The 70:20:10 Learning Framework: How Can You Put it into Practice?
Staff members have much less time than before to learn. In this case, you can implement the 70:20:10 learning framework at your workplace to help your staff make the most of their time. However, let’s first begin with a question.
How much professional training do your employees get in their present job, and how much of that training do they remember?
Next, give some thought to how much your learners have learned in the flow of their work. Think of whatever was acquired on the job has stuck with them and helped them in their everyday lives.
It’s likely that when employees are doing their daily work, they remember the skills they had learned on the job much more clearly than the orientation and training videos individuals had to watch when they joined your company. This is what the 70:20:10 learning framework is based on.
The 70:20:10 approach is all about how we could use the value of learning in the workplace to help people learn as they go about their work. You can even use your learning management system (LMS) to channel this.
Even though learning and development leaders are aware of the benefits of using technology to update their learning strategy and the significant role it serves in the procedure, several fail to adopt new training programs in a way that helps them reach their goals.
A Deloitte poll found that 88 percent of those surveyed think it’s essential to train future workers, but only 11 percent feel they understand how to go about it.
When you consider the fact that employees say they can only spend 1% of their time per week on training, it’s easy to see why it’s more important than ever to adopt 70:20:10 learning strategies.
The 70:20:10 Learning Framework: An Introduction
The 70:20:10 learning framework was made by Morgan McCall, Michael M. Lombardo, and Robert W. Eichinger of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in the middle of the 1980s.
They questioned 200 top managers about how they had learned. Based on the answers they got, they put the lessons they learned into three groups:
- 70% –- learning outside of the workplace — on-the-job or experiential training
- 20% — mentoring, coaching, and learning from others
- 10% — structured learning initiatives and formalized courses
The end outcomes?
They successfully found a high-quality way to learn that increases employee involvement and, most notably, works.
The founding members of the 70:20:10 Institute, Jos Arets, Charles Jennings, and Vivian Heijne, assert that incorporating the 70:20:10 learning framework will generate real business impact by adjusting the internal focus from merely creating formal training solutions to integrating knowledge in the work process. That’s how grown-ups naturally learn, so it’s not a surprise!
In the broad sense, those who use this new instructional blueprint in their training courses see twice as many business results and efficiency improvements as those who don’t. Sounds intense, doesn’t it? But how does learning like this work?
The 70:20:10 Learning Framework: Its Modus Operandi
Before we can speak about how we gain knowledge, we need to know how adults learn at work. Adults learn in a much more complex way than children, who learn best in structured settings like preschool and kindergarten.
Adults learn best when:
- There is a chance to practice: The information acquired is valuable and can be used in many different situations. This can happen in real life or even just at work.
- There are established systems and informative discussions that knowledge is not always a result of guides or presentations.
- The learner should be given an option to get inputs from other talented professionals or subject matter experts, have detailed dialogues about a subject, and communicate ideas with coworkers to gain in-depth know-how on essential topics.
- The information is frequently reviewed, either solo or together. The process should be repeated and used in different situations over time.
The 70:20:10 learning framework is an effective way to learn because it works directly with how most employees learn:
The 70 focuses on impromptu, on-the-job instruction that is reiterated often. This gives people many chances to learn and remember information about a specific array of capabilities.
The 20 is all about mentoring and coaching through dialogues with experts in the field and with coworkers.
This could be their boss giving users helpful job-related advice to help individuals do their job better, or it could be a coworker displaying a cool trick and getting something done quicker. The number 10 stands for formal learning, like classroom settings, webinars, lectures, practice tests, etc.
It is well recognized that the 70:20:10 learning framework has a direct and significant influence on how engaged learners are and how much they remember.
Learning systems that endorse the 70:20:10 learning framework makes it easier for a company to switch from a program that only facilitates formal training to one that supports all three types of learning.
As a company, you can divide your training into modules. One module covers 70 percent of informal, active learning and 20 percent of social learning. Your core LMS can compensate for the rest by promoting formal learning.
What Do People Who Use the 70:20:10 Learning Framework Get Out of it?
As you might expect, putting the 70:20:10 learning framework into Practice doesn’t work in theory. From the numbers, it seems to work! Despite some misconceptions, organizations that have adopted the 70:20:10 learning framework displayed the following statistics:
- 73 percent think the process is better.
- 72 percent think efficiency has gotten better.
- 63 percent say that productivity has gone up.
A survey by Towards Maturity also shows that organizations that use new models like the 70:20:10 learning framework consistently report more perks than those that don’t
At least, they are:
- More prone to react quickly to changes in business (30 percent vs. 7 percent)
- Staff motivation is 3 times more prone to improve (27 percent vs. 8 percent)
- Customer satisfaction scores are twice as likely to get better (42 percent vs. 18 percent)
The research also showed that when the 70:20:10 learning framework is put into place, it alters how L&D professionals endorse their structured learning activities and makes it more likely that their trainees will seek opportunities to learn from their social job circles.
This implies that learners are more likely to take ownership of the learning and are keen to learn.
Also, learners in a 70:20:10 learning framework are more likely to:
- Learners promptly put what they have learned to use (34 percent vs. 20 percent)
- Employees can learn things that are directly related to their jobs (62 percent vs. 32 percent)
- Staff members can choose their route as they learn (39 percent vs. 21 percent)
- They have seen improvements in how staff act (28 percent vs. 12 percent)
Those numbers are pretty cool! Understanding how efficient the 70:20:10 learning framework is and how involved and helpful your students are when using it makes us wonder: how do we use it, and with what tools?
Putting the 70/20/10 Learning Framework into Practice
When it relates to the 70:20:10 learning framework, the most important thing is to use a suitable LMS. The correct LMS makes your structured learning content easier to use, but it also encourages learners and specialists to talk to each other.
This gives trainees in your learning system a built-in chance to have deep conversations and connect with each other. That’s the “20” in the 70:20:10 formula.
When putting a new model into place, you need to ensure that the educational technology can support your employees with whichever learning framework you choose.
That implies your system needs to have the features that make it easy for learners to share knowledge and give SMEs a place to store the knowledge they need to mentor other learners successfully.
It also indicates that the process has to be capable of providing information on demand to be used in real-world situations.
Think about:
- Does my platform have discussion boards and threads where people can ask general questions about the content to the community?
- Does your alternative let learners look for answers to questions that have been asked before?
- How simple is it for your trainees to share what they know with other learners in a community?
- Can the learner quickly contact subject matter experts through the platform?
- Is it easy for them to find the information they need to help understand something?
When it relates to “just-in-time” learning or acquiring knowledge when you need it, an instructional platform developed around the 70:20:10 learning framework gives your employees the tools to get the information they need when they need it.
Conclusion: Give Your People the Power of the 70:20:10 Learning Framework
The 70:20:10 learning framework can be used on platforms, which have a lot of features that attract learners and encourage a collaborative learning method that integrates structured, informal, interpersonal, and hands-on ways of learning at work, and in everyday life:
- Group content for learning by role. Giving the learner structured training materials which are relevant to them in particular
- Learners can leave comments on videos, which lets them start a comment thread under online content.
- Almost on every page, you can click on a button to contact a subject matter expert.
- AI-powered e-discovery makes it easy to find relevant content using only search terms
Give your people the tools they need to take advantage of social, informal, and hands-on learning opportunities in their daily work. Read more: Corporate learning
