The changing nature of work continues to evolve at an ever rapid pace. If you are a learning leader or a senior business leader you know this as more than most people. So why are the roles in L&D not evolving just as fast? Looking around we still see an awful of instructional designers, facilitators, and LMS administrators, however, we begin to shift the focus to the future of work and to how learners want to learn, we see the opportunity for many new roles and skill needs.
Below is a list of the roles we are beginning to see a need for inside of learning organizations. If you have one or more of these roles, congratulations, your learning strategy is forward-thinking. If you are missing out on these roles, let’s talk about this need and how impactful these new roles are to ensuring a great learning experience.
Learning Strategist – someone who is looking 6, 12, and 18 months to 5 years down the road, understands how to learn effectively, gets how learners want to learn and knows how to build a plan to achieve that vision. This is not just your CLO or Head of Learning, this is your resources aligned to your line of business partners looking for learning needs across the business. These individuals should be connecting learning not only to the needs you have today but to the strategic workforce plan of the organization.
Remote Learning Producer – “Can everyone see my screen?”, “Can everyone please mute their line”, “Why is taking 20 minutes for us to get settled for an hour-long session?” – If any (or all) of these sound familiar, you might need a remote learning producer on our team. Like a conductor for a symphony, the remote learning producer plans and orchestrates the engagement experience in a remote learning environment for optimal results.
Learning Experience Designer – Beyond instruction design, a Learning Experience Designer conceptualizes the best possible approaches to a learning program. One part instructional designer, one user experience guru, one part Hollywood scriptwriter, these are the people in your organization with the creativity and vision to bring even the driest content to life.
Data Analyst/Quality Manager – You worked hard on building that great experience. You don’t want poor ratings on your eNPS score or worse hundreds or thousands of issues raised by learners because something was missed in testing. A quality manager will set standards for the team and help measure your success to continually improve.
Learning Experience Specialist– this role acts as a strategic partner focusing on delivering that great learning experience using several modalities in unique ways to continually engage the learners and keep them asking for more.
Learning Technologist– formerly known as your System Administrator, in today’s advanced technologies, this role has been elevated through the use of multiple technologies, AI, bots, integrating learning in the flow of work and setting up the technical environment to be configured for success.
Our profession will continue to change, and so will the roles we will need to build a culture of lifelong learning in our organizations. We love to hear your thoughts on these roles – or if there any you would add to this list.
If you would like to talk to us about these roles, how we might play one of these roles for you, or other learning needs, reach out to us – Because as we say around here, together we learn
