The Future of Learning at Work 🌇 Transcend Newsletter XVI
The way we learn at work has been dreadfully boring for way too long.
This week we are looking the way the world learns at work, a growing part of the world of education.
Find more about our work at Transcend Network and read about our Fellowship for early-stage founders in the space. Looking for a job in the space? Check this out
NEXT ISSUE - The future of Higher Education in the US
tl;dr: The world is increasingly learning at their workplace; the solutions are changing by focusing on meeting the learner where they are, creating virality and killing ugly LMS platforms (thank god).
1) Defining Learning “At Work”
Learning At Work is a broad definition that includes Corporate Learning, Learning & Development (L&D) and any other type of Learning benefits companies provide to their employees in order to learn and grow. All of our thinking around this space can be found in our Open Theses.
The market is super fragmented, and generally can be sliced in 3 main categories: Training, Learning & Development, and Benefits (a small fraction of which is assigned to learning)
There are some areas of overlap, but the categories are important because they usually involve selling to different stakeholders within the organization.
2) Why should we care?
The world is increasingly learning at the workplace, and using more technology in that process.
Let’s just look at the numbers: the L&D space is roughly valued at about $350b globally: $160B of the market is in the US, with ~$80-100B market in both the EU and Asia. The benefits sector is about the same size (~$300b). Combined, that’s roughly the GDP of Turkey or Switzerland!
From our analysis, there are three important aspects to understand this sector:
🔍Most of L&D spend is not learner-friendly, but management-friendly: most of the platforms used in the industry optimize for the manager experience over the employee and learner, as the latter is not the ultimate decision-maker when it comes to product purchases.
👀Employee usage is the key bottleneck: taking the Learning as a Benefit market as an example, about 90% of employees in the US are eligible for some sort of employer-funded learning benefit, however, only a minority of employees ever use it. When it comes to LMS, LXP or L&D platforms, the utilization rates also vary but engagement is generally pretty low.
💻The workforce is changing: the workforce of the future is much more dependent on contractor/freelance work (which will reach 50% of the US in a decade). Benefits are growing in importance as gig economy players face regulatory and social pressures to extend to their contractors.
3) The future of Learning at Work
This space is undergoing massive change over this decade, as employers continue to take on more aspects of their employees’ education, during and after university.
From our research, these are the 5 major trends that will shift the future of Learning at Work:
Employee/learner-centric solutions will ultimately win: players tend to centralize the consumption of learning content through their own apps, but this often results in low engagement. We are going to see new teams focused on learner outcomes that will actually push out these low-engagement solutions.
Moving towards more freedom for employees to choose how to learn - lightweight solutions that simply give access and support the learner might be much more successful
Learning-as-a Benefit is the next wave in corporate learning: benefits are exploding as a category - they drive employee retention and happiness, and can be very flexible and varied. These also give much more freedom for employees to choose how to consume their learning, which could be a key intervention to address the low engagement levels experienced globally.
New flexible work solutions require new solutions: 2019 is marking an inflection point in the relationship between contractors and employers, as California is forcing them to extent them the benefits of full-time employees. Learning as a benefit is well-positioned to take on this, given its flexibility as a category, fiscal advantages and investment into the contractors -
Vendor partnerships as the new distribution channels for the numerous enterprise SaaS solutions: there's more coaching marketplaces or leadership training platforms that enterprises can realistically adopt - and often there is a large gap that keeps technology startups from selling to brick and mortar institutions. These, however, already use companies like SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce... who can be the way for startups to sell to new enterprise customers.
These 5 trends are opening up opportunities for startups globally to address gaps in Learning at Work.
4) Projects in the space
Below is a map we’ve created in our research with all the largest players in the space.
On the left, the internal content platforms, most of them are legacy enterprise solutions. On the right, external content platforms, most of them have been around for less than a decade.
The emerging platforms of the early 2010s (Learning & Development Platforms and Learning Experience Platforms), are consolidating their business as the market becomes more established. These include Udacity (project-based courses with employer certificates), Coursera for Business (online courses designed by universities + employers) or Degreed (lifelong learning platform to carry credentials through your career).
The new learning platforms are being built in two spaces: Learning as a Benefit (using benefits budgets to allow employees to learn what they want) and Coaching/Training Platforms (building systems around training that were previously done manually).
🎁Learning as a Benefit
Guild Education (employer-funded college access for employees), InStride (similar business model), Sunlight (platform to access micro-growth opportunities - such as conferences, books, courses - using employees’ learning budgets).
🤝Coaching/Training
Strive and Cultivate (management & leadership training platforms), BetterUp and Torch (enterprise coaching marketplaces), Junto (leadership content through podcasts).
For more information on the space, feel free to reach out to us, and follow our Twitter list with thought leaders in the Future of Learning at Work.
What do you think? We’d love to get your thoughts, please leave a comment or reply to this email!
☀️Applications have been rolling in for the W20 Transcend Fellowship for early-stage founders shaping the future of learning and work, and we are really impressed by the startups we are seeing! Don’t forget to share and apply here before Dec 1st.
📦HolonIQ published this insightful taxonomy to map out all education projects globally.
🔧Curious to see what the inside of a startup looks like? Buttondown is opening up its costs for the world to see!
📊The MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab published some new insights into the future of work in this fascinating report
Shen Gao (San Francisco, CA)
Positions I’m looking for: Product Manager, Product Operations, Business Analyst
My Background: Over the last two years, I’ve in product design, product management, strategy, & web design roles at startups in San Francisco.
I’m currently exploring consulting as an option and would love to connect with anyone who currently works as a consultant to learn more about what it’s like.
Let me know if you would be open to a 30min chat! (hello@shengao.me)
👋Looking for opportunities? Introduce yourself here!
Strive Talent
Our friends at Strive Talent are hiring a Product Designer.
Strive helps people achieve their personal and professional potential through personalized and practical leadership development, and they have a top leadership team, great culture and some of the best investors in the space.
If you have 3-6 years of experience working in user experience research and product design (from user flows/journeys to pixel-perfect designs), apply directly here and let us know!
All the updated job opportunities can be found on our Job Board!
Growth Lead | Customer Support Lead | Partnerships & Community Lead - Eva Tech
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Microverse - Product Management
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Briter Bridges - Community ManagerAssociate; Expansion and Research
London Interdisciplinary School - Digital Marketing Manager
Laconia - VC Intern
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Thanks for reading another week! For any feedback, requests or ideas, reply to this email.
Alberto(alberto@transcend-network.com) & Michael (michael@transcend-network.com)