To All Learning Colleagues: Our Competition is Actually Netflix

Over the last year we've facilitated a fun/insightful/challenging exercise with some of our customers that I wanted to pass along to anyone looking to set an aspirational vision for your learning and talent experiences.

The exercise is pretty simple.

Step 1: Schedule a meeting for one week out + task your team with some homework. The ask is to have them screenshot or take pictures of their 'top 10' favorite digital and brand experiences. Think Netflix, Amazon, the Dominos pizza delivery app - or whatever creates a meaningful brand experience when they're off the clock.

Step 2: Then after they submit, ask them to go through your organization's talent + learning experience content and print a representative sample of the experiences employees go through at onboarding, leadership training, career planning sessions - or whatever represents the employee digital learning experience appropriately.

Step 3: Then, when you have your meeting, physically print out the images and pictures from both sets of experiences. Put the 'personal life' brand experiences on one wall. Put the 'employee life' experiences on the opposing wall.

Then talk about what you see. What's similar/different? How does each wall make you feel? Why?

While there's been plenty of talk about Employee Experience (EX) and modernizing the employee digital experience to feel relevant, personal and curated, we've found that many companies struggle to make these concepts 'real.' This exercise helps fill that gap because it brings to the surface why we love the things we engage with voluntarily in our personal lives. And why our associates may or may not love how they learn and engage at work.

Pro Tip for Facilitators: The takeaway is not that 'we need better graphic designers.'

The key 'aha' quote from delivering this type of session tends to be something along the lines of: I never fully appreciated how design, ease of use, and personalization in our personal lives raises the bar for expectations in our employee lives.

The idea that your "competition" when designing learning, engagement, or upskilling/reskilling experiences is Netflix (?!) initially may have a somewhat sobering effect. But the discussion about a grander vision also sparks innovation + motivates teams to explore different ways to drive employee experience.

Give it a try. (And be sure to let me know if you do!)