfaction, and ensures that companies operate in tune with the times.
The New Learning approach and the learning ecosystem enable the integration of learning into everyday work and simplify L&D in the corporate context. Above all, digitalization has brought about major changes in corporate training and, through technical tools, creates new opportunities for employees to acquire new skills and competencies.
Would you like to bring climate protection into your company?
Click here to access our climate protection training program!
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